Biden OMB pick Neera Tanden apologizes for tweets attacking GOP senators

President Biden’s nominee to lead the White House budget office, Neera Tanden, on Tuesday apologized for a litany of tweeted attacks on Republican senators.

Tanden deleted more than 1,000 insult-laden tweets before her nomination to be the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, which sets federal spending policies.

“I deeply regret and apologize for my language and some of my past language. I recognize that this role is a bipartisan role, and I know I have to earn the trust of senators across the board,” she said at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) ran through some of her barbs for GOP senators now weighing her nomination.

“You wrote that Susan Collins is ‘the worst,’ that Tom Cotton is a fraud, that vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz, you called Leader McConnell ‘Moscow Mitch’ and Voldemort,” Portman said.

Tanden, president of the Democratic Party-aligned Center for American Progress, denied that she deleted tweets as a coverup.

“I deleted tweets because I regretted my tone and I’ve deleted tweets over many months … But for those concerned about my rhetoric and my language, I’m sorry, and I’m sorry for any hurt that they’ve caused,” she told Portman.

Portman, however, noted there were still “nine pages of tweets about Sen. Ted Cruz.”

At the hearing, Tanden told Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) that “nobody advised me” to delete the tweets.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) told Tanden that a review of her tweets revealed she used the social media platform more frequently than former President Donald Trump, who could tweet from the White House more than 100 times a day.

“You actually tweeted more in the past four years than President Trump tweeted as far as just numbers. And it’s been pretty hostile, obviously. You’ve called Republicans ‘criminally ignorant,’ ‘corrupt’ and ‘the worst,'” Lankford said.

If confirmed, Tanden will hold a powerful post to implement Biden’s policies.

Under Trump, the budget office played a role in controversially stalling foreign aid to Ukraine and instructed agencies to disfavor New York City, Portland and Seattle for federal grants for allegedly tolerating rising crime or violent protests.

Tanden’s nomination appeared to be in deep trouble before Democrats won a pair of Georgia runoff elections on Jan. 5, flipping control of the Senate with a 50-50 split and Vice President Kamala Harris as tie-breaker.

Tanden in part blamed her tweets on the political tension of Trump’s time in office.

“I do think the last several years have been very polarizing and I apologize for my language that has contributed to that,” she said at the confirmation hearing.