Blackburn to Newsmax: Time to End Dems' Obstruction on Trump Nominees

Senate Republicans are determined to restore long-standing practices to accelerate the confirmation of President Donald Trump's nominees amid unprecedented Democrat obstruction, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told Newsmax on Tuesday.

"What [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer did was declare the nuclear option," the Tennessee Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "What Republicans are saying is, let's return to the way the Senate has worked for years. We want to get President Trump's nominees confirmed and get them to work, putting in place the agenda the American people overwhelmingly voted for."

The solution, she said, is to return to the practice of handling lower-level nominees by unanimous consent or voice vote.

"Going back to the process that worked for years, where many of these lower-level nominees were confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote, is exactly what we should do so that we get them through the process," Blackburn said.

The senator added that she believes Senate Majority Leader John Thune was right in warning that the backlog cannot be cleared under current procedures.

Opening the Senate on Monday, Thune called ongoing Democrat obstruction "unsustainable," adding that "if the delays continue, there is no practical way that we could come close to filling all the vacancies in the four years of the administration, no matter how many hours the Senate works."

Blackburn also stressed that filling vacancies is central to delivering on Trump's platform. "Remember, he won the Electoral College and the popular vote, and the American people want to see action taken so that we get inflation down, so that we continue to secure this border, so that we are rebuilding our military, so that we are fighting crime in communities, areas where President Trump has done tremendous work," she said.

Blackburn also previewed a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing featuring two whistleblowers on Facebook parent company Meta's handling of child safety concerns.

"I am so looking forward, and we've worked really hard through the month of August to prepare for this hearing today," she said. "With this virtual reality, children are not able to distinguish between what is happening to their avatar and what is happening to them, and the physiological and psychological effects are the same. Meta knows this. [Meta CEO] Mark Zuckerberg knows this. The legal team at Meta is aware of this… parents are so tired of these social media platforms using children as a product so that they can gather their data. And then the social media platforms profit off that data."

While Blackburn is in favor of giving the Meta whistleblowers a platform to testify, her support is curious to some in political circles, considering these whistleblowers are represented by Whistleblower Aid, the non-profit legal organization that represented the whistleblower who led to Trump's 2019 impeachment.

It also represented Miles Taylor, the former Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security, who in 2018 anonymously published an op-ed in The New York Times titled, "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration."

And on a Meta note, it also represented another whistleblower, former Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen.

Whistleblower Aid is widely considered left-leaning: CEO John Tye previously worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center, as well as the climate change activist group Avaaz. He also donated $2,700, the maximum general election donation, to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, according to Influence Watch. Democracy Fund Voice, a left-wing lobbying group in the advocacy-philanthropic network of eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar, contributed $200,000 to Whistleblower Aid in 2019.

Blackburn's ire for whistleblowers is well-documented: in November 2019, during the Trump–Ukraine impeachment saga, Blackburn stirred controversy when she tweeted, "Vindictive Vindman is the 'whistleblower's' handler," referring to Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. The comments drew widespread scrutiny and sparked the mocking hashtag #MoscowMarsha.

Shortly afterward, his Whistleblower Aid attorney Mark Zaid called for Blackburn to resign from the Senate Whistleblower Protection Caucus, arguing that her remarks ran counter to the caucus's purpose.

Turning to last month's stabbing death of a Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte, North Carolina, Blackburn tied the crime to what she described as soft policies that allow repeat offenders back on the streets.

"Well, I will point to two bills that I filed last week that deal with this issue of cashless bail," she said. "And it is these prosecutors and these judges who are soft on crime, local elected officials, and, of course, the governor of North Carolina in this instance, that have, along with the mayor, promoted these soft-on-crime policies."

She also outlined legislation targeting jurisdictions that decline to enforce bail requirements.

"What one bill does is to end cashless bail in D.C.," said Blackburn. "We know that the president's crackdown on crime in D.C. has made a tremendous difference. The other bill would restrict federal funding to these cities and states that are sanctuary cities or that do not enforce cash bail, letting these people, these repeat violent offenders out of jail to go back on the street and to commit crime. Many times, they are back on the street before the paperwork is finished by the arresting officer."

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