Top Biden Pick Ignored Warning That Could Now Haunt Him

One of Biden’s top picks to work at the Pentagon ignored warning from colleagues about his Twitter use that could not derail his confirmation.

According to The Washington Free Beacon:

In March 2017, former Obama administration official Anne-Marie Slaughter told Colin Kahl, now President Joe Biden’s nominee for a top Pentagon post, that his lacerating Twitter broadsides were contributing to “the degradation of the public discourse.”

The warnings were seemingly ignored:

Nominated to be undersecretary of defense for policy, Kahl’s tweets have become a flashpoint of his confirmation. Beyond slamming Republican lawmakers, Kahl also took several Trump administration nominees to task for their own social media posts, arguing that intemperate tweets could be a “liability” for Senate confirmation, and advising one official to “delete your account…or your job.”

Now it’s Kahl’s nomination that is in jeopardy after Democratic senator Joe Manchin (W. Va.) torpedoed Biden’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget over malicious tweets aimed at Republican senators. In a sign that Kahl is on the ropes, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke with Manchin on Tuesday about Kahl’s nomination, according to a Politico report.

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee raised concerns about Kahl’s fitness to serve after the Free Beacon revealed tweets that characterized the GOP as the “party of ethnic cleansing” and a “clown show” and claimed that critics of the Iran nuclear deal “won’t be satisfied until they get the war they’ve pushed for decades.”

Joe Manchin’s decision on Kahl now seems to determine the fate of his confirmation and Washington looks on in anticipation.