The cast of characters Trump has chosen to populate his second term are a Star Wars cantina of fanatics, extremists, conspiracy theorists, sexual harassers, and disreputable no-goods. They have little or no experience running government, let alone expertise in the issues confronting the agencies and departments Trump wants them to lead.
Over the next two weeks, the Senate will hold confirmation hearings on them. As soon as they’re completed and Trump takes the oath of office on January 20, the Senate will vote on them. Most if not all Senate Democrats will vote against them, so Trump can afford to lose the votes of only three Senate Republicans.
The question, therefore, is whether at least four Senate Republicans have enough integrity to refuse to confirm the worst of them. The worst of the worst are:
Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for secretary of defense. Hegseth has a reputation for sexual harassment, including an allegation of assault in 2017. (His own mother accused him in writing of repeatedly abusing women but subsequently disavowed the statement.) According to a recent report, Hegseth was ousted from leadership roles in two military veterans organizations following allegations of financial mismanagement, aggressive drunkenness, and sexist behavior.
Nonetheless, Hegseth has appeared to win over key Senate Republicans. Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, an Armed Services Committee member and the Senate’s first female combat veteran, has been deeply concerned about sexual harassment and assault in the military (where she says she was assaulted). But Trump Republicans have threatened to run a primary challenger against her if she doesn’t support Hegseth —which seems to have changed her attitude toward him.
Of all Trump’s nominations, Hegseth is probably closest to Trump in character and temperament, which should be damning enough to stop his confirmation. He’s scheduled to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing on January 14. Stay tuned.
Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to direct the FBI. He has called for firing the top ranks of the FBI, prosecuting leakers and journalists, and replacing the national security workforce with “people who won’t undermine the president’s agenda.”
Patel has even created a list of whom he dubs “government gangsters” — headlined by outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland — who he says “must be held accountable and exposed in 2024.” He has pledged to investigate Trump’s political opponents and “come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig the presidential election.”
Of all Trump’s picks, Patel may be the most dangerous.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence. She has publicly called for the U.S. to allow Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to remain in power and traveled to Syria to meet with him. She even challenged U.S. intelligence that found Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons.
Gabbard is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and a favorite on Russian propaganda. In 2022, she used her platform to amplify a Russian talking point that the U.S. had somehow provoked Putin to invade Ukraine.
Why in the world would Trump want her to head national intelligence — unless, of course, Trump himself is compromised?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for heading the Department of Health and Human Resources. Kennedy Jr. is a well-known anti-vaxxer who has made the baseless claims that COVID-19 was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” and that “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
Kennedy Jr. keeps repeating the long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism in kids, along with his insistence that the COVID vaccine has killed more people than it’s saved, which is another lie.
He’s a wacko. Nonetheless, his critiques of corporate influence over food and drugs might possibly gain the votes of two Democrats: Bernie Sanders and John Fetterman.
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The Constitution (Article II, Section 2, Clause 2), gives the Senate the power of “advice and consent” over a president’s key appointments. Advice and consent requires careful screening, not outright submission to the will of an incoming president.
If you live in a state with Republican senators (or in Sanders’s Vermont or Fetterman’s Pennsylvania), you might remind them that they have a constitutional duty to not allow the U.S. government to fall into the hands of unqualified and potentially dangerous people like the four mentioned above.
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Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/