Ignoring massive holds by numerous Republicans on the required Senate confirmations of U.S. military and diplomatic officials, Fox News is blaming President Joe Biden for what one host called the “lack of Senate confirmed elected officials.”
The officials are not “elected,” they are appointed or nominated by the President. The President nominates and the Senate’s constitutionally required role is “Advice and Consent.”
U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) since February has placed a near-total blockade on the confirmations of well over 300 military officers, and even in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Israel he has refused to lift his holds.
READ MORE: Former NATO Commander Latest to Blast Tuberville Blockade of Military Confirmations
“Sen. Tuberville is not the only one using this tactic,” noted the Bipartisan Policy Center on August 29. “Recently, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) announced that, because of the Department of Justice’s indictment of former President Donald Trump, he would put a hold on all DOJ nominees. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) announced a hold on Department of Energy nominations to pressure the Biden administration to produce an action plan for combating radioactive waste in St. Louis. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has a hold on the nominee for the Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) recently released a two-month-long hold on State Department nominees over documents on the origins of COVID-19.”
On Monday, Foreign Policy reported, “At the time of the deadly Hamas attack on Israel, Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East, the United States had no confirmed ambassadors to Israel, Egypt, Oman, or Kuwait. The State Department’s top counterterrorism envoy position has sat empty for more than two years, the top human rights envoy position—the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor—has been unfilled for the entirety of the Biden administration, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has not had a top Middle East official in nearly three years.”
Those observations closely track with what the Fox News host was saying. But she did not appear to read this from the same Foreign Policy article:
“The mostly empty bench is due to a nearly broken Senate confirmation process, where nominees have languished in limbo for months or even years due to the ‘new normal’ practice of Republican senators placing sweeping holds on all nominees for different agencies over policy disputes with the administration. On the Pentagon side, hundreds of senior military posts are on indefinite pause due to Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s blanket hold on nominees over the Biden administration’s abortion access policies for the military—including senior officials at U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East. At the State Department, Republican Sen. Rand Paul has held numerous nominees over access to documents on the origins of COVID-19, while fellow Republican Sens. J.D. Vance and Ted Cruz have also previously issued holds.”
READ MORE: ‘Dishonest’: Critics Slam Fox News for ‘Attack-Biden-at-All-Costs Garbage’
Watch the Fox News clip below or at this link.