Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I come to the floor to express my opposition to the nomination of Andrew Bremberg to be Representative of the United States to the Office of the United Nations in Geneva. He is not qualified for this position, and his views on women's rights and access to reproductive healthcare conflict with longstanding positions of the U.S. Government and more than three-quarters of the American public.

I take my position as ranking member for the Foreign Relations Committee seriously. I have a duty to thoroughly vet all nominees who come before the committee whether they be political nominees like Mr. Bremberg or career civil servants.

The criteria I use to determine their fitness to represent our country abroad include their foreign policy experience, their core values, and whether they will be responsive and honest with Congress as we conduct our oversight. I am disappointed to say that Mr. Bremberg fails even these basic criteria. He has no relevant foreign policy experience.

I repeat, the nominee to represent the United States at Geneva has no foreign policy experience. Mr. Bremberg has served as Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor for Domestic Policy at the White House and as a political appointee to the Department of Health and Human Services in the Bush administration.

When it comes to Mr. Bremberg's core values, his nomination hearing left me deeply troubled. Our voice at Geneva must stand up for the core principle that reproductive rights are human rights; yet Mr. Bremberg made clear that he opposes access to reproductive health services for women and girls who are victims of sexual violence in conflict in the world. This radical view of women's rights and access to reproductive healthcare is totally outside the mainstream, not just for the Democratic Party but the Republican Party and the American people at large. That is why 40 reproductive health groups wrote a joint letter opposing Mr. Bremberg's nomination.

Moreover, in his positions at the White House, Mr. Bremberg led and advanced divisive and incendiary policy proposals, such as the infamous Muslim ban Executive order and the addition of a citizenship question on the census.

When questioned on these subjects, Mr. Bremberg frequently cited confidentiality interests and declined to elaborate further. When pressed by Senators on whether he was exerting any form of privilege or executive privilege, he insisted he was not; yet he continued to refuse to answer questions. Clearly, we cannot rely on this nominee to be honest and forthright with this body.

Beyond Mr. Bremberg's lack of experience, his extreme far-right views, and his lack of respect for Congress, there is the issue of his erroneous declarations on government documents. Indeed, his nomination was significantly delayed because my staff discovered Mr. Bremberg's claim that he had terminated from his political consulting company--of which Trump for America was a client--when the truth is he did not. In fact, Mr. Bremberg did not terminate his political consulting firm until forced to as part of the Foreign Relations Committee's vetting process.

Once again, the Trump administration has displayed a basic inability to conduct even the most cursory vetting to ensure that a nominee is qualified and fit to hold office, free from potential financial or ethical conflicts of interest.

We have nominees with restraining orders, nominees who have failed to mention sexual harassment lawsuits, and nominees whose virulent, troll- like approach to social media should disqualify them from holding any office, much less a Senate-confirmed representative of the American people.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration has decided to advance unqualified and unfit nominees even as it withdraws a number of qualified civil servant nominees from consideration.

The failure of the political leadership at the State Department to stand up and defend qualified, veteran Ambassadors when they come under fire from the White House is nothing short of cowardice.

It was reported last week that Fiona Hill, the former White House foreign policy adviser, concluded that one Trump administration Ambassador was so unprepared for his job that he actually posed a national security risk. Mr. Bremberg is cut from the same mold.

If his performance before the Foreign Relations Committee demonstrated anything, it is that his views are completely outside those of mainstream America. He is unprepared to represent our Nation on the world stage, and he has little to no respect for the Senate and the role of Congress as a coequal branch of government. Surely, we can do better than this. The American people certainly deserve better than this.

I urge my colleagues to oppose his nomination and to demand that this administration nominate an ambassador to the United Nations organization in Geneva who is worthy of representing our country on the world stage.

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