Politics
Trump pick for State Department drops out after drawing heat for comments about ‘white culture’
A political commentator who argued that white people are the victims of racism and need help protecting their “identity” 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 for international organization affairs in June, but his confirmation appeared precarious in recent weeks after Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) vowed to vote against his confirmation.
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 “white identity” in American culture. Carl later derided the hearing as “theatrical” and “brutal” in a piece published last week in The Spectator, a conservative British magazine.
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 “to simply pick nominees from the same stable of ‘business as usual’ possibilities” for the role.
“Unfortunately, for senior positions such as this one, the support of the President and Secretary of State is very important but not sufficient,” said Carl, who served as deputy assistant secretary of the Interior during Trump’s first administration. “We 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.”
Civil rights and labor groups opposed Carl’s nomination, pointing to his history of inflammatory remarks about immigration and race.
Carl wrote in his 2024 book, “The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart,” that white people have faced persistent discrimination and that their identity has been “erased” from American history.
Asked by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) to define “white identity,” Carl described the concept as “certain types of Anglo-derived culture that comes from our history.”
Carl wrote in a social media post responding to Murphy after the hearing that he was “of course, not a White nationalist” adding that “The ‘White culture’ then that I was referring to was simply the culture of the overwhelming majority of Americans who lived here” prior to 1965.
“I firmly believe that Americans of *every* race or cultural background can ultimately share in and contribute to that culture,” he wrote on X.
He also faced tough questions for agreeing with a podcast host who assailed Jews for claiming “special victim status” after the Holocaust and saying that “Hitler is always the convenient kind of bad example.”
Curtis cited those views in justifying his opposition to Carl’s nomination, writing in a statement: “I find his anti-Israel views and insensitive remarks about the Jewish people unbecoming of the position for which he has been nominated.”
Carl is not the only Trump nominee to face backlash on Capitol Hill for divisive rhetoric.
White House official Paul Ingrassia withdrew his nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel last year after POLITICO reported a slate of inflammatory texts he sent to Republicans in a group chat, and Australian American MAGA commentator Nick Adams’ nomination to be ambassador to Australia has failed to gain support in the Senate.
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 — which holds that national sovereignty hinges on the promotion of traditional Christian values — and defended the Great Replacement Theory, a far-right belief that there is an active effort to replace white Americans with non-white immigrants.