Yet another Donald Trump appointment is raising some eyebrows, at least briefly, before gutless Senate Republicans rubber-stamp his confirmation. Anthony Tata is a former brigadier general in the Army, and more importantly, he plays a defense expert on Fox News. Those were all the qualifications Trump needed to see, so he nominated Tata to hold the third highest civilian post at the Pentagon, "undersecretary of defense for policy." (The post came open in February when Trump purged all the disloyals once impeachment was over with. The previous undersecretary, John Rood, opposed withholding military aid from Ukraine.)

Unfortunately, Tata's nomination ran into a spot of bother earlier this month when CNN did secret spy stuff to him, by looking at his Twitter history and finding it full of racist conspiracy bullshit, like a bunch of Islamophobic tweets from 2018 in which he said all Muslims are called to do terrorism, and called Barack Obama "a 'terrorist leader' who did more to harm the US 'and help Islamic countries than any president in history.'"

MSNBC's Steve Benen drily notes that it's unclear whether "the White House failed to vet Tata, or chose him because of unhinged missives."

But don't worry! In a letter to two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tata says he has come to "deeply regret" those awful tweets, especially because people found them, and he hopes the senators, Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) and Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island), will understand the "hyperbolic" tweets were merely a departure from his usually sober, respectful attitude toward all, even filthy Muslim terrorist presidents trying to destroy America. He's not that guy who wrote his very own tweets, not at all! Especially if they might get in the way of his setting American defense policy.