A Humiliating Display

Job interviews for the Trump administration require blind obedience

Credit: Getty Images

Witness the current state of the Republican Party: a lame duck president with dismal polling numbers who still forces his loyal acolytes to bend the knee to an abject failure of a presidency. It is embarrassing to witness this level of cowardice by those whose allegiance is so misplaced.

The behavior was aptly demonstrated by a trio of Donald Trump nominees who have been on Capitol Hill this week for their confirmation hearings. While they are up for very different jobs, the three have one salient thing in common: publicly debasing themselves to prove loyalty to their benefactor. It is a prerequisite for this president.

Let’s start with Todd Blanche. He has been Acting Attorney General since April, when his boss, Pam Bondi, was fired for not being ruthless enough. He is a clear Trump favorite. “We have a man who’s doing a great job, I’ll tell you. I knew it! Because he kept me out of jail for years! Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche,” Trump beamed at a Rose Garden event in May.

During his hearing on Wednesday, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Blanche made a telling faux pas, saying, “I’m his lawyer… was his lawyer.” Exactly. The attorney general of the United States is supposed to be the people’s lawyer, not the president’s consigliere.

Blanche, the architect of Trump’s IRS suit settlement, defended the part that would shield the president and his family from past tax violations. Then he had a hard time convincing senators that the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” (slush) fund was dead. That’s taxpayer money for January 6 rioters.

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) could quickly kill Blanche’s confirmation. The senator will be out of job come January, in part because Trump backed his primary challenger who then won the nomination. Cornyn has big doubts about the demise of the slush fund, suggesting it could easily be resurrected. Republicans have a one-vote majority on the committee. A “no” vote from Cornyn would doom Blanche and offer some measure of revenge from the soon-to-be former Texas senator.

Over at the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Trump’s nominee to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) got a grilling that was met with a lot of non-answers. Dr. Erica Schwartz, a former deputy surgeon general, was asked if she would challenge Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who is a vaccine and science skeptic. She didn’t say an outright yes.

She promised to “never compromise on the science,” while also saying she believed Kennedy wouldn’t implement policies that are not scientifically sound. To avoid answering direct questions, on more than one occasion she said, “The secretary absolutely will allow me to be the CDC director.”

Committee chair, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), wasn’t buying what she was selling. “You can be CDC director and just take orders. We need a CDC director that will actually stand up to crazy, stupid things being said that undermine faith in immunization.”

Cassidy, another victim of the Trump loyalty test when the president endorsed his primary challenger, is finally speaking his mind.

Jay Clayton, currently U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, is Trump’s pick to replace Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Like Blanche and Schwartz, he stuck to the shameful script.

If you haven’t seen Senator Jon Ossoff’s (D-GA) interrogation of Clayton, it is worth two minutes of your time. Ossoff started by asking a simple question.

Ossoff: “Who won the 2020 election?”

Clayton: “You know, we’re not, I’m not, I’m not going to do this with you.”

Ossoff: “This is a job interview. We have established that you have an obligation to be honest and forthright with the committee, yes?”

Clayton: “Yes”

Ossoff: “Who won the 2020 election?”

Clayton: “I said, I’m not going to get into that with you. I think I’ve answered the question.”

After several more evasions from a convictionless Clayton, Ossoff closed his line of questioning with this, “Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question? To have to indulge the president’s delusions? We know, you know, everybody in this room knows the truthful answer to that question. Why can you not give it?”

Indulging the president’s delusions is the crux of all of these hearings. Nominees, indeed anyone looking to join the administration, must prove fealty to Donald Trump by discrediting themselves in front of Congress and the nation.

“I should not feel bad for those who humiliate themselves to gain a position in Trump’s administration. But I do feel sorry for anyone so lacking in self-worth that they blow up their hard-earned reputations to gain a temporary position with a lame duck politician. It is sad,” Joe Scarborough of MS NOW posted on social media.

If Blanche, Schwartz, and Clayton are seemingly willing to lie to Congress, or at least resort to sophistry to get their jobs, what might they be willing to do once in their positions?

Clayton’s refusal to say that Joe Biden won the 2020 election — not by a little, but by more than 7 million votes — was a litmus test of Trump’s number one conspiracy theory.

Under Trump, the DNI is no longer an intelligence advisor, but rather the Cabinet member focused on re-litigating the 2020 election, an obsession of this president, something he cannot and will not stop talking about.

So much so, he is giving a primetime speech about it on Thursday. Almost six years after the election, he claims to have “big news.” But because no one in the White House seems to know exactly what Trump is going to say and because many of you will be reading this after the speech is given, we won’t speculate.

It is interesting to note however, that this speech is also a test of sorts for the TV networks. Will they or won’t they break into programming to broadcast the speech live?

Belief is widespread that Trump will continue to pedal repeatedly debunked lies about the 2020 election. While the networks have tried to avoid amplifying his lies about the election, they risk blowback from a White House happy to mete out punishment for perceived slights.

Networks are not required to carry a presidential address. Speeches by Gerald Ford, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden were not broadcast live.

Money comes into play here. Networks lose revenue from commercials when they carry presidential speeches.

When asked if the networks have a responsibility to air this speech, Federal Communications Commission Chair and Trump lackey Brendan Carr told NewsNation, “Broadcasters have an obligation to operate in the public interest.” As of this writing, ABC and NBC will air the speech only on their streaming channels. CBS hasn’t said what it will do.

Trump’s approval ratings, plus an affordability crisis and an unpopular war, are pointing to the loss of control of one, if not both, houses of Congress. The president seems unwilling to do the hard work to fight to keep Congress. Instead, he is filling his Cabinet with even bigger sycophants and undermining election integrity in hopes that will guarantee his political power for the next two years.

He is unlikely ever to accept the results and move on. No advisors have the spine to tell him the truth. And here’s the reality: Six years later he’s far less popular than he was after his 2020 defeat. Pushing election denialism could be helpful for Democrats, but it’s certainly the last thing Republicans need, especially for those on the ballot in November. Trump is once again questioning a long-ago election while ignoring what many voters are insisting on now: undoing the damage he’s already done.

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Stay Steady,
Dan