Former White House speechwriter Darren Beattie was fired during Donald Trump’s first term, and now he’s back. Andrew Puzder’s Cabinet nomination collapsed during the president’s first term, and now he’s back, too.
Anthony Tata’s nomination for a key Defense Department position also failed during Trump’s first term, and wouldn’t you know it, he’s also back. The New York Times reported:
President Trump has nominated Anthony J. Tata, a retired brigadier general with a history of Islamophobic and other inflammatory comments, to a senior Pentagon post in charge of jobs and deployments.
It’s been a while since we last talked about Tata, so let’s revisit our earlier coverage and review how we arrived at this point.
In February 2020, as part of a post-impeachment loyalty purge, Trump ousted John Rood as the undersecretary of defense for policy. The president soon after settled on Tata, whom he’d seen on Fox News, as Rood’s successor. It wasn’t long, however, before Tata’s ugly record came into focus.
Two years earlier, for example, the retired brigadier general condemned Barack Obama as a “terrorist leader,” with “Islamic roots,” who helped negotiate an internal nuclear agreement to help “the greater Islamic state crush Israel.” Around the same time, Tata described Islam as the “most oppressive violent religion I know of.”
He also published a 2018 tweet pointing to “clues” that Obama “supported Russian meddling” in the 2016 race, adding that Islamic militants “really did have Manchurian Candidate in White House.” Tata also suggested that former CIA Director John Brennan sent a coded tweet ordering Trump’s assassination.
With this record in mind, a variety of former U.S. military leaders publicly opposed Tata’s nomination. Though the retired brigadier general retracted his earlier rhetoric — “I did misspeak in 2018 on Twitter in hyperbolic conversations,” he said in a letter to senators — it quickly became clear that there was significant Senate skepticism about his nomination. Before his confirmation hearing could even begin, Tata quietly withdrew from consideration. It was, however, a temporary departure: In August 2020, Trump appointed Tata to a senior Pentagon position that did not require Senate approval. In November 2020, just a week after he lost his re-election bid, Trump did it again, making Tata the acting undersecretary for policy. Four years ago this week, the Biden administration showed the retired brigadier general the door, but Trump nevertheless wants him for a Pentagon leadership role — again. Tata’s confirmation hearings have not yet been scheduled, and Republican senators have not yet commented on his nomination or his prospects. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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