Sen. Marsha Blackburn, one of the GOP lawmakers questioning Phillip Washington, President Joe Biden's nominee to lead the Federal Aviation Administration, said Thursday on Newsmax that while Washington's service record is to be commended, his experience does not match the position's requirements.
"We know that Mr. Washington is a retired command sergeant major and we commend his service to our nation in that capacity," Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, told Newsmax's "National Report." "The questions we have are about his participation as the CEO of LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) and also there in Denver at the Denver International Airport. And he has seemed to prioritize equity in contracting, and we are at a time when people want to know that the skies are going to be safe."
This week, Blackburn noted, there was a near-miss collision between a JetBlue plane leaving Nashville and a private plane taking off from Boston Logan International Airport.
"I think we're up to seven near misses right now and the flying public is saying, 'Hey, wait a minute. We need to reset these priorities,'" said Blackburn. "They're looking at the U.S. Department of Transportation and they're saying to Secretary [Pete] Buttigieg, 'What are you and your team doing?' People want to know that the rails, the roads, the rivers, and the skies are going to be safe."
Blackburn said Washington lacks the necessary experience and was not able to answer basic questions about the job.
"Part of the process is looking through people's work experience to make sure they are qualified for the job they've been tapped to fill," Blackburn said.
Washington, the chief executive of Denver International Airport, has been met with uncertainty in the Senate, and he was pressed on topics including his experience and issues concerning a public corruption investigation, reported The New York Times. The hearing was held by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
Blackburn also discussed the findings by the Energy Department that the COVID-19 pandemic was likely started by a leak of the deadly coronavirus from the virology lab in Wuhan, China.
The Biden administration is still saying the findings are inconclusive. Blackburn said the White House "has not followed the science through the entire thing."
"They have followed the World Health Organization, who negotiated the language of the COVID report with the Chinese Communist Party to help the Chinese Communist Party and the Wuhan lab play a game of CYA," she said. "We have over a million Americans that lost their lives, tens of millions that have been adversely affected by the loss of life."
But the White House wants to say there has not been an intelligence consensus, said Blackburn.
"There is a common sense consensus that if this lab was doing research, work on coronavirus and gain-of-function research on coronavirus, and people in the lab became infected, and even some died and they tried to warn the public about this," she said. "It is very likely it came from that lab, as many of us have said from day one."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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