Exclusive: Senate Democrats blocking Trump nominee because he is gay, Log Cabin leader says
Neil W. McCabe
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The president of the Log Cabin Republicans, the national organization of gay and lesbian GOP voters and their straight allies, told Big League Politics, Senate Democrats are blocking the nomination of Richard Grenell to be the ambassador to Germany.
“For a lot of Democrats, the M.O. is: ‘Live your truth, as long is it is our truth,’ and I truly think there is little that would roil Democrats more than the knowledge that you would have an openly gay Republican appointed by President Donald Trump representing our interests in the largest country in Western Europe,” said Gregory T. Angelo, who was an alternate delegate for Speaker Newton L. “Newt” Gingrich’s 2012 bid for GOP’s presidential nomination.
“You have someone in Mr. Grenell, someone who has unquestionable foreign policy experience,” he said.
“There is no one, who can question Rick Grenell’s resume or qualifications, which is why President Trump nominated him for this position–it just so happens that Mr. Grenell, in addition to his many other qualities, is someone who is gay,” he said.
Angelo said he is shocked that this has become a fight that Senate Democrats want.
Gregory T. Angelo (Courtesy)
In the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, all Republicans voted for Grenell and all Democrats voted against him, so this is not the case where Republicans are blocking the nomination of a gay man because of cultural or religious objections, he said.
Rather it is the Democrats, who are abandoning their support of equality with their opposition to a highly-qualified nominee to one of the country’s most important diplomatic posts–keeping it vacant for more than a year, he said.
“All of the barriers to Mr. Grenell’s confirmation are totally a creation of the Democrats,” he said. “Far from being anti-gay, it is the Republicans, who have stood by Mr. Grenell.”
The White House announced the president’s intention to nominate Grenell Sept. 2 and sent the formal nomination to the Senate Jan. 8.
Grenell was the longest serving U.S. spokesman at the United Nations, from 2001 to 2008, where he served under four ambassadors, including John Bolton. The graduate of Evengel University and John F. Kennedy School of Government has worked at all levels of government, including a stint in the office of Sen. John S. McCain III (R.-Ariz.).
In 2012, Grenell resigned from the presidential campaign of former Massachusetts governor W. Mitt Romney after religious conservatives objected to Romney’s having an openly gay man on his senior staff.
The Washington Blade reported that Sen. Christopher S. Murphy (D.-Conn.) objected to Grenell’s mean Tweets directed at women at a Sept. 29 hearing:
Murphy said the “litany of derogatory comments about women’s personal appearances” were among the “very inflammatory things” said by the nominee, asking him if he regrets the statement and can understand the concern about the impact they’ll have on his role in Germany.
Contrite in his response, Grenell said it was “never my intention to hurt anyone’s feelings” and denied the comments were representative of his character.
Another article in The Blade quotes Grenell Tweeting that Ambassador to the Vatican Callista Gingrich snaps on her hair and Hillary R. Clinton is transforming into Madeline Albright.
The same article quotes Grenell telling a female staffer in red shoes also working on the 1992 reelection campaign of President George H.W. Bush: “Didn’t your mother ever tell you only whores and very small children wear red shoes?”
Angelo said it was clear that Senate Democrats are not really blocking Grenell because of this mean Tweets.
“Rick can be aggressive on Twitter,” he said.
“Rick is someone who is known to be a fighter and he does not back down, and that is someone that you want fighting for the United States in Germany or any other country, but that’s the excuse,” he said.
“It is not the real reason.”
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