Donald Trump’s original plan for Kari Lake was badly flawed. Not long after returning to the White House, the president tapped the Arizona Republican, best known for her failed Senate and gubernatorial campaigns, to oversee the administration’s plan to gut the Voice of America.

That plan didn’t go especially well, and as recently as March, a federal judge invalidated Lake’s VOA tenure and nullified the mass layoffs she ordered last year.

This week, she received a consolation prize. The New York Times reported:

President Trump on Monday appointed Kari Lake, a fierce ally of the president who had led the administration’s efforts to shutter Voice of America and other federally funded news groups, as the next ambassador to Jamaica.

Her appointment, if confirmed by the Senate, would end her tumultuous time at the parent agency for federally funded news groups that broadcast to countries with limited press freedom, such as China, Russia and Iran.

Lake’s nomination coincided with the president also tapping Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano — another prominent Republican election denier who launched a gubernatorial campaign that failed — to serve as U.S. ambassador to Slovakia. The far-right state senator will also need to be confirmed by the Republican-led Senate.

Time will tell when and whether Lake and Mastriano receive the support they’ll need on Capitol Hill, but their nominations are emblematic of a larger pattern: The White House sure does like to hand out ambassadorships to those whose earlier political plans didn’t quite work out.

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Steve Benen

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

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• Kari Lake gets an unfortunate (but familiar) consolation prize following VOA failures