CV NEWS FEED // Gigi Sohn, President Joe Biden’s controversial Left-wing nominee to run the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has bowed out of the nomination process.
The news comes after many senators expressed alarm over Sohn’s past rhetoric and social media activity, which has included incendiary and racially charged language.
Sen. JD Vance, R-OH, last month confronted Sohn in a hearing, driving home the inappropriateness of some of her social media posts.
“‘President Obama is a raggedy black supremacist president and his cowardly enablers would rather kill everybody than stop killing white people,’” Vance said to Sohn. “Do you think a person who said that should be appointed or confirmed to the FCC?”
When Sohn suggested she would need to know more context, Vance replied: “You retweeted the exact same thing, only with ‘President Trump’ instead of ‘President Obama,’ and the races reversed.”
Vance offered a similar reading of another tweet: “Angry black woman, not a good look, Judge Brown Jackson.”
“Would a person who tweeted that pejoratively be deserving of the position that you’re seeking?” he asked.
Sohn weakly resisted, suggesting the tweet would have “nothing to do with the position.” She did admit, however, that she had tweeted almost those exact words about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“Gigi Sohn, whom the White House first nominated in October 2021, said her decision came in response to ‘unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks’ from cable and media industry lobbyists,” Fox News reported:
Sohn ruffled feathers with her past social media posts and views on certain key issues that prevented the Senate from ever holding a floor vote on her confirmation. During the Obama administration, Sohn was one of the chief architects of net neutrality, a cornerstone of progressive telecom policy, which was reversed by the free-market types who ran the FCC under former President Donald Trump.
“Sohn’s decision to bow out leaves the Biden administration’s ambitious internet agenda mired in limbo, continuing more than two years of deadlock at the FCC,” the liberal Washington Post reported Tuesday, adding that the “collapse of Sohn’s nomination” shows “the limits of the White House’s political power.”
The administration was unable to unify Democrats behind Sohn’s nomination in a narrowly divided Senate. Shortly before Sohn announced her decision to withdraw, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) dealt a critical blow, announcing he would vote against her, accusing her of holding “partisan alliances with far-left groups.”
Manchin will likely be seen as representing a growing bipartisan weariness of progressive rhetoric and its focus on race, sex, and “gender.”
“Especially now,” Manchin said, “the FCC must remain above the toxic partisanship that Americans are sick and tired of, and Ms. Sohn has clearly shown she is not the person to do that.”