Senator John Kerry may have sailed through his confirmation hearings for Secretary of State, but a showdown is brewing over Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense.
Hagel may have once been a Republican Senator from Nebraska, but he’s getting very little love from his former colleagues on the hill. On Wednesday, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, explained his dislike of the nominee: “It’s a series of things, a series of votes, an edge about him that makes many of us unnerved about his selection at a time when the world is on fire,” Lindsey said at a meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Yesterday, Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, among others, also threatened to block Hagel’s confirmation until President Obama gave them more information about the attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi, last September.
Takeaway Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich has the latest from Capitol Hill.