President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday that he plans to nominate Michigan Republican Party Chairman Pete Hoekstra to be the U.S. ambassador to Canada.
In a statement, Trump said Hoekstra "was a great help" to his presidential campaign in Michigan. Trump and his running mate JD Vance won the state by about 80,000 votes in this month's election.
Trump endorsed Hoekstra to lead the Michigan GOP amid a messy leadership battle within the party earlier this year.
Hoekstra was Trump's ambassador to the Netherlands in his first term — a position in which he got off to a rocky start with Dutch journalists. Early in his posting, Hoekstra told a Dutch news crew that he did not say an "Islamic movement" was responsible for "no-go zones" and politicians "being burned" in the Netherlands, calling it "fake news" despite having made those remarks on video in a 2015 panel discussion. Hoekstra apologized a month later.
Before his posting to the Netherlands, Hoekstra represented a West Michigan congressional district for 18 years, including a stint as chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
