WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump's choice for Army secretary withdrew his nomination on Friday in the face of growing criticism over his remarks about Muslims, and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans. Mark E. Green, a Republican state senator from Tennessee, former Army physician and West Point graduate, said in a statement he was making the decision with “deep regret” but had to do so because “false and misleading attacks against” him had made his nomination a “distraction.”

"Tragically, my life of public service and my Christian beliefs have been mischaracterized and attacked by a few on the other side of the aisle for political gain," he said. The president's first pick to be the Army's top civilian, Vincent Viola, dropped out in early February because of financial entanglements, and about three weeks later Philip B. Bilden, the Navy secretary nominee, withdrew for similar reasons. CNN first reported on Tuesday that Green, a Tennessee state senator and former Army physician and West Point graduate, was unlikely to move forward because, according to one unnamed source, “there are questions whether he has enough support from either side of the aisle.”

Green ran into fierce opposition for his open slurs against Muslims and LGBT people. In his book, “A Night with Saddam,” which detailed his role in the operation that resulted in the capture of Saddam Hussein, Green wrote that Hussein “was not filthy,” unlike other high-value targets, who “had an odor of what I thought was curry mixed with sweat.”

On Monday, CNN surfaced a lecture Green gave in 2015, in which he said the theory of evolution violated the second law of thermodynamics and compared billions of years of evolution to leaving a lawnmower outdoors.
Tennessee state senator and former Army flight surgeon Mark E. Green withdraws his name from consideration as Secretary of the Army because of political opposition. Green was the Trump Administration's second nominee for this position.