Well, except these confirmation hearings aren’t history; they are just a harbinger of how bad these nominees are going to be at their job, and not incidentally but by design, because Trump is full of vengeance and wants to burn the boat to the waterline and everyone in it, and the Heritage Foundation fucks whispering in his ear (even as they say that they aren’t) are fully on board because they want to build the nation back up into a totalitarian theocracy even though they don’t know how to run a lemonade stand.
I’m not criticizing the o.p. for going through the exercise of watching and commenting on the hearings, and for some of the lesser known nominees their may be some benefit, but for someone like Hegseth this is just a shallow rehash of all of the long list of inadequacies and character defects that have already been discussed at length, and at some point the way the media is covering these hearings is just giving them a patina of respectability even though they are a fully pro forma exercise where even the Republican critics are going to vote to confirm nearly all of these nominees. I empathize with those who just feel as if it isn’t worth their attention and the anxiety it will produce, because this is just the precursor to our coming national divorce with democracy.
I agree but I’d hope there was pushback from the Joint Chiefs. I mean, do they have any integrity left? I’d hope so. They still want a good military (and all the benefits they get from it). As such, I’d hope senators would listen to them and realize Hegseth is NOT the guy they want as SecDef.
Well, he apparently has a drinking problem he refuses to recognize, and none of the people surrounding him seem to care. So I expect many drunken shenanigans to ensue.
People with access to nuclear weapons shouldn’t get “a bit fighty”.
Even more so, unlike the rest of the government, having and effective military is something that the Republican party, at least according their rhetoric, actually supports. So if there was one position that they were going to reject an unqualified candidate for fear of the consequences of his confirmation this would be the one.
The only other candidate who might be in danger would be Kennedy for HHS since he has Democrat stink on him and his crazy conspiracy theories are generally distinct from the crazy conspiracy theories that they support. So they may prefer someone who’s ideologically driven to kill welfare. The only reason that he was put up for the post was as a reward for handing over his followers in the previous election, now that that is over they have no use for him. So they may just drop him, … or not.
I’ve wondered if nominees for confirmation are allowed to Google answers when the senators are interviewing them. Eg when the one asked Hegseth which member nations are in ASEAN, could he have said “Could I have 10 seconds? I’ll look it up here.” Maybe his having chosen not too was detrimental. (I’ve dug through ‘rules of order’ and such but didn’t find a guideline about that).
Breathalyzer to enter the Pentagon or use a phone.
That’s what we want for the Secretary of the Department of Defense; a guy who has to do a Google search to figure out who is party to major strategic alignments. Or better yet, skip the guy and just reference Google Gemini to figure out what to do with defense. For Surgeon General, we can save a buck and just link to WebMD. GPT-4.o for White House Press Secretary, and Conservapedia for Department of Education. We’re already like halfway to that promised US$2T in budget reductions, right?
Amid peals of laughter I do see your point. I was thinking it’s okay for the nominees to be normal citizens but now I can see how they shouldn’t be given that consideration.
Yeah, these people are interviewing for what is basically the CEO for the government equivalent of Boing, Apple, or Intel. These people should be exceptional in both their knowledge and their judgement. Of course, that isn’t what Trump is shooting for, but that is the general standard of presidential nominations in the past, Republican or Democrat. When you bring in people who are inept, corrupt, or morally compromise, you get the 2003 invasion of Iraq or a collapse of the mortgage industry. When you bring in people specifically selected for their complete unsuitability (which, with maybe the exception of maybe two or three of these picks, all of these are), you’re just trolling at democracy, which requires competence to keep steaming along.
Don’t you mean BibleGateway? As a further “loyalty test,” see which version of the Bible each person chooses. “I’m sorry, but that’s not the Trump-approved translation. Yes, you are guaranteed the right to free exercise of religion, but we are talking facts here.”
I watched maybe five minutes of Hegseth and maybe the same of Bondi. It was all I could stand. I’m ‘not a well man.’
To me, it’s the exact same fundamental issue as we had/have with Trump: how do you reconcile a situation where everything they love about these people is everything we hate about them?
Put a little more bombastically (and said here not for the first time):
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
–John Kenneth Galbraith
Trump – like other RW demagogues – has tremendous appeal to the mouth-breathers, because he tells them that they shouldn’t have to care about less fortunate people, the planet, the environment, or minorities.
He doesn’t ask them to be ‘better people’ in any way, shape or form, the way that most past Presidents have. He encourages them to be proud of their baser instincts and worst qualities.
In short, he applauds them for their “religiosity” while simultaneously absolving them from any need to actually be decent human beings.
ETA: the two hearings I watched, in small part, were painfully reminiscent of Brett Kavanaugh’s hearing – a job interview played out on the world’s stage, and for an audience of only one: Trump.
I stand by my prediction in another thread that he will be one of the first Trump cabinet appointees to go. I’d be stunned to learn that he didn’t have a hoard of skeletons, including some literal, hiding in his closet. I can’t imagine it will be long before a revelation emerges that’s so heinous that even the Republicans can’t blow it off. At that point Trump will throw him under the bus while claiming to have barely known the guy.
Maybe this has been brought up and i missed it. I find reading this thread trying. I tend to run down most of what gets posted because many posters cite Hegseth’s response as “blah blah blah,” which, for me, isn’t right, at least for this forum (maybe in the pit). If you are going to post his response, post his response, don’t post some garbage because, in your opinion, his response was garbage. I’m a big boy, I can make those decisions for myself.
Anyway, I just wish one of the congresscrtters has asked Hegseth, “Do you believe that you are the most qualified person in the US to hold this position, and if so, why do you think that?” and perhaps follow up with, “Of all Americans who have been Secretary of Defense, which one(s) do you admire most?” or, to perhaps, “Assuming you feel you are the best man for the job, if you don’t get it, who (past or present) would think could do the job as well as you?”
It’s like these Congresscritters have never had to interview for a job before. Every job I have interviewed for since I was 22 years old has thrown similar questions at me, so I can’t be the only one who is wondering this.
