Posted on 10/04/2017 9:21:56 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
WASHINGTON — Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain said Tuesday he is refusing to advance U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominees to the Pentagon until he is satisfied the administration is communicating its plans for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Outside a tense committee hearing on Afghanistan with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, McCain told Defense News that because the administration has not been open with Congress, “we’ve been holding nominations … from the Pentagon to fill in those Pentagon jobs.”
The disclosure came little more than a month after Trump announced a new strategy, criticized for its vagueness, that involves sending more U.S. troops as advisers to the Afghan military. The Department of Defense has acknowledged that it has 11,000 forces on the ground, more than the 8,500 previously reported, and that it plans to send an additional 3,000-plus.
The holds pertain to an unspecified number of civilian nominees, said to be in middle management; however, Secretary of the Army nominee Mark Esper and Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness nominee Robert Wilkie — both senior positions — are also on hold.
Trump has notoriously lagged behind other modern presidents in filling jobs across the federal government, and about 70 percent of DoD positions that need Senate confirmation are unfilled.
“There’s a number of them that have been awaiting hearings and confirmations, some have had hearings,” said McCain, R-Ariz. “The Constitution says that the Senate has the obligation to advise and consent. I am in keeping with the Constitution of the United States. When I got reelected, I said I would support and defend the Constitution, I didn’t say I would support and defend the president of the United States.”
(Excerpt) Read more at defensenews.com ...
He needs to go away ASAP.
Is McCain working for the enemy?
McConnell should have removed this knucklehead along with Collins and Murkowski from any committee leadership for going rogue. Yet, McCain still riding high. Shame on the spineless McConnell
I have a very un-Christian hatred for John McCain. In other words the sonofabitch can’t drop dead soon enough for me. He’s an enemy of the United States.
Or until he dies or leaves office? He should be stripped of committee assignments and seniority. Same with Lyn’ Ted and others that have failed to support Trump.
Yes, and he thinks he is the president. A pox upon him.
The Attention Whore from Arizona is insatiable. He’ll never get over the fact that he ran for president and lost, and Trump ran for president and won.
McCain knows his illness is winning, and figures he has nothing left to lose by being a total creep to anyone and everyone. Selfish and bitter to the end.
He’s not a RINO. He’s a democrat in the R tent. It’s so obvious it pains me to see anyone taking his antics seriously.
If I thought McCain had a legitimate grievance... but I don’t.
So John McCain is taking a knee against the troops because he has not been consulted about military plans. Or maybe he was, and just forgot. Disgraceful.
I pray every day God calls him.
Is McCain working for the enemy?
I was a Seattle resident, but I bought my property in rural central KY two weeks before the 2008 election because I expected McCain to win. He’s been on my radar as a true and utter farce since that Keating Fibe debacle.
He should have been in prison. His successful defense was basically that he was too stupid and gullible to be responsible for his participation.
I suspect (but do not know, I'm not a doc) that Mister McCain has some brain pathologies (very possibly linked to his glioblastoma), and that significantly affect his ability to think or behave rationally.
I further suspect that these brain "issues" might just amplify his embarrassment that he lost a presidential election, which was won a few terms later by someone that I guess that he considers to be his inferior; and, he is determinedly settling scores (constituents be darned!).
“Is McCain working for the enemy?”
McVain IS THE ENEMY!! The RINO domestic enemy.
McNuts IS the enemy!
I don’t know why he’s so concerned with details, he won’t be around long enough to see any of it anyway.
By defying the president with threats of forwarding the peoples’ wishes, McCain is no longer a viable part of the GOP. He needs to be cut off from all funds and support, all committees, and minimized to the basic actions of a freshman senator.
By holding an action hostage, especially against his own party, he has displayed his wishes to separate from the GOP and collaborate with the DNC, which he has been doing on a regular basis for years. He was sent there for a purpose he is not accomplishing, and openly ignoring, to create his own agenda. And that was not to support the people’s wishes. He needs to be recalled or voted out at the next election he is up for, which ever comes first.
rwood
Trump should simply call these folks out publicly.
McCain and McConnell holding up his nominees for bizarre purposes.
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