When Team Trump ordered cabinet members to hit the campaign trail for Republicans in the midterm elections, Democrats were willing to pay their expenses.
This is such an inferior collection many candidates shouldn’t want them. It’s very difficult to find any Democrat or neutral voice who respects this cabinet. Generally, it’s not about ideology, it’s about a lack of character and competence.
This contrasts with every recent Administration, Republican and Democrat, where leading cabinet members were admired by some members of the opposition party.
As Trump gives his State of the Union tonight -- expected to be interminably long -- he is in deep political trouble. He’ll be his own worst enemy with narcissistic falsehoods and vitriolic insults. He can’t look to the yes-people around him for help.
The cabinet focus is on the most prominent offices, the big Four; Secretaries of the Treasury, State, Defense and Attorney General.
A few of the second tier might be doing an ok job, but do any of you know who is the Secretary of Energy or Housing Secretary?
You’d be better off if you didn’t know Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who is dismantling one of the world’s best public health systems and endangering thousands of lives. Or Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence who’s a conspiracy nut; or Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, best known for his link to sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
To those who say Commerce Secretaries usually are mediocrities, Lutnick’s predecessor Gina Raimondo is a political and policy heavyweight.
Of the top four, start with two considered the best or least bad: Secretaries of Treasury, Scott Bessent and Marco Rubio at State.
Bessent, a successful Wall Street money manager, was thought to be a safe choice. He quickly learned he has to be a Trump sycophant.
He gave Elon Musk’s marauders access to the Treasury’s private payment system, overseeing the firing of a top official who opposed this action. Placating Trump, unlike most Treasury chiefs he has openly assailed Federal Reserve chairman Jay Powell, even criticizing him for attending a Supreme Court argument over whether the President has authority to remove a Fed Governor.
Unlike Democrat Bob Rubin or Republican Hank Paulson, Bessent has little bipartisan support.
Marco Rubo is often depicted as the good cop, the sensible foreign policy advocate to Vice President Vance’s bad cop. I’ve long thought Rubio, while clever and politically shrewd, is weak.
Thirteen years ago he was a leading Senator for immigration reform. He did a full Ginsburg (named after Monica Lewinsky’s lawyer who once did five Sunday talk shows) plus two more, advocating for reform. Within a year as the GOP tides switched so dramatically did the Florida Senator. In a 2016 New Hampshire Presidential primary debate I saw another candidate, Chris Christie, eviscerate him.
Thus it was no surprise when Rubio, once a champion of Democracy, defended the German right wing, pro-Putin AfD party and embraced Hungary’s autocratic President, Viktor Orban, two months before he faces a tough reelection.
As Secretary of State he is no George Shultz or Jim Baker or even Madeleine Alright or Hillary Clinton.
Rubio, however, looks like a gold standard next to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who was a Fox News weekend anchor.
He breached security by discussing war plans on a digital app, purged respected military officers who he deemed insufficiently loyal to him and the President, sought to inculcate a Christian culture at the Pentagon and barred reporters who won’t obey his rules in coverage.
He is an embarrassment in contrast to Defense chiefs in Republican Administrations, Dick Cheney or Bob Gates or Democrat Leon Panetta. More pointedly, in the first Trump term, Defense chiefs James Mattis and Mark Esper both stood up to unwise or illicit Trump policies or orders, resigning or getting fired as a result. That’s not going to happen with the current Secretary.
There never has been such a rule-of-law-challenged Attorney General as Pam Bondi. Hundreds of qualified attorneys have left or been fired from the Justice Department; fourteen leading U.S. Attorneys just left the Minneapolis office rather than follow what they considered lawless orders.
She has appointed other unqualified U.S. Attorneys who couldn’t be confirmed by even this Republican Senate, ridiculed by numerous federal judges, sought baseless indictments against Trump’s adversaries, a half dozen of which have been rejected by grand juries, a rarity.
Even many Republicans agree she has totally botched the investigation of sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in an effort to protect Trump. She instead has assured the issue won’t go away.
It’s unimaginable that Bondi sits in an office once occupied by Robert F. Kennedy, Elliot Richardson or Edward Levi. While she loves to take cheap shots at her predecessor Merrick Garland, she fails to mention that under his stewardship the Justice Department successfully prosecuted a senior Democratic United States Senator, Robert Menendez, and the son of the Democratic President and named a special counsel to investigate that President. That’s not going to happen with this AG.
If watching the State of the Union tonight, the pool cameras likely will focus on the Supreme Court Justices, the recent target of Trump’s venom, who’ll be sitting in the front row of the House chamber. Across the well will be most of the cabinet in seats once occupied by historic figures.
Al Hunt standing up for democracy, thanks