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Floor Speech
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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to discuss a vote that the Senate will take later this week on en bloc Executive nominations. The vote will likely come either tomorrow or possibly Friday. There is an en bloc of approximately 100 nominations that we will be considering, and I rise to talk about the nomination of one individual--Bill White to be the U.S. Ambassador to Belgium.
I regret that we are taking up nominations en bloc. I think there are good reasons to reform the nominations process. I think we probably have to have Senate confirmation for too many people. But I didn't believe a few weeks ago in the Senate action that allowed people to be lumped together because my view was that that causes individuals who were in the en bloc not to get the appropriate scrutiny they should get. I viewed the action, bluntly, as a little less about advancing nominations as raising the risk of hiding nominations in large groups where individuals would not get the appropriate scrutiny, and I believe that very strongly to be the case with Mr. White.
Mr. White is President Trump's nominee to be Ambassador to an important U.S. ally, Belgium, the headquarters of NATO. Mr. White has done some good things in his life, and I don't dispute that, and I know he has been a strong supporter of President Trump, as are virtually all of the Trump appointees, many of whom I have voted for. I haven't done this calculation, but I probably have a track record on the Democratic side of voting for as high a percentage of President Trump's nominees, both in term 1 and term 2, as just about anyone because I do believe as a former Governor that your election does carry with it a mandate to be able to assemble a team of like-minded people. Even if I might disagree with you, President Trump was elected, and he should have the ability to assemble a team of like-minded people.
But I do carefully scrutinize the character, judgment, and qualifications of the individuals who are put before us for important positions, and this nomination of this individual for this country at this time I view as so uniquely bad that I wanted to take the time to come to the floor and talk about why.
What I am going to talk about is Mr. White's judgment as evidenced by his social media postings. I have a whole lot of examples I could use, but I am going to just narrow it down to the ones that I think are a true window into this individual's judgment and character and that demonstrate that he is not suitable to represent the United States in a critical ambassadorial position.
On May 16, 2023, he tweeted out about one of our colleagues, Senator Graham of South Carolina:
Graham is a snake.
He has tweeted out many bad things about Democratic colleagues that I am not going to post before you, but someone who says about Lindsey Graham that he is a snake is not demonstrating the judgment you need to be an ambassador representing the United States in Belgium.
Mr. White fell down the rabbit hole of election conspiracy in 2020 and has repeatedly tweeted and posted his belief that the 2020 election was not accurately called and that Donald Trump actually won rather than President Biden. Now, I think any intelligent person recognizes that as a conspiracy theory that most fourth graders wouldn't be gullible enough to fall for, but Mr. White has tweeted it over and over and over again.
He has gone beyond just asserting that Donald Trump won the election in 2020. He has actually gone much, much further than that. In the runup to the election of 2024--so this is now 4 years after the 2020 election--Mr. White was posting material and reposting material about Georgia's secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, claiming that he had acted improperly in the 2020 election.
Lock [Georgia's secretary of state]--
And forgive me; this is a quote.
Lock . . . this mother effer up.
That is what he is calling to happen to the Republican secretary of state in Georgia. And this was recent. This was in August of 2024. This is not years and years and years ago.
Mr. White went on to continue in this extreme rhetoric in the aftermath of President Trump's election in 2024. Within the days to follow, shortly after the election, he basically says Donald Trump won Georgia--that is referring to the 2024 election--and that it is high time now to legitimately prosecute the Georgia secretary of state and Governor Kemp, the Republican Governor of Georgia. Mr. White is calling for them both to be prosecuted, and this was just at the time that Donald Trump won the 2024 election.
OK. Donald Trump was elected President in 2024. Why are you still so focused on a campaign of retribution against Georgia Republicans whom you were urging to be locked up and prosecuted?
To be an ambassador, you need to have some judgment, you need to have some diplomacy. You will deal with tough issues. Belgium is not a big country, but Belgium is a very important country. It has been a U.S. ally for a very long time, and it is the headquarters of NATO, which has a huge importance in the world right now.
Putting somebody into a position like this who puts out negative tweets about Lindsey Graham and who is encouraging Republican officials in Georgia to be prosecuted and locked up--I think those would be disqualifying in and of themselves, but as I was looking at this individual's social media account, I came upon something else that a lot of people didn't notice, because it seemed odd, but I did a little bit of research into it, and I want to focus on it.
Mr. White, in May of 2024--months before President Trump's election-- retweeted a post from an individual named Dries Van Langenhove, with a video from this individual. The video is a lengthy video wherein this individual, Dries Van Langenhove, says:
This Friday, they may send me to prison for years, so this video is my last chance. They are trying to destroy me, but with your help, we will destroy them. Free Dries.
Among the other tweets of calling a colleague a snake and calling for people to be locked up, this one seemed odd. Who is Dries Van Langenhove? Who is Dries Van Langenhove? Dries Van Langenhove is a convicted, Holocaust-denying, pro-violence anti-Semite in Belgium. The tweet that Mr. White posted was his video the night before he was sentenced to a year in prison for inciting violence and denying the Holocaust.
This is an article from POLITICO Europe in March of 2024, and it talks about Mr. Van Langenhove. Title: ``Belgium's far-right prodigy gets prison term for inciting violence.''
Dries Van Langenhove, a political activist and leader of a Flemish-nationalist youth movement called Schild & Vrienden, was convicted of inciting violence and denying the Holocaust, the Ghent criminal court [ruled].
[He]"revelled in Nazi ideas that caused much suffering. He wants to undermine society,'' a judge said when announcing the ruling.
Why would Mr. White, in March of 2024, even know who Dries Van Langenhove was?
When I saw this, as I was researching this prior to the hearing on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I had no idea who Dries Van Langenhove was. I wondered, Why is Mr. White platforming this individual I know nothing about? Then, as I read it, I find that he is a notorious violence-promoting, Holocaust-denying anti-Semite criminal convict in Belgium. This is a big deal.
The ADL says that of any nation in Europe, Belgium may have seen the most spike in anti-Semitic behavior since October 7.
Some of you might remember the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris a couple of years ago, pre-October 7. There was a similar attack on the same day in Belgium, an anti-Semitic attack. Belgians have been charged with crimes of vandalism and religious-based violence and attacks on the Holocaust museum in both Belgium, Brussels, and Paris. And the Belgian Government is really working hard to try to deal with this cancer of anti-Semitism in this nation.
As far as I know, Mr. Langenhove is the only individual who has been successfully prosecuted in Belgium for Holocaust-denying, inciting violence, and reveling in pro-Nazi ideas. The material that Bill White posted was Mr. Van Langenhove seeking support in donations to help him avoid accountability for his words and actions.
Mr. White's work in the past might qualify him to serve in some capacities. I am not saying there isn't a position, one that doesn't require diplomacy, where his skills might be necessary, but this particular appointment is an insult to Belgium--a nation that is trying to deal with a deep, deep challenge in anti-Semitism.
For the United States to send as an ambassador to that nation someone who has platformed the far-right prodigy who has received a prison term for inciting anti-Semitic violence is a slap in the face of this important ally.
I started by saying I am worried that the fact that this nomination is being slid into the middle of a big block of nominations means it won't get the attention that it deserves. Traditionally, on a nomination like this, we might get 1 or 2 hours on the floor to focus on this particular individual.
My colleague Senator Merkley, as we were discussing the change that allowed en bloc nominations, proposed an alternative where you could remove a name from the en bloc if you wanted to actually have some ability to focus on it. That effort was unsuccessful. But I want to raise this today.
This is already getting press in Belgium. The hearing itself, where it came to light that Mr. White was platforming Dries Van Langenhove, is getting press in Belgium; it is getting press elsewhere in Europe; and it is being examined as: Wait. How does the United States feel about this country and this relationship? How does the United States feel about qualifications for diplomats if someone who is so intrepid in his speech but also is platforming Belgian Holocaust deniers gets the plum position to be our Ambassador to Belgium?
So my hope--and in life, I have often learned that high hopes are great and so are low expectations. I will say in standing here today, I stand here with high hopes and low expectations. My hope is that some of my Republican colleagues might look at this and say: This is a bridge too far. This is too important a country and anti-Semitism is too important an issue to send, with the imprimatur of U.S. Ambassador and to this ally of the United States, somebody who is platforming and promoting an anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying convicted criminal.
That is my hope that when we have this vote later in the week, we might decide that the United States can do better by our ally.
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