Mark Walker

yes in early april now more than eight months ago and the position is ambassador at large for international religious freedom this was a position written up by republican legislation uh they dragged bill clinton kicking and screaming in 1998 he did sign into law i would be the seventh ambassador for such which is there's an intelligence component to this as well but our job is to advocate for those uh people whether it's syria whether it's in china

Middle Eastern countries, Africa, we've seen this recently.

A lot of the persecution, targeting, blasphemy laws, even rape, pillaging, and killing of these folks.

And specifically, most of it driven by Islamist groups, whether it's Boko Haram, ISWAP, Al-Shabaab, and others.

But yes, this is an important position.

It lists this position as the principal advisor to both the Secretary of State and to President Trump on all things that are international religious matters.

And

As we know, a lot of these wars are driven by these false religions.

And so, yes, we've been anxious about it.

We've traveled back and forth to D.C.

nearly every week, meeting with senators, and a lot of support that we do have across the board from cabinet members, from senators, but we've not been able to get the hearing quite yet.

And to say the least, it's been frustrating.

Yeah, I think it comes down sometimes.

You know, we don't have what they call the blue slip for specifically nominees.

That's more on the legal side with judges and appointments.

But they do have sometimes these gentlemen agreements where if you have one senator that's maybe pushing back or kind of giving a wink and nod to the chairman of, in this case, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, they do slow play that out.

We've got great support.

John Thune's been great.

The entire leadership, we have unanimous support across the leadership in the Senate, those on the committee as well.

It's just that we're trying to get through.