{"id":19844,"date":"2026-03-10T23:03:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T23:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-pick-for-state-department-drops-out-after-drawing-heat-for-comments-about-white-culture\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T23:03:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T23:03:12","slug":"trump-pick-for-state-department-drops-out-after-drawing-heat-for-comments-about-white-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-pick-for-state-department-drops-out-after-drawing-heat-for-comments-about-white-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump pick for State Department drops out after drawing heat for comments about \u2018white culture\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A political commentator who argued that white people are the victims of racism and need help protecting their \u201cidentity\u201d withdrew his candidacy Tuesday for a senior diplomatic role in the State Department as Republican opposition placed his nomination in jeopardy.<\/p>\n

Jeremy Carl was nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs in June, but his confirmation appeared precarious in recent weeks after Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) vowed to vote against<\/a> his confirmation.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers grilled Carl on his views on race and religion during his confirmation hearing in February, with Republicans and Democrats pushing him to explain past remarks about the importance of protecting \u201cwhite identity\u201d in American culture. Carl later derided the hearing<\/a> as \u201ctheatrical\u201d and \u201cbrutal\u201d in a piece published last week in The Spectator, a conservative British magazine.<\/p>\n

In announcing his withdrawal in a social media post, Carl thanked the administration for nominating him and praised the White House for being willing not \u201cto simply pick nominees from the same stable of \u2018business as usual\u2019 possibilities\u201d for the role.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, for senior positions such as this one, the support of the President and Secretary of State is very important but not sufficient,\u201d said Carl, who served as deputy assistant secretary of the Interior during Trump\u2019s first administration. \u201cWe also needed the unanimous support of every GOP Senator on the Committee on Foreign Relations, given the unanimous opposition of Senate Democrats to my candidacy, and unfortunately, at this time this unanimous support was not forthcoming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Civil rights<\/a> and labor groups<\/a> opposed Carl\u2019s nomination, pointing to his history of inflammatory remarks about immigration and race.<\/p>\n

Carl wrote in his 2024 book, \u201cThe Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart,” that white people have faced persistent discrimination and that their identity has been \u201cerased\u201d from American history.<\/p>\n

Asked by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) to define \u201cwhite identity,\u201d Carl described the concept as \u201ccertain types of Anglo-derived culture that comes from our history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carl wrote in a social media post<\/a> responding to Murphy after the hearing that he was \u201cof course, not a White nationalist” adding that \u201cThe \u2018White culture\u2019 then that I was referring to was simply the culture of the overwhelming majority of Americans who lived here\u201d prior to 1965.<\/p>\n

\u201cI firmly believe that Americans of *every* race or cultural background can ultimately share in and contribute to that culture,\u201d he wrote on X.<\/p>\n

He also faced tough questions for agreeing with a podcast host who assailed Jews for claiming \u201cspecial victim status\u201d after the Holocaust and saying that \u201cHitler is always the convenient kind of bad example.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curtis cited those views in justifying his opposition to Carl\u2019s nomination, writing in a statement: \u201cI find his anti-Israel views and insensitive remarks about the Jewish people unbecoming of the position for which he has been nominated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carl is not the only Trump nominee to face backlash on Capitol Hill for divisive rhetoric.<\/p>\n

White House official Paul Ingrassia withdrew his nomination<\/a> to lead the Office of Special Counsel last year after Blue Light News reported a slate of inflammatory texts<\/a> he sent to Republicans in a group chat, and Australian American MAGA commentator Nick Adams\u2019 nomination<\/a> to be ambassador to Australia has failed to gain support in the Senate.<\/p>\n

Carl is a fellow at the Claremont Institute and a prominent voice on the New Right. He has frequently aligned himself with the national conservatism movement \u2014 which holds that national sovereignty hinges on the promotion of traditional Christian values \u2014 and defended the Great Replacement Theory, a far-right belief that there is an active effort to replace white Americans with non-white immigrants.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A political commentator who argued that white people are the victims of racism and need help protecting their \u201cidentity\u201d withdrew his candidacy Tuesday for a senior diplomatic role in the State Department as Republican opposition placed his nomination in jeopardy. Jeremy Carl was nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as assistant secretary of state […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19844\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}