Will Donald Trump get a clean sweep in the US Senate for all of his submitted nominees?
Let’s hope not.
Trump has made some surprising choices for his cabinet positions. Pete Hegseth brings a rank-and-file perspective and a return of the warrior culture to the Pentagon, even if his qualifications may look light. Tulsi Gabbard would not have been my pick as Director of National Intelligence, but she brings the necessary skeptical approach to the status quo for this administration — and John Ratcliffe as CIA Director will keep a reliable hand on the rudder as a partner. I still don’t support Robert Kennedy as HHS Secretary; I understand the need to reward the political alliance, but RFK would have been a better fit at the Food and Drug Administration. At least RFK has the same skeptical approach to the establishment elite as Trump desires, and has pledged to subordinate his agenda to Trump’s. (We’ll see.)
That’s not true of Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Chavez-DeRemer has no record of taking on the establishment clique and looking for reform. Chavez-DeRemer is the establishment, someone who not only has a clear bias to Big Labor, but also to Planned Parenthood and a host of other alliances that are aligned far more with the bureaucratic state than with Trump’s constituents and constituencies.
How did Chavez-DeRemer get this appointment? As with RFK, Trump understandably feels the need to reward Teamsters president Sean O’Brien for remaining neutral-ish in the election. O’Brien spoke at the Republican convention, and got frozen out of the Democrat convention for it. Unlike RFK, O’Brien didn’t endorse Trump, but he certainly made it clear that Trump didn’t bother him. In small-d democratic politics, taking that kind of political risk creates a chit that can get called in after the election. […]
— Read More: hotair.com
