Donald Trump nominates an incompetent cabinet without reqirement for background check? But many nominees are unqualified.
Echo editorial published in the Boston Globe:
Some of Donald Trump’s nominees are real (loooosssy❗) doozies. The Senate must publicly vet them via thorough background checks, committee hearings, and floor votes.
Senate Republicans must be thanking their lucky stars that former representative Matt Gaetz withdrew last week as President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to be attorney general.
In doing so, Gaetz rescued the Republicans, who will take control of the Senate early in January, from having to oppose his nomination and thereby incur Trump’s assured wrath.
That rejecting Gaetz might have seemed a profile in courage says much about the state of Republican politics today: He was among the least qualified nominees to run the Justice Department in memory and had been one of the most scandal-scarred and disliked men in Congress before he resigned earlier this month. One of his staunchest defenders was former representative George Santos, who was expelled from the House last year as an ethical embarrassment.
Now comes the truly hard part. More than two dozen Trump Cabinet secretaries and other top administration officials will require Senate confirmation early next year, and some of them are (looooossy❗) oozies. For the integrity of their own institution and the good of the nation, the Senate must not simply rubber stamp them all, as Trump and his most vocal supports will demand.
This process must begin by not acceding to Trump’s suggestion that he should be allowed to choose his Cabinet through so-called recess appointments, which would circumvent the gauntlet of Senate approval. The Senate must instead move with dispatch to publicly vet all of Trump’s nominees via thorough background checks, committee hearings, and floor votes.
Though he would be the last to admit it, Trump himself would benefit if his most dubious nominees were forced to answer hard questions about possible ethical issues and policy positions. They should show competence beyond the ability to please a Fox News audience. If nothing else, the process might save him from his own worst impulses.
So where to begin? Start with former representative Tulsi Gabbard, a onetime Democrat turned Bernie Sanders independent turned MAGA enthusiast, who is Trump’s choice to be director of national intelligence. The job entails overseeing the 18 agencies that collect and analyze information from human spies, satellites, and other foreign and domestic surveillance sources. The DNI is the chief intelligence adviser to the president and his national security leadership, the keeper of the nation’s most classified secrets.
Gabbard is justifiably criticized for her lack of experience (and incompetence❗) in intelligence policy, beyond her service in the Army National Guard.
That rejecting Gaetz might have seemed a profile in courage says much about the state of Republican politics today: He was among the least qualified nominees to run the Justice Department in memory and had been one of the most scandal-scarred and disliked men in Congress before he resigned earlier this month. One of his staunchest defenders was former representative George Santos, who was expelled from the House last year as an ethical embarrassment.
Now comes the truly hard part. More than two dozen Trump Cabinet secretaries and other top administration officials will require Senate confirmation early next year, and some of them are (looooossy❗) oozies. For the integrity of their own institution and the good of the nation, the Senate must not simply rubber stamp them all, as Trump and his most vocal supports will demand.
This process must begin by not acceding to Trump’s suggestion that he should be allowed to choose his Cabinet through so-called recess appointments, which would circumvent the gauntlet of Senate approval. The Senate must instead move with dispatch to publicly vet all of Trump’s nominees via thorough background checks, committee hearings, and floor votes.
Though he would be the last to admit it, Trump himself would benefit if his most dubious nominees were forced to answer hard questions about possible ethical issues and policy positions. They should show competence beyond the ability to please a Fox News audience. If nothing else, the process might save him from his own worst impulses.
So where to begin? Start with former representative Tulsi Gabbard, a onetime Democrat turned Bernie Sanders independent turned MAGA enthusiast, who is Trump’s choice to be director of national intelligence. The job entails overseeing the 18 agencies that collect and analyze information from human spies, satellites, and other foreign and domestic surveillance sources. The DNI is the chief intelligence adviser to the president and his national security leadership, the keeper of the nation’s most classified secrets.
Gabbard is justifiably criticized for her lack of experience (and incompetence❗) in intelligence policy, beyond her service in the Army National Guard.
But, far more troubling is her bizarre coziness with President Vladimir Putin of Russia and the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Gabbard blamed the United States for provoking the aggression, an absurd apology for Putin’s unsubtle expansionist ambitions. And during the Syrian civil war, she accused the United States of supporting terrorists there, even as Assad — an avowed ally of not just Russia but also Iran — was massacring his own citizens. It should come as no surprise that Rossiya-1, a Russian state television channel, called her a Russian “comrade.”
Next up is Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense. Though he has little experience managing a large organization, he did serve with the Army National Guard, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of greater concern: He is accused by an unnamed woman of rape during a Republican event in 2017; he asserts he had consensual sex with her. Democrats can be counted on to question Hegseth about this accusation.
But, Republicans must also look hard at Hegseth’s policy statements, including his vigorous defense of troops accused or convicted of war crimes; his opposition to women serving in combat, though they have been for years; and his being a hyper-partisan Trump loyalist who seems eager to politicize the armed services. The latter would be a dire subversion of t US military’s long tradition of nonpartisanship.
And then there is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s (incompetent) pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services. The sprawling agency is nearly as large as the Pentagon and oversees the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For all his support for quack theories, Kennedy has called for improving the nation’s diet. But his obsessive and scientifically refuted skepticism about vaccines is deeply alarming, given the clear benefits of inoculations against not just COVID-19, measles, and the flu, but also once-deadly diseases that have been nearly eradicated, like polio. (HELLO❓ But, wait, wait❗ What about the hypocritical picture taken with RFKjr eating a MacDonald's hamburger with his new master the 😡cult leader DJT❓)
The department not only delivers crucial health care funding to individuals and institutions, it also helps direct the nation’s medical research. At the very least, the Senate must closely interrogate his views on the research and development of potentially life-saving vaccines and other curative treatments.
No one should be surprised if Senate Republicans assist Trump in pursuing his (incompetent) policy agenda, whether sharply reducing immigration, shrinking the regulatory state, reducing US military commitments, opposing Chinese expansionism, reinvigorating domestic manufacturing, or cutting taxes (for the rich).
If ever there were a magistrate in need of restraint, it is Donald Trump. Who among the Senate Republicans will stand for the good of the nation and integrity of the Senate itself against blind loyalty to the (tryant) president?
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Gabbard blamed the United States for provoking the aggression, an absurd apology for Putin’s unsubtle expansionist ambitions. And during the Syrian civil war, she accused the United States of supporting terrorists there, even as Assad — an avowed ally of not just Russia but also Iran — was massacring his own citizens. It should come as no surprise that Rossiya-1, a Russian state television channel, called her a Russian “comrade.”
Next up is Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense. Though he has little experience managing a large organization, he did serve with the Army National Guard, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of greater concern: He is accused by an unnamed woman of rape during a Republican event in 2017; he asserts he had consensual sex with her. Democrats can be counted on to question Hegseth about this accusation.
But, Republicans must also look hard at Hegseth’s policy statements, including his vigorous defense of troops accused or convicted of war crimes; his opposition to women serving in combat, though they have been for years; and his being a hyper-partisan Trump loyalist who seems eager to politicize the armed services. The latter would be a dire subversion of t US military’s long tradition of nonpartisanship.
And then there is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s (incompetent) pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services. The sprawling agency is nearly as large as the Pentagon and oversees the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For all his support for quack theories, Kennedy has called for improving the nation’s diet. But his obsessive and scientifically refuted skepticism about vaccines is deeply alarming, given the clear benefits of inoculations against not just COVID-19, measles, and the flu, but also once-deadly diseases that have been nearly eradicated, like polio. (HELLO❓ But, wait, wait❗ What about the hypocritical picture taken with RFKjr eating a MacDonald's hamburger with his new master the 😡cult leader DJT❓)
The department not only delivers crucial health care funding to individuals and institutions, it also helps direct the nation’s medical research. At the very least, the Senate must closely interrogate his views on the research and development of potentially life-saving vaccines and other curative treatments.
No one should be surprised if Senate Republicans assist Trump in pursuing his (incompetent) policy agenda, whether sharply reducing immigration, shrinking the regulatory state, reducing US military commitments, opposing Chinese expansionism, reinvigorating domestic manufacturing, or cutting taxes (for the rich).
If ever there were a magistrate in need of restraint, it is Donald Trump. Who among the Senate Republicans will stand for the good of the nation and integrity of the Senate itself against blind loyalty to the (tryant) president?
Echo opinion published in the Boston Globe by the newspaper's Editorial Board.
What the Senate should vigorously oppose are Trump’s worst inclinations toward retribution and overreach😥😞. Never mind that the nation’s security will be threatened by corrupt, hyper-politicized, or incompetent oversight of the military and intelligence agencies. Trump’s own MAGA base will be among the first to be hurt if the nation’s health care system is shipwrecked by bumbling leadership.
In Federalist No. 76, Alexander Hamilton argued that the great benefit of requiring Senate approval of top administration jobs was to prevent “the appointment of unfit characters.” He added: “The necessity of its co-operation, in the business of appointments, will be a considerable and salutary restraint upon the conduct of that magistrate.”
If ever there were a magistrate in need of restraint, it is Donald Trump. Who among the Senate Republicans will stand for the good of the nation and integrity of the Senate itself against blind loyalty to the president?
What the Senate should vigorously oppose are Trump’s worst inclinations toward retribution and overreach😥😞. Never mind that the nation’s security will be threatened by corrupt, hyper-politicized, or incompetent oversight of the military and intelligence agencies. Trump’s own MAGA base will be among the first to be hurt if the nation’s health care system is shipwrecked by bumbling leadership.
In Federalist No. 76, Alexander Hamilton argued that the great benefit of requiring Senate approval of top administration jobs was to prevent “the appointment of unfit characters.” He added: “The necessity of its co-operation, in the business of appointments, will be a considerable and salutary restraint upon the conduct of that magistrate.”
If ever there were a magistrate in need of restraint, it is Donald Trump. Who among the Senate Republicans will stand for the good of the nation and integrity of the Senate itself against blind loyalty to the president?
Labels: Bashar al-Assad, Bernie Sanders, Boston Glove, MAGA, RFKjr, Russia, Tulsi Gabbard, Vladimir Putin
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