CNN’s Pamela Brown Confronts Biden Official Over Pressure from Senators to Appoint More Asian-Americans

CNN’s Pamela Brown challenged White House official Cedric Richmond on how the Biden administration responds to a demand from a pair of Senate Democrats that it must appoint more Asian-Americans to top jobs.

Earlier on Tuesday, Illinois Democrat Sen. Tammy Duckworth issued a public ultimatum that she would vote against future cabinet, sub-cabinet, and judicial appointees until President Joe Biden named more members of the Asian-American Pacific Islander community to senior positions within his administration. Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono joined in the demand, pledging her opposition until the White House made additional diversity efforts.

When Brown brought up the dissension within the Democratic ranks to Richmond, he started off by noting that Biden’s first nominee to be the OMB director, Neera Tanden, was Asian-American.

“Unfortunately, she was not able to get enough votes in the Senate and she withdrew,” Richmond noted of the Tanden pick that was effectively killed by another Democratic senator, Joe Manchin. “But we have been very consistent that we value diversity. And if you look at our [U.S.] Trade Representative [Katherine Tai], you look at our Surgeon General [Vivek Murthy], if you look at our vice president…”

“But will the president take that step to appoint more Asian Americans to key positions?” Brown broke in. “That’s the question.”

“We are appointing more Asian Americans to key positions,” Richmond insisted, without naming any. “So we’re very confident that we will continue to do that. Of course we respect Senator Duckworth and Senator Hirono very much, their feelings matter to us, their opinions matter to us and the fact that they are of the opinion they are not seeing enough, we will take that to heart and continue to do what we’re doing in terms of making sure our cabinet looks like the country.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.