Trump’s Frighteningly Bizarre Cabinet Nominees May Get Free Ride From Spineless GOP Senators

Interview with Heather Digby Parton, a contributing writer at Salon.com, conducted by Scott Harris

As Donald Trump nears his second presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, it’s clear that the nation that just elected this one-time reality TV star convicted of 34 felonies, will be subject to the same shameless dishonesty, corruption and incompetence that characterized his first four years in the White House. Many of Trump’s Cabinet nominees seem designed to provoke ridicule and alarm about where his administration is headed.

At least a dozen of Trump’s announced nominees and other appointments have a connection with right-wing propaganda outlet Fox News. That’s not surprising, given that’s where most of the president-elect’s information and opinions comes from.  The list of his most unqualified nominees includes individuals who’ve faced allegations of sexual assault, alcohol abuse and who traffic in dangerous conspiracy theories. They are Fox News host Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. to lead Health and Human Services, extremist conspiracy theorist Kash Patel for director of the FBI, and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence. The world’s richest man Elon Musk, who contributed $260 million to Trump’s campaign, has been named co-leader of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Salon.com columnist Heather Digby Parton. Here she assesses some of Trump’s most disturbing cabinet nominees, many of whom come with the strong smell of vengeance, corruption and oligarchy and are likely to be confirmed by a servile Republican Senate majority that will confirm them.

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON: The “unqualifications,” I mean, that’s just the least of it. They are also extremists. They have ideas that are way, way outside the mainstream. These are people who are either dedicated MAGA warriors or have some kind of an extreme agenda that they’ve been pushing for many years. And it’s the most extreme administration that he’s putting together that I think that we’ve ever seen. I mean, this is very, very unprecedented.

And the problem is, is that I don’t think Trump really cares much about anything but just three specific areas. He cares about vengeance against his political enemies. He cares about, you know, making as much money as possible as president. I think he cares about deportation and tariffs as agenda items.

Those are things that he cares about them to the extent that they’re sort of signature items that he believes are important for him to accomplish. Other than that, I don’t think he cares about anything. I don’t think he even understands any of the rest of it. So most of these people that are coming into these jobs, people like, you know, Tulsi Gabbard, people like RFK Jr., these are areas that he has no particular interest in.

And even more concerning is Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are running this commission that he’s created, which normally I wouldn’t pay much attention to because commissions come and go. You know, Reagan had one. Trump himself had one back in 2016 about voter fraud. And they never seem to go anywhere. But Elon Musk is the richest man in the world, and that makes Trump admire him more than anything.

So I don’t think he cares about government spending. I don’t think he cares about the deficit or any of the rest of this. But he does care about Elon Musk. I think that that is meaningful to him. You know, obviously, you have to look at the Congress and there’s a whole bunch of complications on that agenda of cutting what they’re trying to cut — a third of the government budget.

But nonetheless, it’s very concerning to think about all of this coming together. Now, my only optimistic point of view on this is the fact that a lot of these agendas are competing. And as a result, you know, you may find that as Trump showed in his first administration and in the way that he just runs his campaigns and his political life generally, there’s a lot of conflict and a lot of chaos.

And, I think that’s the best we can hope for is these these people are unable to actually accomplish what they are setting out to do because they’re in conflict with each other. And whether Trump has the bandwidth or the focus to be able to pay enough attention to actually put his own personal clout behind it.

This is very crazy stuff that we’re dealing with. Crazy, crazy stuff.

SCOTT HARRIS: Heather, as you look at the Republican senators that will have a three-seat majority in the next Congress, what are the prospects that Republicans, if they have any common sense, would reject these guys, given the fact that Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, as you said earlier, is threatening to provide hundreds of millions of dollars to primary challenge the Republicans who oppose any of Donald Trump’s nominees is really out there very blatant, very transparent. They’re threatening these guys with millions of dollars, likely hundreds of millions of dollars from Elon Musk.

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON: It’s a shocking level of just outright corruption, really. I mean, there’s no other way to look at it.

But I would like to think that there were Republicans who maybe aren’t up for election in 2026, maybe 2028 or 2030, people who were just elected that they would have enough, I don’t know — pride, integrity, backbone to sort of say, Hey, you don’t get to push us around like this. We’re the U.S. Senate.

Normally everybody in the U.S. Senate wakes up every morning, looks in the mirror and sees a future president, right? I mean, that is, these are very, very powerful people, highly ambitious. And you would expect that they would not like being pushed around by Donald Trump and his henchmen and Elon Musk. But I’ve got to be honest, I’m not seeing any real — (laughs) that that is happening.

I think it’s a fair chance that you’ll get two or three maybe that will vote against some of these nominees, but it’s very hard for me to see right now that they’re going to actually vote down any of Trump’s nominees.

Now, having said that, we think there are going to be hearings, right?

I mean, that’s a whole other sort of ball of wax where we’ve got this idea that maybe they could do recess appointments, rather than do hearings and actually confirm these in a normal constitutional fashion.

But assuming they are hearing some of them could get very ugly, because I’m telling you, these people, the backgrounds on these people, the press is doing their best, I think, in sort of exposing this, but I don’t know how much people are hearing it.

And, you know, everybody I know — I don’t know about you — but everybody I know is tuning out the news. They don’t want to hear any of it right now. So I don’t know how many people are really grasping just how extreme and completely unqualified and just, you know, unfit these people are for the jobs that they’re being nominated for.

Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Heather Digby Parton (17:03) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.

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