National security expert makes case to Senate GOP for 'future of the Republican party'

Tom Nichols, staff writer for The Atlantic and professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, is urging Senate leaders to uphold their constitutional duty in the face of President-Elect Donald Trump's "dangerous" Cabinet nominations.

During Sunday's episode of MSNBC's Velshi, host Ali Velshi pointed to a column Nichols published in The Atlantic Saturday night, saying that "it speaks volumes about the real second term agenda."

Nichols wrote, "Trump has been releasing names of the nominees for the cabinet in waves. began with conventional choices, unloaded one bombshell after another, perhaps to paralyze opposition in the Senate with a flood of bad nominees, or to overwhelm the public's already limited political attention span. Trump may have held off announcing Patel until he had enough exhaustion with his other nominations."

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Turning to Nichols, Velshi noted, "The issue here is — I think he is not a distraction. I think this is one of the dangerous ones we need to be paying attention to."

"Right," Nichols replied. and the setup to get to Kash Patel was Matt Gaetz and other nominations. He may not care about people like Gaetz. One thing I think Trump's been trying to do, is he tries to create this aura of inevitability. 'I'm just announcing things, and they just happen because I can will this into existence.' And Gaetz proved that's not true. "

The Atlantic staff writer continued, "If the United States Senate really cares about its constitutional duty and cares about democracy and, you know, even to say that these Republican senators — if you care at all about the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement — it's only going to take four of you to stop the most dangerous nominations: [Fox News host Pete] Hegseth, [former Democratic Rep. Tulsi] Gabbard, and Patel. And, of course, RFK [Jr.], who is a different kind of danger. But again Trump's counting on people saying, 'I guess if we have to pick one of them, maybe we should try to.'"

"No, you don't have to pick," Nichols emphasized. "If you keep sprinting, you are going to wear yourself out. This is a process, where you're just going to have to say one time after another, 'No, this is not appropriate. No, this is dangerous.'"

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Velshi replied, "Which is the constitutional right and responsibility for the Senate. This is not a stretch. This is not a favor anybody is doing for anybody. This is actually what you are elected to do.":

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