President Donald Trump's pick for Army Secretary has withdrawn his nomination amid backlash over his past controversial remarks, CNN reported.

The White House confirmed Friday that Mark Green was no longer being considered for the top civilian leadership position in the U.S. Army. 

Mark Green said his nomination had become a distraction due to "false and misleading attacks" against him. 

The former Army physician was criticized as an unsuitable leader for the nation's largest military service based on a widely seen video of him speaking last September in Tennessee to a group affiliated with the Tea Party, a group of fiscally and socially conservative Republicans. In his remarks, Green said people who are transgender - those born as members of one biological sex who identify themselves socially as the other gender - suffer from a "disease."Green also assailed what he contended is the "indoctrination of Islam" in some American public schools, and said his "life of public service and my Christian beliefs have been mischaracterized" by his opponents.