GOP Senators Stall Tata Nomination for Top Pentagon Post

After Islamophobic remarks, Trump’s controversial pick to be Defense Department’s policy chief is in troubled waters.

The fate of President Donald Trump’s controversial nominee to become the Pentagon’s top policy official, Anthony Tata, turned suddenly rocky on Thursday when the Senate committee responsible for his confirmation abruptly canceled his nomination hearing less than an hour before it was scheduled to begin.

“There are obstacles,” Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the No. 2-Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said when asked if Tata had any path to confirmation. “There are … obstacles,” he said again, after a pregnant pause.

Tata, a retired Army brigadier general who became a novelist and a Fox News commentator, has drawn fire for past remarks falsely calling former President Barack Obama a “terrorist leader” and a Muslim. Democrats have been unified in their opposition to his nomination from the beginning.

But several GOP members of the panel have also expressed discomfort with him, and it is that discomfort that appears to have jolted his confirmation off the tracks. The committee on Tuesday held an executive meeting to discuss the nomination. By Thursday morning, just as the hearing was scheduled to begin at 9:30, it was canceled.