March 5, 2025 (EIRNS)—Two of President Donald Trump’s nominees had their confirmation hearings yesterday: Elbridge Colby, for the position of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; and Matthew Whitaker, an acting attorney general, for a time, during the first Trump administration, for U.S. Ambassador to NATO. Colby was the more controversial of the two, but both faced many of the same questions.
Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, led by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), grilled Colby over his evolving stances on Iran, Taiwan and NATO allies, reported The Hill. GOP senators were said to be particularly alarmed over Colby’s past suggestion that the United States could tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran, and that it would not be in the nation’s interest to launch military operations to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons infrastructure. Republican members of the Armed Services Committee also pressed Colby on what some view as his softening stance on defending Taiwan, given what the nominee has called an emerging military capabilities imbalance between China, which now has the world’s largest maritime fighting force, and the United States, which faces defense spending cuts.
Over at the Foreign Relations Committee, Whitaker was facing not skeptical Republicans, but hostile Democrats, who, like their co-thinkers in London, believe that Trump is a Russian agent. Senate Democrats pressed Whitaker to say that Russia is the aggressor against Ukraine, to agree that the U.S. standing with Ukraine makes NATO stronger, and to address the extraordinary Oval Office shouting match between Trump, and Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
