President Joe Biden pulled the nomination late Tuesday of Neera Tanden to direct the Office of Management and Budget.
CNN reports that Tanden herself requested she be pulled from consideration after it became clear to her that “there is no path forward to gain confirmation.”
“I have the utmost respect for her record of accomplishment, her experience and her counsel, and I look forward to having her serve in a role in my Administration,” the President said to Newsweek.
Tanden is Indian American and executive director of the left leaning think tank Center for American Progress. Some senators considered her a divisive figure who’s stinging tweets frazzled the nerves of Senators on both sides of the political aisle.
Among those tweets she compared Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to Voldemort, a bad guy in the Harry Potter movies and novels. She also said that “vampires had more heart” than Sen Ted Cruz(R-TX), CNBC reported.
While Biden did not nominate any Asian Americans to a cabinet post, the administration pointed to several Asian Americans to other leadership position. Besides Tanden, he named Katherine Tai as his choice for US Trade Rep, Vivek Murthy as Surgeon General and Vanita Gupta as the number 3 in the Department of Justice.
“I appreciate how hard you and your team at the White House has worked to win my confirmation. Unfortunately, it now seems clear that there is no path forward to gain confirmation, and I do not want continued consideration of my nomination to be a distraction from your other priorities,” Tanden wrote in a letter to Biden.
Some found irony in Republicans failure to tame Donald Trump from tweeting insult after insult on an almost daily basis during his presidency. Yet they could muster outrage over Tanden’s tweets from her position in the non-profit sector.
“Maybe @neeratanden can be the White House Social Media Director now? She’s awfully good at tweeting,” tweeted Mike Hahn, deputy digital director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).
“Neera Tanden bites the dust. Couldn’t have happened to a nastier individual. Well, I guess she can go back to viciously slandering all the people who refused to support her.”
Republicans weren’t the only ones, however, to oppose Tanden. Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced early on he would not vote for Tanden. Given the 50-50 split in the Senate, that made it necessary for her to gain at least one Republican vote.
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