Former congressman Billy Long’s nomination was included in a batch of nearly 50 Trump administration nominees cleared Monday by the Senate.
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The Senate voted Monday to confirm a new ambassador to Iceland whose joke about making the country a U.S. state infuriated Icelanders.
Billy Long, a former Republican congressman from Missouri, apologized during his confirmation hearing in February for joking about making Iceland the “52nd state.” President Donald Trump has talked repeatedly about his desire to admit Canada as the 51st state.
Icelanders responded by starting a petition asking Iceland’s minister of foreign affairs to reject Long and urging Trump to nominate someone else. The petition attracted more than 5,500 signatures.
“I would urge you to understand that when you are being considered as an ambassador of the United States that those kinds of jokes aren’t necessarily viewed by others as funny,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said during Long’s confirmation hearing. “That’s what we’re hearing in Iceland — that here’s some real concern about what your views are.”
Long responded that his comments — which were first reported by Politico — were “totally inappropriate.”
“I just hope that the people in Iceland will give me a second chance to make a first impression,” he said.
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The Senate voted 46-43 along party lines to confirm Long and 48 other lower-level presidential nominees, including ambassadors, U.S. attorneys and assistant secretaries of state, transportation, defense and commerce.
The package of Trump’s nominees is the fourth the Senate has confirmed since Republicans changed the chamber’s rules last year to allow the confirmation of multiple lower-level nominees at a time.
Democrats decried the change, which Republicans said was necessary to combat a backlog of nearly 150 nominees whom Democrats refused to confirm by voice vote, which is faster.
The vote was not the first time the Senate has confirmed Long, a genial former auctioneer, during Trump’s second term. The chamber vote in June to confirmed Long as Internal Revenue Service commissioner, but Trump forced Long out less than two months later after he made changes that frustrated Treasury Department leaders.
Long said during his confirmation hearing that he would give the job everything he had.
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“Going to Iceland I plan to put in 100 percent,” he said.
