They were both Democrats until five minutes ago. What could be worse than that?
Among the most shocking actions taken by President Trump and the Republicans in the first week of his administration, and there were many, confirming a totally inexperienced, 44 year old, weekend TV show host with extreme character flaws and a penchant for war criminals as Secretary of Defense was one for the books. Pete Hegseth will be in charge of the world’s most powerful military and the country’s largest bureaucracy and he is completely unqualified in every way. But he is a Trump loyalist and it says something about the president’s coterie of followers that Hegseth is the best he could do.
There was some slight discomfort among a few GOP Senators. Three actually voted against him, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky the former majority leader. He and Lisa Murkowski, R-Ak., and Susan Collins, R-Me., voted no, which required the Vice President to cast the tying vote. There were others who had expressed reservations but who came home in the end, likely because Hegseth is a true blue MAGA warrior with the full backing of the hardcore base which made its wishes known in no uncertain terms. You can tell that it left a bad taste in some of the Senators’ mouths but they weren’t willing to poke those bears.
There are a couple of nominations coming up this week that may give them an opportunity to pretend to themselves that they actually have some integrity and try to salvage some self-respect. There will be hearings for former Congresswoman from Hawaii, Tulsi Gabbard and Anti-Vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr for their nominations for the Director of Intelligence and Secretary of Health and Human Services respectively. Neither of them have relevant experience for those positions and they both have some unique characteristics that are disqualifying in themselves.
Gabbard is a shocking choice for this particular job sitting atop the entire Intelligence Community because of the fact that she’s literally suspected of being sympathetic to America’s adversaries, particularly Russia. Perhaps her most famous act as a politician was to travel to Syria under false pretenses to meet clandestinely with its president, the recently deposed Bashar al-Assad, a dictatorial monster who was waging war on his own people. Assad is now in exile in Russia, the country whose talking points Gabbard has been using for the last couple of years to attack the US, most pointedly for allegedly causing the war in Ukraine. To say she is a bizarre choice for a top Intelligence job is an understatement and it’s causing some severe consternation among America’s allies.
But there’s more to Gabbard than just that, although it should be enough. She was born into what most people would call a cult and remains a member as is her husband and most of her closest aides. According to The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey, that relationship is the one “throughline” in her politically peripatetic career. Following the tenets of the “Science of Identity Foundation”, an offshoot of the Hari Krishnas led by a man named Chris Butler, she started out as a conservative anti-gay politician but soon morphed into a progressive, Bernie Sanders star in the Us Congress followed by her bizarre turn as a pro-Assad advocate and an eventual falling out with the Democratic party. After that she went on Fox news, as one does, charming the MAGA faithful and endorsed Donald Trump. And here she is today about to become America’s top Intelligence official.
But who is Gabbard, really? She’s only been a Republican for a few years now. She ran for president on the Democratic ticket in 2020! Can MAGA really trust someone with that history? The National Review doesn’t think so, calling her “an atrocious nominee who deserves to be defeated.” She does not appear to be the type of nominee to inspire the sorts of threats and intimidation that Hegseth did so if any GOP Senators feel the impulse to try out a little independence, this one is probably pretty safe from MAGA horde.
And that probably goes double for Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who ran in the 2024 election as a Democrat before switching opportunistically to Independent and then endorsing Trump in exchange for favors which turned out to be a cabinet position. It’s hard to imagine that Trump actually cares that much if he’s the HHS Secretary and may even be hopeful that the Senate will save him since it’s clear that he’s going to be nothing but trouble.
By this time, most people are aware that Kennedy is a crank and a weirdo who believes that vaccines have caused a Holocaust among children and has admitted to picking up a dead bear and leaving it in Central Park as a joke — when he was over 60. Among other looney conspiracy theories he pushes, he told Joe Rogan that “Wi-Fi radiation” could be causing autism, food allergies, asthma, eczema or other chronic conditions saying “I think it degrades your mitochondria and it opens your blood-brain barrier.” He directly had a hand in the deaths of dozens of Samoan children by pushing bogus anti-vax ideas.
He even contradicts germ theory, suggesting that if the body is healthy it cannot be damaged by microbes. These ideas are downright medieval and he has no business being in government in any capacity much less overseeing the public health agencies, Medicare and Medicaid. It is an abomination that he has even been nominated.
And now it turns out that he appears to be corrupt as well, having made millions from getting a piece of the action from anti-vax suits brought by a couple of law firms with which he’s been affiliated. He says he has no intention of foregoing that money as the HHS Secretary even though he would have direct control of the nation’s vaccine policy.
Kennedy is a member of the most famous Democratic Party family in America. He was a member himself until five minutes ago. He is pro-choice, which is generally a deal breaker in GOP politics and that has brought out at least some token opposition from outside groups including one led by former Vice President Mike Pence. He’s assured all the GOP Senators that he won’t let his life-long liberal affiliations get in the way of Donald Trump’s agenda but if any of them have even the slightest concerns for the health of the American people (or even themselves and their families) surely they can find the tiny bit of courage it would take to tell Trump that they just can’t vote for a pro-choice nominee.
All of this is assuming any but Murkowski, Collins and McConnell, all of whom have indicated they won’t vote for either of these absurd nominees, give a damn. There is little reason to think they care about anything but keeping their seats. But if they do have a tiny bit of integrity left, Gabbard and Kennedy offer a way for them to oppose them. All they have to do is say they just can’t vote for a Democrat. Surely, the MAGA mob will understand that and let them off the hook.
Salon