Republican Sen. John Kennedy grilled President Joe Biden’s Budget Office lead nominee Neera Tanden during her confirmation hearing Wednesday, denouncing her for her past tweets and words insulting Republicans and progressives.
“I’m very disturbed about your personal comments about people. It’s not just one or two. I think you deleted about 1,000 tweets, and it wasn’t just about Republicans,” Kennedy said. “I don’t mind disagreements in policy. I think that’s great. I love the dialectic, but the comments were personal. I mean, you called Sen. Sanders everything but an ignorant slut.”
Tanden, the former president and CEO of the progressive think tank Center for American Progress, previously built a brand on “mean tweeting” and trolling her political opponents on the internet, but she frantically deleted many of her comments in November in anticipation of a close confirmation vote requiring Republican senators’ support. Some of these tweets included criticisms of Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who is often considered a swing vote in tight decisions, as well as claims that Russian hackers potentially changed the results of the 2016 election.
.@neeratanden appears to have deleted her tweets about Susan Collins, whose vote she'll likely need for confirmation.
h/t @varadmehta pic.twitter.com/atwonFCaMb— KC Johnson (@kcjohnson9) November 30, 2020
.@neeratanden spread conspiracies that Russia hacked the 2016 election through voting machines and changed votes for Trump. Enjoy the confirmation! pic.twitter.com/eTKFAGszRR
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) November 30, 2020
Neera Tanden, who Biden has picked to lead OMB, wrongly and laughably accused @byronyork of running interference for Russia because he called BS on the Steele dossier. https://t.co/l58gBwvauf
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) November 30, 2020
Following Kennedy’s reference to the famous comment from “Saturday Night Live,” he questioned Tanden’s motives for her past comments. “When you said these things, did you meet them?” Kennedy asked multiple times while Tanden attempted to dodge. The former Hillary Clinton aide eventually admitted she “must have meant them, but I really regret them.”
The Republican senator closed out his interrogation by clarifying that he did not call Sen. Bernie Sanders an “ignorant slut.”
Just one day before Kennedy’s questioning, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri grilled Tanden about her connections to various Wall Street financiers, Silicon Valley tech giants, and foreign governments after many donated to her Center for American Progress, asking her how she would “advocate for working people, given this history of soliciting tens of millions of dollars from the biggest and most powerful corporations on the planet.”
Tanden replied that “no policy position I have taken has been determined by the financial interests of any single person.”
CONFIRMATION: Sen. Josh @HawleyMO lists donations to Neera Tanden’s Center for American Progress: “$665,000 from the personal foundation of Mr. Zuckerberg. Millions of dollars from Wall St. financiers, big banks, foreign govts, Silicon Valley… $2.5 million from the UAE.” pic.twitter.com/yGk1O1IYXr
— Forbes (@Forbes) February 9, 2021
