WASHINGTON, March 10 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s nominee for a senior State Department post withdrew from consideration on Tuesday after his controversial comments about Jewish people and diminished white power sparked rare Republican opposition to the president’s pick.
In a statement on X, Jeremy Carl, Trump’s nominee for assistant secretary of state for international organizations, thanked Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for their support but said their support was not enough.
“We also needed the unanimous support of all GOP senators on the Foreign Relations Committee, given Senate Democrats’ unanimous opposition to my candidacy, and unfortunately, at this time, that unanimous support has not materialized,” Carl said, using an acronym to describe the Republican Party.
The influential Senate committee typically votes on a nomination before sending it to the full Senate for a confirmation vote.
The nomination had been in doubt since Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah, a member of the committee, said after Carl’s nomination hearing in February that he did not believe Carl was the right person to represent the country’s best interests in international organizations.
Curtis cited Carl’s ‘anti-Israel views’ and ‘insensitive comments’ about Jewish people as disqualifying factors.
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Failing to support a Trump nominee is a rare rebuke from the Republican-majority Senate, which has so far supported the vast majority of the president’s nominations and policies.
A State Department spokesperson said the department is committed to defending the Trump administration’s ‘back to basics’ approach to international organizations.
‘After Mr. Carl’s decision to withdraw his nomination, we will continue to work to ensure strong U.S. leadership and reform efforts in this space,’ the spokesperson said in a statement.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
At the hearing, lawmakers questioned Carl about his past comments about Jews and his belief in the ‘great replacement theory,’ a conspiracy theory associated with white supremacy that left-wing and Jewish elites are planning the ethnic and cultural replacement of whites with non-white immigrants.
Carl told the hearing that he didn’t remember making some of the comments read aloud by senators and that he regretted others. “I made some comments in interviews about downplaying the effects of the Holocaust that were absolutely wrong,” he said.
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When asked at the hearing if there was an effort underway to replace white Americans, Carl said he believed Democrats’ immigration policies “certainly showed signs of that.”
Carl is currently a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Claremont Institute. He was deputy assistant secretary of the Interior during Trump’s first term.
