Joe Biden mispronounced the name of his nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Tuesday in the latest flub from the gaffe-prone politician.
Biden, former vice president of the United States, also mixed up the name of the department, referring to it as the department of “health and education services.” Both gaffes, seconds apart, came during Biden’s official announcement that he would nominate California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to lead the HHS.
Watch:
Reports of Biden’s choice to lead HHS surfaced on Sunday. Becerra came as a surprise to some political observers as his name had only come into conversations around the cabinet-level position in recent days. Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus had pushed Biden to name New Mexico’s Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, to the spot.
A 2002 House report found that Becerra, who has served as California’s attorney general since 2017, had pushed for the sentence of a convicted drug trafficker and son of a donor to his campaigns to be commuted. As The Daily Wire reports:
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who has been selected by former Vice President Joe Biden to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services in a prospective Biden administration, contacted not only then-U.S. attorney Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security, about commuting the sentence of a convicted drug trafficker whose father had donated thousands of dollars to Becerra’s campaigns, but also the Bill Clinton White House. The drug trafficker, Carlos Vignali, ended up receiving a commutation from Clinton in January 2001.
Horacio Vignali, whose son Carlos was in prison, sought help from politicians including then-Congressman Becerra to have his son released.
A 2002 House report stated, “Congressman Becerra conceded that the Vignalis were not members of his constituency but that Horacio had been a friend and contributor of his for five years,” delineating donations of roughly “$11,000 to his political action committee between 1998 and 2001, $2,475 to his congressional campaigns, and $3,500 toward his subsequent failed bid for Los Angeles mayor,” as Fox News reported.
This is an excerpt from The Daily Wire.
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