Turning up editorial heat to alert Americans about Donald Trump's dangerous cabinet nominees

‘Unconventional’ Trump Cabinet picks represent a clear and present danger:  Hegseth, Vought, RFKjr, Gabbard simply not qualified.

Echo editorial opinion published in The Boston Globe:

Where are the Republicans who will stand up to Trump's incompetence? Instead, they are fleeing like a group of lemmings.

Where are principled Republicans who care about protecting our democracy?  They must be lost in a Where's Waldo maze.

From the moment he rode down that golden escalator in Trump Tower nearly a decade ago, Donald J. Trump reshaped the nation’s politics — and he continues to do so today with his incoherent hodgepodge of Cabinet picks that includes billionaires and media darlings, eccentrics, and rhetorical bomb-throwers.

Even in introducing — and supporting — Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth at his confirmation hearing Tuesday, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker conceded, “The nominee is unconventional.”

Unconventional isn’t always a bad thing and presidents are generally given wide latitude to choose like-minded candidates for their Cabinet and their closest advisers.

But those Cabinet members and advisers serve the nation too. Some are, after all, in the presidential line of succession should the president and vice president be unable to serve. So while Trump has sometimes treated the process cavalierly (who can forget the now thankfully aborted nomination of the disreputable Matt Gaetz as attorney general), the US Senate does not have that luxury.

This past week it got down to work, putting more than a dozen nominees through their paces at their respective confirmation hearings.

Two of the nominees — those admittedly in the more conventional category — will deservedly win swift and likely bipartisan approval:


Senator Marco Rubio, nominated to be secretary of state, is the son of Cuban immigrants. His experience as vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations provide him a solid background in international affairs.

Scott Bessent, a billionaire money manager from South Carolina, should provide a steady hand as Treasury secretary. He’s an advocate for deficit reduction and deregulation and would be the first openly gay nominee to that post.

Other nominees remain so far out of the mainstream and are so utterly unqualified for the critical posts to which they have been nominated that they represent an insult to the nation and a potential embarrassment to Senate Republicans on whose support their future rests.

Pete Hegseth’s chief qualification for running the Pentagon — with its $850 billion budget and more than 3 million uniformed and civilian personnel — seems to be his frequent appearances on Fox (FAKE❗) News. The Army National Guard veteran has opposed a role for women in combat, wants to bring an end to any Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs in the military, and in his book questioned whether the United States should continue to abide by the Geneva Convention. He vowed at his hearing to “restore the Warrior Ethos to the Pentagon.” He also now insists that “women will have access to ground combat roles,” causing Senator Elizabeth Warren to remark, “I’ve heard of deathbed conversions, but this is the first time I’ve heard of a nomination conversion.”

Where are the Republicans who will put democracy and national security before their egotistical politics?

Hegseth is also accused of excessive drinking, including while on the job, and womanizing. He fathered a child with the woman who would become wife number three, while still married to wife number two, at the same time he was accused of sexual assault by yet another woman, a case resolved with an out-of-court settlement and a nondisclosure agreement.

“I have not been a perfect person, but I have been redeemed,” he testified.

“I am astonished and aghast that someone in this responsible a position would, in effect, say that the president is above the law and that the United States Supreme Court is entitled to their opinion, but mine should supersede it,” Blumenthal said. “It’s just baffling that we are in this unprecedented moment in the history of this country.”

Not yet scheduled for his hearing is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services. 

A long-time vaccine skeptic, Kennedy would be in charge of the federal agency responsible not just for vaccines and medications, but also agencies that fund medical research and are charged with responding to public health emergencies and epidemics. More than 75 Nobel Prize winners signed a letter opposing his confirmation saying he “would put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in the health sciences.” Kennedy has also been an opponent of drinking water fluoridation. His flip-flopping on abortion has managed to alienate those on both sides of the debate. And then there are the personal incidents — from the babysitter who made allegations of sexual harassment to the dead bear cub he admits to leaving in Central Park and the dead whale head he collected off a Cape Cod beach.

The director of National Intelligence is a position so critical to the nation’s security — a post that so obviously should be beyond politics — that its current occupant, Avril Haines, was confirmed by the Senate on Inauguration Day in 2021, by an 84-10 vote. Trump’s nominee, former Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard, however, brings far more baggage than she does qualifications, delaying the scheduling of her hearing.

Russell Vought, Trump’s pick to head the Office of Management and Budget, signaled at his hearing that the incoming administration could again withhold congressional-approved funding for Ukraine and more — despite federal law barring the president from unilaterally blocking appropriated funding. During his first term, when Vought headed OMB, Trump blocked funds appropriated to assist Ukraine — a move that a federal watchdog concluded was illegal.

“He believes it’s unconstitutional,” Vought said of Trump’s view of the law. “For 200 years, presidents had the ability to spend less than an appropriation if they could do it for less.”

Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut noted that the Supreme Court declared the law constitutional four decades ago.

Now a MAGA devotee, Gabbard had a history of being rather fond of such dictators as Syria’s now deposed Bashar al-Assad, with whom she met in Syria in 2017, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. She blamed NATO for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and spread the Russian-invented claim that Ukraine was hosting US-funded labs working at creating bioweapons. She’s also a fan of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, now living in Russia, both of whom are accused of leaking classified information. She has proposed pardoning Snowden.

With friends like Gabbard, as the saying goes, the US doesn’t need enemies.

In a sane and rational atmosphere, Gabbard and Kennedy wouldn’t even make it to the hearing stage, suffering the same fate as Gaetz. But Trump and his closest Republican allies have made the most of their ultimate weapon — promising to primary anyone opposing the president-elect’s nominees. In the case of Senator Joni Ernst, a respected military veteran herself, who now supports the confirmation of Hegseth, it seems to have worked.

That’s not simply shameful, it’s both dangerous and potentially tragic. And if things turn tragic, the American people will know who to blame.