SCOOP: How the Washington Reporter helped confirm Mike Waltz
Mike Waltz's path to the UN appeared temporarily closed. Then Jason Miller spoke with the Washington Reporter.
For months, the Trump administration didn’t have its Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) in place.
Mike Waltz was languishing in confirmation limbo just days before the UN’s General Assembly convened in New York — so much so that the Associated Press wrote a piece titled “delays to Mike Waltz’s UN bid make it all but impossible he’s in the role for a major world meeting.”
The Trump team, in conjunction with Senator Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.), however, didn’t want President Donald Trump to get to New York without having Waltz confirmed. Last week, Jason Miller — a former senior advisor to Trump and to his transition team — explained to the Washington Reporter why Waltz needed to be confirmed immediately.
“The Majority Leader has the power to keep the Senate in session to assure that Mike Waltz and the president’s team is seated at the UN ahead of next week’s meeting of the General Assembly — and he should do so,” Miller said.
Thune then did just that — and one Trump insider told the Reporter that “through some fast-acting messaging in conservative press, like the Washington Reporter, the Senate quickly calendared a vote and Thune’s Senate did its job.”
“Supporters of the Trump administration saw a gaping hole at the UN that could be remedied with a Senate vote confirming his Ambassador pick ahead of the president’s upcoming address to the global body,” the source said.
Hours after Miller made the case in the pages of the Reporter, Thune scheduled a standalone vote and got Waltz confirmed in a bipartisan manner.
Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) was the lone Republican to join with almost every Senate Democrat in voting against Trump’s pick for the UN. The Washington Free Beacon previously reported how “Rand Paul cost[] taxpayers $75 million with [his] failed effort to block Trump UN nominee Mike Waltz.”