‘Sit Your Asses Down, Republicans’: Nicolle Wallace Demands Chuck Schumer Get Tough On GOP Senators

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace called on the Senate to move faster to approve military nominations now that lawmakers have bypassed Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-AL) blockade that’s been preventing them for months.

Tuberville is blocking all DOD nominees in the Senate until the Pentagon reverses its policy to reimburse travel expenses for service members who are stationed in states where the procedure is illegal. Typically, the Senate confirms most nominees without holding an actual vote, with the confirmations happening via unanimous consent. Senate rules, however, allow a single senator to impose a standing objection called a “hold.”

“Why doesn’t [Chuck] Schumer (D-NY) say today, ‘We’re going to do 30 a day, and in 10 days, when Chairman Mark Milley leaves Washington, D.C., and an honorable career in the military, they’ll be all done. And you know what? Sit your asses down, Republicans — you’re not going anywhere until all 300 are done.’ Why can’t — why isn’t there any innovation up there?” Wallace asked reporter Ali Vitali.

“He could,” Vitali answered, “But right now I think one of the key battles on this is over the principle, which is that these promotions shouldn’t be used as a bargaining chip at all —”

“Well, they lost, right? They lost. They’ve lost,” Wallace interrupted. “All of the — there are no confirmed heads of — I mean, they’ve lost on principle, didn’t they?”

“I think just to be clear, everyone here is a loser on this one, because even — I just think that’s really important when you play with games like this, where you’re using military promotions as pawns, and I think it’s why we’re not seeing this as one of those clean partisan issues. Even [Mitch] McConnell (R-KY) has gone so far as to say that Tuberville doing this is a mistake,” Vitali said.

In a seemingly counterintuitive move, Tuberville looked to force a Senate vote on Gen. Eric Smith’s promotion to Marine Corps commandant, according to NBC News.

But before he got a chance, Schumer began the vote on three nominees, saying on the Senate floor, “Senator Tuberville is essentially trying to make himself the gatekeeper of which officers are promoted and who sits and waits. Instead of just getting out of the way and allowing the Senate to approve the promotions that these decorated military officers deserve, the senator from Alabama, unfortunately, and wrongly, is using them as pawns.”

Watch the clip above via MSNBC.