Armand V. Cucciniello III (born December 7, 1979) is a former American diplomat,[1] news reporter, military advisor, political commentator, and public relations executive.
Shortly after, he was hired by the U.S. Department of State to work in the Public Affairs Section at the U.S. embassy, located in the former Republican Palace (Arabic: القصر الجمهوري al-Qaṣr al-Ǧumhūriy) of Saddam Hussein.
[6] Cucciniello was vice president of Blue Force Communications, a public relations agency with offices in New York City and Washington, D.C.
In a 2016 article for USA Today, Cucciniello was the first person to describe then-U.S. presidential candidate Donald J. Trump's foreign policy as "America First," a moniker subsequently used by New York Times reporters David E. Sanger and Maggie Haberman in their interview with Trump who, "agreed with a suggestion that his ideas might be summed up as 'America First'.
[9] While a student at National Defense University, Cucciniello wrote about and published essays on state-sponsored Chinese influence[10] and Russian propaganda.