One week after social media posts sank President Biden’s nominee for budget chief, another pick appears to be in jeopardy. More “mean tweets” and a proxy battle over Biden’s Iran policy have endangered the nomination of his pick for the No. 3 job at the Pentagon.
A single Democrat could sink the nomination of Colin Kahl to be undersecretary of defense for policy. The White House is relying on party solidarity to avoid a repeat of the fate suffered by Neera Tanden, Biden’s Office of Management and Budget nominee, whose nomination collapsed after West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat, said he would not support her.
On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made an appeal to Manchin, who said afterward he had not made up his mind.
“I’ve reached out to Republicans who he’s worked with and who he’s worked under,” Manchin told Fox News on Tuesday. “I’m gathering all that information. I have not made a final decision.”
Manchin also spoke to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican, under whom Kahl worked.
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“I’ve seen some [Kahl’s] tweets, and they are concerning, and I’ve talked to him about those, and he’s well experienced and well accomplished in the area they want to confirm him to,” Manchin said. “And we spoke about all those things.”
“First of all, his tweeting is nowhere near what Neera Tanden’s was, and we spoke about that, too,” he added.
In the tweets in question, Kahl, who served under former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and as deputy for the position for which he is now nominated, criticized former President Donald Trump’s national security policy, charged that Republicans “debase themselves at the altar of Trump,” and called the GOP “the party of ethnic cleansing.”
Republicans indicated they would oppose Kahl at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, expressing displeasure at the tweets.
“How can you reassure this committee that your hyperpartisan advocacy would not drive Pentagon decisions?” asked Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, the top Republican on the committee. Inhofe said that if he sounded a little upset, it was because, “Frankly, I am.”
Kahl worked to smooth over differences, apologizing for what he said was “disrespectful” language. He was “swept up” in “polarizing” social media discourse, he explained.
Yet Kahl’s efforts to smooth over the relationship quickly unraveled as Inhofe disputed the characterization of a private phone call between the two of them that leaked to the media.
Still, Republicans’ larger objection to Kahl is his support for the Obama administration’s Iran deal.
During his hearing, Kahl signaled he would favor a strong rebuke to an attack by Iran.
“When Iran takes actions against our own forces, we should defend ourselves and punch back,” Kahl said.
But critics have already circled the wagon.
Inhofe told Jewish Insider that said he agreed with “some of” Kahl’s comments on Iran, but “he wasn’t strong enough.”
GOP senators, including Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Joni Ernst of Iowa, and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, have said they will not support Kahl.
“He has been consistently wrong about almost every foreign policy issue in recent memory,” including on “Russia, … Iran, and … Jerusalem,” Blackburn said, calling Kahl “the wrong choice” for the position.
A hearing for Wendy Sherman, Biden’s deputy secretary of state-designate, raised similar concerns over the 2015 Iran deal.
Nominations for Sherman and Biden’s pick for Central Intelligence Agency director, William Burns, who led backchannel talks with Tehran in 2013, have not advanced as Sherman came under fire for her ties to the deal. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican, is holding Burns’s up in a bid to pressure the White House to take action against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would move Russian gas to Europe.
Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine pointed to the potential for a party-line vote on Iran in the hearing, calling opposition to Kahl “essentially a proxy war.”
“Republicans didn’t like the Iran deal,” he added.
Kahl, who worked alongside colleagues who negotiated the Obama-era deal, tempered earlier remarks about Trump exiting the deal, which he said would speed up Tehran’s military provocations and pursuit of nuclear materials.
“It’s completely conceivable” that frozen assets returned to Iran in 2015 could have financed Iranian proxy forces, Kahl said in the hearing.
He had opposed sanctions and cited testimony from the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2017 to support his 2015 assessment that sanctions relief would largely go toward domestic spending rather than financing hostility.
“Most of it will go to butter,” Kahl had said at the time.
After speaking out against the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani by U.S. forces last year, Kahl conceded in the hearing that, “I think [the world] is probably a better place without him.”
A former GOP aide, now an outside policy adviser, suggested opposition to the deal had become something of a litmus test for conservatives and Democrats, such as Manchin, in red-leaning states.
“On the Republican side, [opposition to the JCPOA] is seen as signaling that you are a strong conservative, perhaps a strong Trumpist, to oppose the deal and anybody associated with it,” he said.
This person suggested that Manchin, who opposed the deal in 2015, would continue to wait the nomination out.
“I think Sen. Manchin is looking to put as many marks on the Republican side of the ledger as he can,” this person said. “And that means he’s going to probably reserve judgment on nominees until the very last moment or come out against some of them the way he did with Neera Tanden.”
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The White House and Manchin did not respond to requests for comment.
