***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***
In an 11th-hour vote change from Senator Rand Paul (KY) Monday, CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s nomination for secretary of state was allowed to go to the full Senate for a confirmation vote. Defying expectations and an obstructionist Democratic Party, the progress of Pompeo’s nomination drew the ire of NBC Nightly News and Chief Foreign Affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell, whose report on the vote was filled with Democratic gripes and talking points.
“Moments ago, secretary of state nominee Mike Pompeo cleared a key hurdle and will now go to the Senate for a confirmation vote after a last-minute change of heart on the committee spared Pompeo from what could’ve been a historical rebuke,” anchor Lester Holt announced as he led into the segment.
What Holt pitched as a “historical rebuke,” as if there was a major problem with Pompeo, was actually just historic obstruction from the party that dubbed itself the “resistance.” On CBS Evening News (via Congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes), they actually had the integrity to note the actions of Democrats were far from normal:
Still, the party-line vote was a departure from Senate tradition. John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Condoleezza Rice all got unanimous or near-unanimous backing from the Foreign Relations Committee, a signal to the rest of the world of bipartisan confidence in the nation's top diplomat.
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