On Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., and Mitch McConnell; federal prosecutors, resigning on principle; and more
There is a famous story in the NFL. It goes something like this: A team coached by Bill Parcells was having a disappointing season. Someone said to Parcells, “You’re better than your record, aren’t you?” No, answered the coach. “You are what your record says you are.”
Tulsi Gabbard is now the director of national intelligence, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now the secretary of health and human services. “This is not who we are,” some may be tempted to say. But it is, manifestly.
Gabbard is a perfectly natural DNI for Trump and his movement (and his party); RFK Jr. is a perfectly natural HHS secretary. The Republican Party has nominated Trump for president three times in a row. (No one ever before had been nominated by the GOP for president three times in a row.) The American people elected him twice.
Is this not who we are?
There was a time when Gabbard and RFK Jr. — both of them — were despised by the Republicans. Those two have not changed. But the Republicans have, dramatically. I think they were right the first time (as about a lot of things).
Looking at this statement by Alexander Dugin, I thought of a saying in golf: “Every shot pleases someone”:
Dugin, of course, is one of the high priests of Putinism.
The Republicans have a fairly comfortable lead in the Senate: 53 to 47. They are more of a rubber stamp than a check. Tommy Tuberville spoke for most of them, I think, when he said, “Who are we to say that we’re a better vetter and picker of people than Donald Trump?” He said this when Pete Hegseth was nominated to be secretary of defense. Some Republicans were hesitant about that nomination — for about two seconds.
Said Tuberville,
I just can’t believe we have people on our side saying, “Well, I’ve got to look at this, got to look at that.” What they’re doing is, they’re throwing rocks at Donald Trump. They’re not throwing them at Pete Hegseth. They’re throwing them at Donald Trump, because they’re saying, “Well, we don’t believe you did the right vetting, and we don’t believe he can do the job.” Wait a minute. That’s not our job to do that. That’s the Democrats’.
A keener expression of political tribalism, you will hardly ever see or hear.
Mike Crapo (R., Idaho) is pretty good in that department too. A news report from early December said,
Crapo, who will chair the Senate Finance Committee that will hold confirmation hearings for several positions, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the Department of Health and Human Services secretary, said he will accept whatever Trump wants.
“No, I’ll let that be a decision that President Trump makes,” he said when asked if he will insist on background checks performed by the FBI. “My position is, what President Trump decides to do is what I will support.”
That is the posture of the GOP — and of the Right generally. Here is the Heritage Foundation:
Every Republican senator voted to confirm Tulsi Gabbard except one. Every Republican senator voted to confirm RFK Jr. except one. That one, in each instance, was Mitch McConnell.
I wrote about him last year when he announced he would not stand again for Republican leader of the Senate: here. I will not repeat what I wrote in this piece. But I will summarize:
Like many others, I wish he had voted to convict Trump in the impeachment trial of 2021. But I value him highly. He tells the truth about the 2020 election and January 6. He understands the conflict in Ukraine, and he knows what Putin is, and he backs Ukraine to the gills. He tells the truth about Viktor Orbán — an ally of “America’s greatest strategic adversaries,” as McConnell says: Russia, China, and Iran.
And now he has voted against the nominations of Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. — alone, among Republicans. Absolutely alone.
Think of it: For 18 years, he was leader of the Republicans in the Senate. Now he stands alone. Who changed? The Republicans or McConnell? Not McConnell.
An article from the Associated Press begins,
President Donald Trump seemed to question a well-documented part of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s life — his childhood battle with polio — after the Kentucky Republican opposed vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation Thursday as the nation’s top health official.
For the record, Kennedy is not a “vaccine skeptic.” He is a vaccine opponent, at best.
The article continues,
Trump attacked McConnell’s mental acuity and said he had “no idea” if the senator had polio. . . .
Earlier, the senator referred to himself as a survivor of childhood polio and talked about the life-saving impact of vaccines, in explaining his opposition to Kennedy’s confirmation as Trump’s health secretary.
The president refers to Senator McConnell as the “Old Broken Crow.” He refers to McConnell’s wife as “Coco Chow.” The senator’s wife is Elaine Chao, a longtime public servant, who served in Trump’s cabinet the first time around.
Two years ago, Trump wrote,
There is so much unnecessary turmoil in the Republican Party, in large part do to people like the Old Broken Crow, Mitch McConnell, his “wife”, Coco Chow, who is a sellout to China, and their RINO allies . . .
Do you notice the quotation marks around “wife”?
I was a Republican from 1983, I believe — when I was a sophomore in college — to 2016: to May 3, in particular, when Donald Trump won the Indiana primary, thereby clinching the GOP presidential nomination. I wrote about this in the next issue of National Review, saying,
In my view, Trump is grossly unfit to be president, in both mind and character — especially the latter. Even if I agreed with him on the issues — even if I thought his worldview sound — I would balk at supporting him, owing to the issue of character.
I mentioned this in a piece published last Election Day — another personal piece, titled “A Political Testimony.” I said,
This was a common view among conservatives at the time. Only later was it a dissenting, if not a heretical, one.
Check out this statement by Charlie Kirk, the young Republican leader — a statement retweeted by Elon Musk, who I suppose is No. 2 in the Republican Party, after Trump. I wonder whether other Trump voters agree with Kirk’s statement:
Trump’s original nominee for attorney general was Matt Gaetz. When the nomination proved “hot” — controversial — Gaetz withdrew. Was he a sucker for doing so? Should he have stuck it out? Do you think the Republican Party that confirmed Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. would have rejected Matt Gaetz?
I don’t.
Some Republicans appear poised to reject Trump’s nominee for labor secretary. (To read an article about this, go here.) Imagine that: Gabbard, RFK Jr., Hegseth, and others are kosher. But possibly unacceptable is Lori Chavez-DeRemer . . .
• On Saturday, the president published this:
The Trump-’splainers have been busy — ’splaining that he was just kidding, and can’t the rest of us take a joke? Alternatively, they have been ’splaining that Trump is a student of history and political theory, and making a nuanced point.
But we don’t have to be so gullible.
I ask Republicans: If Barack Obama or Joe Biden had published that statement — or Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris had — what would you have said? Whatever it is, would you please consider saying it now?
Forgetting Republicans, I ask my fellow conservatives: Who are we?
Anyway, plenty of people are enthusiastic about Trump’s declaration:
• Danielle Sassoon sets a very good example, and so does Hagan Scotten. Until recently, they were federal prosecutors. But the Trump Department of Justice ordered them to drop charges against New York mayor Eric Adams — and they said no. They resigned. As of this writing, so have five others. But I will focus on the two I have named.
Sassoon went to Harvard College and Yale Law School. She clerked for two sterling conservatives judges: J. Harvie Wilkinson III and Antonin Scalia. She is a member of the Federalist Society. Scotten was in the Army for nine years. He fought in Iraq as a Special Forces captain. After graduating from Harvard Law, he clerked for Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts. Etc.
In his resignation letter, Scotten wrote,
Any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials. If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.
What a great and stirring phrase: “it was never going to be me.”
Reading about Danielle Sassoon, Hagan Scotten, et al., I thought of José Martí, the Cuban independence leader — who said, “When there are many men who lack honor, there are always others who have within themselves the honor of many men.”
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