President Donald Trump is reportedly set to nominate Fox News contributor and former government spokesman Richard Grenell to serve as U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
If confirmed, Grenell would be the highest-ranking openly gay official within the Trump administration. Grenell refused to comment, but an unnamed White House official said he would get Trump's nomination, according to Bloomberg on Wednesday.
Grenell resigned from his post as a foreign-policy spokesman in former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign after his sexuality drew ire from social conservatives.
"My ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign," Grenell said at the time.
Grenell has previously served as a spokesman for three U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations, including John Bolton during the second Bush administration, and founded the company Capitol Media Partners.
He has defended Trump on Twitter against reporters and praised Trump's threat to break with NATO.
"I think this is about NATO reform, I don’t think this is about getting rid of a NATO alliance," Grenell said on Fox in 2016. "I think this is businessman Donald Trump showing that he knows how to reform."
Trump has called NATO "obsolete," and threatened to stop militarily backing the alliance if other member countries didn't pay more.