By Marco Levytsky, Editorial Writer.
To many, it was an unbelievable shock that Americans were willing not only to elect but to give a popular majority to a convicted felon who has violated the Constitution of the United States. But even more incredible is the shock of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks. Never in US history has such a cabal of fact deniers, unabashed sympathizers of foreign autocrats, fawning cronies of an incoming President, and ill-qualified and ethically challenged candidates for administrative service ever been proposed to oversee the government of the most powerful nation on earth.
Take, for example the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a conspiracy theorist and longtime vaccine skeptic who knows nothing about medicine, as Secretary of Health. His appointment has alarmed health experts around the world, especially from Samoa, the tiny Polynesian island nation of 200,000 people where Kennedy spread misinformation regarding vaccines during a measles epidemic. More than 5,700 were infected, and 83 died, many of them young children. Aiono Prof Alec Ekeroma, the director general of health for Samoa’s Health Ministry, told The Washington Post that Kennedy “will be directly responsible for killing thousands of children around the world by allowing preventable infectious diseases to run rampant.”
Kennedy has said Ukraine should be forbidden from joining NATO, but that he would consider admitting Russia. He has also said the 2014 Revolution of Dignity was an attempted coup sponsored by the U.S. against the Ukrainian government and that the Ukrainian government committed atrocities against the Russian population in Donbas, wrongly claiming that all casualties of the Donbas War between 2014 and 2022 (about 14,000) were Russians.
Then there is Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, Trump’s pick for attorney general. Trump has promised to utilize the office of attorney general — the top law enforcement position in the United States –to seek revenge on his opponents and enemies. Gaetz, a Trump loyalist and controversial figure in Congress, is well-known for sending the House into leadership chaos last year by making a motion to vacate then-speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. He was also subject to a Justice Department investigation into allegations of sex trafficking. He was never charged with a crime but remains under a House ethics investigation.
Yet another questionable nomination is that of Fox News host Pete Hegseth, as Secretary of Defense, despite having no previous government experience whatsoever. In his book The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, released earlier this year, Hegseth calls NATO “outdated, outgunned, invaded, and impotent” and echoes Trump's repeated pledge not to defend alliance members that don't meet defence spending commitments. “Why should America, the European 'emergency contact number’ for the past century, listen to self-righteous and impotent nations asking us to honour outdated and one-sided defence arrangements they no longer live up to?” Hegseth wrote.
But worst of all is the inexplicable, extremely dangerous and potentially treasonous appointment of former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard to the position of Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The director of DNI is a senior cabinet-level position created in 2004 that oversees all intelligence agencies in the US, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA). The two agencies report directly to the DNI and have been indispensable in helping Ukraine hold off Russia’s full-scale invasion.
As with the Trump nominees or appointees mentioned above, Gabbard has no prior experience in, or relevant qualifications for, the position in question and has been a vocal critic of America’s support for Ukraine under President Joe Biden’s administration. Since the February 2022 full-scale invasion, she has repeatedly called for “a peace deal” which would effectively give Putin control of a neutralized and demilitarized Ukrainian state. On April 4th of this year, Gabbard appeared on the Lex Fridman podcast, a hugely popular source of information for young American males, in which she claimed: “All the statements and comments that the Biden-Harris administration has made from the beginning of this [Russo-Ukrainian] war essentially point to their objective being basically to destroy Russia.”
Gabbard has also claimed that Ukraine was not worth protecting because it “isn’t actually a democracy,” and that US-funded “biolabs” — of which none exist in Ukraine — could result in the release of “dangerous pathogens.” The latter of these baseless claims echoes Russian propaganda that the United States has been secretly funding labs in Ukraine to make illegal biological weapons for use against Russia. At the time, Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah responded by saying Gabbard was spreading “treasonous lies.”
Conservative commentator David Frum reacted to her nomination by stating: “Why not cut out the middlewoman and just name Putin as director of National Intelligence?”
Georgia State University College of Law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis exclaimed incredulously: “Tulsi Gabbard as DNI? There’s not even a pretense of responsibility from Trump. We might as well just sign up to be a Russian client state.”
Ex-Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger wrote: “Tulsi Gabbard for DNI, a Russian spy. Brilliant”
Patrick Chovanex, former professor at China's Tsinghua University and Columbia SIPA, stated: “Tulsi Gabbard as DNI? We might as well just email Putin all our war plans.”
On a panel of CNN commentators, Jamie Metz, former US National Security Council staffer during the Bill Clinton administration, said: “Tulsi Gabbard has never worked in intelligence. She has no real background for this job, and she has been a booster in many ways for Putin, Assad, [Turkish President Tayyip Recep] Erdogan, people who are not at all friendly with the United States.”
Metz added it was “concerning” that US allies would now be reluctant to share intelligence with the US, “where there are people in the central nodes of our government who are so sympathetic to our adversaries.”
The one positive development that has emerged from the electoral debacle is that Senate Republicans made a surprise pick for Senate majority leader by electing South Dakota Senator John Thune, who has publicly backed continuing support to Ukraine and standing up to Putin’s Russia. “America cannot retreat from the world stage,” he has said. “American leadership is desperately needed now more than I think any time in recent history, and we need to make sure that Ukraine has the weaponry and the resources that it needs to defeat the Russians, because, if we're not sending them American weapons, and they succeed in Ukraine, and they go into a — roll into a NATO country, then we're going to be sending American sons and daughters.”
As Trump’s cabinet nominations have to go through the Senate for approval, it will fall to new Senate majority leader Thune, ideally, backed by very visible and vocal protests of large numbers of concerned citizens in nationwide demonstrations, to rally enough conscientious Republicans to block Trump’s most egregious picks.
We can expect Trump to try to appoint his nominees under the recess appointment procedure that has been used by Presidents in the past when the Senate was in recess. To facilitate this procedure, Trump is likely to try to keep the Senate from convening until after his appointments are made. There has been pushback, however. Retiring Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnel has reportedly stated that “there will be no recess appointments,” which would allow Trump to avoid Senate confirmation of his more contentious picks.
A battle over this issue is brewing and what is involved is nothing less than the system of checks and balances that is the cornerstone of the US Constitution. That is a point all concerned Americans, must emphasize.
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