By Colbert I. King
The Philadelphia Tribune
Reprinted – by Texas Metro News
https://www.phillytrib.com/
A presidential transition has a life of its own, with a beginning, a middle and a full stop when the president-elect is sworn in. Transition team behavior is unscripted; there are no hard-and-fast dos and don’ts. I know firsthand, having been part of the team that staffed President Jimmy Carter’s administration in 1977 and having witnessed the work of President-elect Ronald Reagan’s transition team, which showed us the door four years later.
I have also served on The Post Editorial Board and as a columnist observing and commenting on transitions since 1990. They are what incoming presidents make of them. And Donald Trump is making his transition a riveting and often revolting thing.
Most noteworthy is Trump’s initial round of appointments — not the audaciousness of his choices, which is a separate topic, but how they are clustered.
Right off the bat, Trump raised national and homeland security to the apex of his administration. He announced appointments to the Defense and State departments, the CIA, the Justice Department, and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as his pick for director of national intelligence.
And Trump picked a White House deputy chief of staff for policy and a border czar “in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.”
Corralled at the top are priority appointments that protect the country and himself against threats — foreign and domestic, political or personal, real or imagined. And he has assembled a team of loyalists to achieve his agenda.
No surprise that Trump would roll out appointees from within his inner circle. But therein lies the mystery.
Trump is a successful producer of reality shows. He’s keenly aware of his audience and attuned to what draws their attention. And he also has the pick of the litter of Trumpers hungry to join his team.
So why Matt Gaetz for attorney general, Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence?
Do they represent an in-your-face defiance of the mainstream national security establishment? Is Trump telling the defense and intelligence communities that skills don’t amount to much? Is he throwing a bone to foreign autocrats or signaling to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the Kremlin’s worries are over?
Is Trump doing it for laughs?
And what’s with the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services? Put a fox in the henhouse and wait to see what happens?
It is all something to behold. Before Gaetz withdrew his name for attorney general, Trump sought to place the Justice Department under the command of a man who previously faced a federal sex trafficking investigation (now closed) and was the subject of a House ethics probe into the same allegations and other matters. (He has denied wrongdoing.) Trump wanted to elevate to America’s chief law enforcement officer a man whom the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League said “has a long history of trafficking in antisemitism” and “should not be appointed to any high office, much less one overseeing the impartial execution of our nation’s laws.”
Next, the incoming commander in chief wants to put in the Pentagon (with its $842 billion budget, 3 million employees and 750 military installations worldwide) Pete Hegseth, an Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host who believes combat roles shouldn’t be open to women (as they have been since 2015) and who wants to fire Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other top officials who support diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
In a new book, Hegseth wrote: “Take it to the racist bank: black troops, at all levels, will be promoted simply based on their race. Some will be qualified; some will not be.”
Brown, a Black former fighter pilot with an extensive leadership record, has said, “When I put my helmet on and put that visor down and get in that F-16, you don’t know who I am. You don’t really care. You just want to make sure I’m getting the job done. And that’s what we believe about bringing people into our service.”
Hegseth likes to take aim at others, too, including Muslims. Islamists, he wrote, plan to “conquer” Europe and America demographically, culturally and politically in a bid to destroy “our nation’s Judeo-Christian institutions.” They will “seed the West with as many Muslims as possible” and “multiply in greater numbers than do native citizens.”
Those are thoughts of a person expected to lead one of the nation’s largest institutions, one that is highly diverse.
And what to make of Gabbard, for whom the word “gadfly” could have been coined? A Democrat turned Republican, Gabbard has a lot of explaining to do with respect to her views on NATO, Russia, and who among American leaders are “warmongers” and why. Given Gabbard’s sucking up to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and slavering over Vladimir Putin, the U.S. intelligence community and foreign allies are aghast at the thought of her having access to America’s vast trove of classified information.
Strict Senate scrutiny should apply to her, Gaetz and Hegseth, particularly with the intersection of ethics and morals and Gaetz’s and Hegseth’s professional and personal conduct.
However, the case of Kennedy is what makes the Trump transition a true farce. A more frivolous and dangerous candidate for secretary of health and human services would be hard to find.
COVID-19 targets white and Black people? Mass shootings are linked to Prozac? The CIA was involved in President John F. Kennedy’s assassination? Vaccines can cause autism? Anthony S. Fauci exaggerated the pandemic to promote vaccines? RFK Jr. has advanced all that and more.
That Trump would tap an extravagant promoter of false health claims to head health and human services is a cruel joke. It might be also an indication of the contempt with which Trump holds the federal health establishment, including the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration.
Which triggers the thought that certain Trump nominations reflect his disdain for parts of the federal government that fall into his hands on Jan. 20.
How firm will be the Senate’s advice-and-consent foundation during the reign of Donald Trump?
