In 2006, Cucciniello moved to Baghdad, Iraq to work for Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I). 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.[2] As such, Cucciniello was made a non-career U.S. diplomat[2] and became a spokesperson for the U.S. embassy until 2010.[5] He subsequently served in Islamabad, Pakistan, and later worked for the United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command and United States Forces Korea in South Korea.[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 Trump's foreign policy as "America First,"[7] 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'."[8] The phrase became a cornerstone of Trump's campaign platform, and later that of the Trump Administration.[9] After Rex Tillerson was announced as Trump's nominee for United States Secretary of State, Cucciniello argued that Tillerson could perform well in the role given his depth of business experience.[10] While a student at the National War College at National Defense University[11], Cucciniello wrote about and published essays on state-sponsored Chinese digital influence[12] and Russian online propaganda.