Dr. Anjani Sinha, President Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. ambassador to Singapore, faced a heated grilling in his Senate confirmation hearing in which he struggled to answer questions about the city-state.
Facing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Indian-born Florida-based doctor said he was a “lifelong bridge builder.” But it took barely ten minutes for the orthopaedic and sports surgeon who owns a chain of practices on the East Coast—to reveal his apparent lack of knowledge about Singapore, according to the Daily Beast.
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Illinois Democrat Sen. Tammy Duckworth asked him some inconvenient questions about the size of U.S. trade surplus with Singapore, Trump’s looming 10% tariff on Singaporean goods, and when it’s going to be the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
As Sinha struggled to answer, Duckworth saying he was “unqualified” for the key role, told him, “You are not currently prepared for this posting, period, and you need to shape up and do some homework.”
The exchange detonated on Singaporean social media, where the BBC, as cited by the Beast, reported that one viewer quipped Sinha was “more Embarassador than ambassador.” Another asked whether Trump’s tariff or Trump’s envoy was the bigger insult.
However, Sinha may still be confirmed as Republicans hold a majority in the Senate, according to the Beast. The committee chairman Republican Lindsey Graham introduced Sinha as “a friend of President Trump for over a decade.”
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Trump himself hailed Sinha as a “highly respected entrepreneur” when he nominated him in March. The U.S. Department of State went further still, saying in May that with “his deep social and cultural ties to the Indo-Pacific region, Dr. Sinha is uniquely positioned to relate to its key stakeholders [and] his appreciation for Singapore’s role as a financial hub…render him well qualified to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Singapore.”
Singapore daily The Straits Times noted “the Palm Beach surgeon’s public record shows no involvement in diplomacy, international relations or political activities that would typically align with an ambassadorial nomination. Also, there is no track record of him having been an entrepreneur, as Trump described him.”