Video: Kaine Speaks on Senate Floor in Opposition to Trump Nomination of William White to Be Ambassador to Belgium

FULL VIDEO OF THE SPEECH IS AVAILABLE HERE

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) and Ranking Member of the SFRC subcommittee responsible for human rights, spoke on the Senate floor to express his strong opposition to President Donald Trump's nomination of William White to be Ambassador to Belgium. White has repeatedly amplified posts of a convicted Belgian white nationalist influencer and Holocaust denier and voiced support for election conspiracy theories.

"There's a block of approximately 100 nominations that we will be considering, and I rise to talk about the nomination of one individual, Bill White, to be the United States Ambassador to Belgium," said Kaine.

"I regret that we are taking up nominations en bloc… I didn't believe-a few weeks ago-in the Senate action that allowed people to be lumped together because my view was that causes individuals who are in the bloc not to get the appropriate scrutiny that they should get," Kaine continued. "I believe that very strongly to be the case of Mr. White."

"I do carefully scrutinize the character, judgment, and qualifications of the individuals who are put before us for important positions, and this nomination of this individual for this country at this time, I view as so uniquely bad that I wanted to take the time to come to the floor and talk about why," Kaine said.

"Mr. White fell down the rabbit hole of election conspiracy in 2020 and has repeatedly tweeted and posted his belief that the 2020 election was not accurately called and that Donald Trump actually won rather than President Biden," Kaine said.

"To be an ambassador, you need to have some judgement. You need to have some diplomacy. You will deal with tough issues," said Kaine. "Putting somebody into a position like this, who puts out negative tweets about Lindsey Graham, who is encouraging Republican officials in Georgia to be prosecuted and locked up-I think those would be disqualifying in and of themselves."

"But as I was looking at this individual's social media account, I came upon something else that a lot of people didn't notice," Kaine continued. "Mr. White, in May of 2024, months before President Trump's election, retweeted a post from an individual named Dries Van Langenhove… Dries Van Langenhove is a convicted Holocaust-denying, pro-violence, anti-Semite in Belgium."

"This particular appointment is an insult to Belgium, a nation that is trying to deal with a deep, deep challenge in antisemitism," Kaine said. "For the United States to send as an ambassador to that nation someone who has platformed the far-right prodigy whose received a prison term for inciting antisemitic violence is a slap in the face of this important ally."

Kaine concluded, "My hope is that some of my Republican colleagues might look at this and say 'this is a bridge too far.' This is too important a country, and antisemitism is too important an issue to send, with the imprimatur of U.S. Ambassador, into this ally of the United States somebody who is platforming and promoting an antisemitic, Holocaust-denying convicted criminal. And that is my hope, that when we have this vote later in the week, we might decide that the United States can do better by our ally."

In July, during an SFRC hearing about his nomination, Kaine pressed White over his concerning social media use, including platforming a convicted Belgian Holocaust denier, calling a Republican Senate colleague a 'snake,' and calling Georgia's Secretary of State a 'MOTHER EFFER' who should be 'locked up' in repeated attempts to discredit the 2020 election results.

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