Posted on 07/30/2020 6:38:13 AM PDT by RandFan
The confirmation hearing for President Trump’s controversial nominee to lead the Pentagon's policy shop was canceled l ess than an hour before it was set to begin on Thursday.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said the hearing was canceled because "many" Democrats and Republicans "didn’t know enough about Anthony Tata to consider him for a very significant position at this time."
“We didn’t get the required documentation in time; some documents, which we normally get before a hearing, didn’t arrive until yesterday," Inhofe said in a statement released about 15 minutes before the hearing had been scheduled to start. "As I told the president last night, we’re simply out of time with the August recess coming, so it wouldn’t serve any useful purpose to have a hearing at this point, and he agreed.”
The Hill has reached out the White House for comment.
Democrats have been calling for Tata, a retired Army brigadier general most known for his frequent guest appearances on Fox News, to withdraw from consideration as under secretary of Defense for policy since inflammatory and racist tweets were surfaced by CNN last month.
In 2018 tweets, for example, Tata called Obama a “terrorist leader” and said Islam is the “most oppressive violent religion I know of.” He also called Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) a "vicious race baiting racist” and said she and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) "have always been the same violent extremists."
In other 2018 tweets, he floated a conspiracy theory that former CIA Director John Brennan used a coded tweet to order Trump’s assassination and told Brennan to “pick his poison,” including execution or sucking “on a pistol.”
Tata has since deleted many of the offensive tweets. After CNN’s reports and after several Armed Services Democrats, including committee ranking member Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), came out in opposition to Tata’s nomination, he also penned a letter to Reed and Inhofe expressing regret at the tweets and calling them an “aberration in a four decade thread of faithful public service.”
Ten Democrats, including five on the committee, wrote a letter to Tata released Monday calling on him to withdraw, saying that “multiple past statements cannot be dismissed simply as an aberration.”
Tata could be confirmed without any Democratic support, as nominees only require a simple majority to be confirmed.
But questions have been raised about whether he could garner enough support among Republicans, particularly from those facing reelection would have to defend their vote on the inflammatory nominee.
At least one Republican has indicated he could oppose Tata, but not over the incendiary tweets. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said in a statement last week he would oppose Tata unless the Pentagon changes its policy against adding the names of those who died in the 1969 USS Frank E. Evans ship collision to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
LOL President Trump seems to getting his nominee’s from Tucker’ show ...
Example:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3868951/posts
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