By Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s pick to be assistant secretary of state for international organizations hit a major stumbling block on Thursday when a Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said he would oppose the appointment.
Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah said he did not believe Jeremy Carl is the right person to represent the country’s best interests at international organizations. The position manages the U.S. relationship with international organizations including the United Nations.
Carl is currently a senior fellow at the conservative Claremont Institute think tank. He was a deputy assistant secretary of the interior during Trump’s first term.
“I find his anti-Israel views and insensitive remarks about the Jewish people unbecoming of the position for which he has been nominated,” Curtis said in a statement after Carl’s nomination hearing.
Curtis’ decision was first reported by the Deseret News.
A White House official said that Carl remained the nominee.
At the hearing, Curtis asked Carl about past comments about Jewish people, including an appearance on a podcast in which he responded, “Right, right yeah,” when the host criticized them for “claiming special victim status” because of the Holocaust.
At the hearing, Carl said he did not remember making some of the comments read out by senators and said he regretted some others. “I made some comments in interviews about minimizing the effects of the Holocaust that were absolutely wrong,” he said.
Curtis’ objection leaves Carl unlikely to win the approval of the foreign relations panel, which could sink his nomination.
That would be a departure in the Republican-majority Senate, which to date has backed the vast majority of of Trump’s nominations and policies.
There are 12 Republican and 10 Democratic members of the committee, which oversees the State Department. Every Democrat is expected to object to Carl.
‘GREAT REPLACEMENT’
During the hearing, Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey asked Carl what he meant when he said he believed in the “Great Replacement” theory, which fosters the belief that non-white immigrants will replace white citizens.
Carl responded that the theory referred to the “international demographic replacement of Europeans in Europe.” Booker asked if Carl believed there is currently “an effort to replace Americans” and Carl said, “I think the Democratic party, through its immigration policies, has certainly sent signs of that.”
Questions about Carl’s nomination have existed for months, over his past comments but also his lack of diplomatic experience. In September, CNN reported that Carl had tried to delete at least 5,000 of his comments on X.com, including many that were inflammatory about racial issues.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York opposed Carl’s nomination in a Senate speech this week, saying he had a “long history of racist, white supremacist and antisemitic views.”
A nomination can be sent for a vote by the full Senate if the committee does not vote in his favor, but this is extremely rare. Trump’s Republicans have just a 53-47-seat majority in the chamber.
Asked for comment, a spokesperson for Jim Risch of Idaho, the committee’s Republican chairman, said he supported all of the president’s nominees.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Sonali Paul)
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