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In recent years, some prominent presidential nominees have struggled to win Senate confirmation because of intemperate online posts. In early 2021, for example, President Joe Biden tapped Neera Tanden to lead the White House’s budget office, but Republicans rallied against her because she had published some rude comments to the platform then known as Twitter.
Tanden expressed regret for her rhetoric, but her nomination ultimately failed anyway. Just enough senators said she had the necessary qualifications for a White House post, but they couldn’t overcome Tanden having been discourteous online.
This came to mind five years later, watching the confirmation vote on Kara Westercamp. Reuters reported:
A White House lawyer nominated by President Donald Trump to serve on a court that hears litigation regarding trade laws and tariff policies was confirmed to the bench on Tuesday after she apologized for past social media posts that attacked various senators including Republicans.
The Republican-led Senate voted 50-48 in favor of Kara Westercamp becoming a life-tenured judge on the U.S. Court of International Trade, with Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine joining with Democratic lawmakers to oppose her confirmation.
Two GOP senators, North Dakota’s Kevin Cramer and Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, did not vote, although their absence did not affect the final outcome.
Senate Republicans had plenty of reasons to balk at the president’s choice. As HuffPost reported ahead of the vote, “In now-deleted social media posts, [Westercamp] assailed several Republican senators who are deciding whether to confirm her to a powerful court seat.”
For example, she described McConnell as a “modern-day Benedict Arnold” and “Cocaine Mitch.” Westercamp also reposted a 2021 post saying people “should remove” all seven GOP senators who voted to impeach Trump. (Three of those seven senators are still in the Senate, and two of those, Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, voted to confirm her.)
Perhaps most notably, in 2020, two years after the late Sen. John McCain’s death, Westercamp mocked Sen. Lindsey Graham, writing, “The spirit of #McCain is strong — making Graham a weak-ass $$&&!”
Six years later, on the heels of Graham’s recent passing, Senate Republicans — including Graham’s own sister — nevertheless voted to confirm Westercamp.
Ahead of the vote, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois stood on the Senate floor to read aloud several Westercamp posts, including lies about the Jan. 6 attack, and said it was “a disgrace” to see the GOP majority move forward with her confirmation. Republicans shrugged off her record, accepted her stated apology for months of online smears and voted for her.
Westercamp is just 44 years old, and the position to which she’s been confirmed is a lifetime post. In other words, a Trump loyalist with an apparent temperament problem is likely to spend the next few decades casting predictable votes on the U.S. Court of International Trade.
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