Former college football coach and current United States Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) has made a lot of headlines as of late. He made a name for himself as a college football coach, serving as the head coach of Ole Miss, Auburn, Texas Tech, and Cincinnati before ultimately retiring and pursuing a career in politics.
Now, Tubverille is now making a name for himself in politics for all the wrong reasons. The 68-year-old appeared on CNN earlier this week and tried to defend his stance on white nationalists, who he said as recently as Monday were not racist. Tubverille has since taken back his words, after some pushback from those on both sides of the aisle.
That’s not the only reason that Tubverille is in the news, though.
Tuberville, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has blocked hundreds of military nominations, “citing his objection to a Pentagon policy that provides paid time off and reimburses travel costs for service members and dependents seeking abortions,” according to NBC News.
That has drawn the ire of United States President Joe Biden, who denounced the Republican senator for his actions during a joint news conference with Finland’s president in Helsinki on Thursday. Per NBC, Biden referred to Tuberville’s actions as “totally irresponsible.”
However, his entire message was a bit more brutal than that:
“I expect the Republican Party to stand up — stand up and do something about it,” Biden continued.
“The idea that we don’t have a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the idea that we have all these promotions that are in abeyance right now and we don’t know what’s going to happen, the idea they we’re injecting into fundamental foreign policy decisions what in fact is a domestic social debate on social issues, is bizarre,” Biden said. “I don’t ever recall it happening, ever. And it’s just totally irresponsible, in my view.”
“I’m confident that the mainstream Republican Party no longer, does not support what he’s doing, but they got to stand up and be counted,” Biden said. “That’s how it ends.”
This isn’t the only time that Tuberville has been a subject of a pretty brutal message from President Biden.
It’s certainly a bold move for Biden to call out Tuberville in a press conference. Though, he should probably be used to being called out from his days as a college football coach.
[NBC News]