Late last month, President Trump began grumbling — first quietly and privately, then publicly — that the Senate was moving too slowly to confirm his picks to fill highly sought ambassadorships around the world.
Mere weeks later, Senate Republicans have vastly stepped up their pace in approving his nominees, installing nearly a dozen mostly wealthy loyalists as envoys to key countries and moving more quickly than other presidents have in the past few decades.
The flurry of confirmations — 10 in Mr. Trump’s first 100 days in office — has already outpaced his most recent predecessors and that of his first term, and it comes as the president and his team have undertaken a broader effort to reshape the State Department and U.S. diplomacy. Unlike some of his cabinet nominees, most have sailed through with unanimous Republican support and at least some backing from Democrats.
That was the case on Tuesday, when the Senate voted 67 to 29 to confirm David Perdue, the former senator from Georgia and businessman, to be the U.S. ambassador to China.
His approval did not come as a surprise. Mr. Perdue maintains close relationships with many of his former colleagues and at his hearing earlier this month, he was spared critical questions on topics such as his past criticism of across-the-board tariffs or when he boasted about frequently moving American jobs overseas during his time as a business executive.
Instead, Mr. Perdue said he would dutifully carry out the president’s agenda and, like other Trump appointees to serve as top diplomats around the globe, affirmed his commitment to project an “America First” agenda while stationed abroad.