CNN reports that the hapless Biden administration has appointed former President Barack Obama‘s chief of staff and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel as U.S. ambassador to Japan.
Biden had suggested sending Emanuel to Japan in May after initial plans to appoint him Secretary of Transportation in the administration were nixed by unhappy radicals in the party who were soured by Emanuel’s performance during the Laquan McDonald shooting.
Emanuel was criticized in Chicago for attempting to keep news of the police-involved shooting of the black teen under wraps as he prepared to stand for reelection to the city’s top job in 2015. His stifling of the shooting infuriated activists such as New York’s radical socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who warned Biden last November to avoid adding Emanuel to his administration because of the former Chicago mayor’s actions regarding the McDonald shooting.
AOC reportedly threatened that Emanuel “should not play a role in the party’s future.” Being sent to Japan as ambassador instead might be Biden’s way of mollifying all involved.