Trump nominee withdraws after senators press him on remarks about Jews, Israel and ‘white culture’
President Donald Trump’s pick for a top State Department post said Tuesday he is withdrawing from his candidacy after facing bipartisan backlash over his comments on race and religion.
Jeremy Carl, a conservative political commentator, said he was withdrawing his nomination for assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs because of lack of support from Republican senators.
Carl needed unanimous support from all Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to move to a full Senate confirmation vote. The Republican members of the panel hold a 12-10 majority, so any GOP vote against him would block his nomination 11-11 since tied votes do not advance the Senate.
“Unfortunately, at that time, this unanimous support was not there,” Carl wrote on X.
“I accept this political reality and do not want the President, Secretary Rubio or the rest of his team to waste valuable time and energy trying to change this decision,” he added.
Members of the Foreign Relations Committee questioned Carl last month during his confirmation hearing, with some focusing on his past comments on race and religion.
Sen. John Curtis, Republican of Utah, said in a statement after the hearing that he did not believe Carl was “the right person to represent our nation’s best interests in international forums,” adding that Carl’s “anti-Israel views and insensitive remarks toward the Jewish people” were “unbecoming.”
The position Carl was nominated for involves implementing U.S. policy at the United Nations and other multilateral organizations.
During the hearing, Sen. Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, referenced Carl’s comments and asked, “How do you define white identity and what do you think is erased about white identity?”
Carl responded in part: “I’m concerned about the common majority American culture that we’ve had for some time, which, because of, among other things, mass immigration, has become, I think, much more balkanized, and I think that weakens us. And again, I’m not running away from that comment.”
Murphy later posted a clip of the exchange on social media and called Carl a “legitimate white nationalist.”
Carl objected to this post, responding on
Carl, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Claremont Institute in Washington, was deputy interior secretary during Trump’s first term. He thanked Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for their continued support and appointment to his position on Tuesday.
“The fact that they chose to nominate me and were so supportive of my candidacy was one of many indications that this administration was not content to simply do business as usual nor to simply select candidates from the same stable of ‘business as usual’ possibilities,” he wrote.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening.
