Trump’s determination to install controversial picks faces next test

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

(CNN) — Donald Trump’s Senate allies are racing to defend Tulsi Gabbard, his pick to lead US intelligence services, in what could become the next test of the president-elect’s bid to install provocative nominees — and of any Republican appetite to stop him.

Gabbard and another contentious Trump pick — Pete Hegseth, who has been tapped to lead the Defense Department — came under sharpened scrutiny Sunday as the spotlight shifted from Matt Gaetz, Trump’s toppled choice to be attorney general.

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth warned of Gabbard: “I think she’s compromised.” The Illinois senator brought up Gabbard’s visit to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2017 and policy positions where she’s appeared to mirror Russian propaganda talking points.

But Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, speaking to Dana Bash on the same show, said such claims were “ridiculous” and “outright dangerous” and called for Duckworth to retract them.

The extraordinary public debate over whether a president-elect’s pick to oversee US intelligence agencies is a compromised asset is a taste of the massive upheaval that likely awaits next year in his second term.

Key questions as Thanksgiving week opens

But it’s far from the only question that Trump’s political comeback has sent swirling around Washington heading into the Thanksgiving holiday this week.

• Trump’s pick of Hegseth is also facing uncertainty after the release last week of a 2017 police report detailing an alleged sexual assault in California. The former Fox News anchor says the encounter with a woman in California was consensual. He denies wrongdoing and was not charged.
• One big unknown is whether Republican senators are again prepared to challenge Trump’s judgment after it quickly became clear that Gaetz wouldn’t have enough of their votes to be confirmed amid his own sexual misconduct allegations, which he denies. One theory is that the incoming GOP majority won’t simply be a rubber stamp for an all-powerful president. But the withdrawal of Gaetz — who was already widely disliked in Congress — may leave senators feeling they owe the president-elect on his other highly controversial choices.
• Trump’s new selection for attorney general, Pam Bondi, is meanwhile being welcomed by many Republicans, suggesting she’ll have an easier path to confirmation than Gaetz. But the former Florida attorney general’s past vow that “prosecutors will be prosecuted” raised expectations that the president-elect plans to press ahead with his promise to use the powers of the Justice Department to seek retribution on those who have investigated him, including over his attempt to steal the 2020 election.
• A sense that the president-elect is deeply serious about his vow to gut government was bolstered by the choice on Friday night of Russell Vought to again lead the Office of Management and Budget. Vought was one of the key authors of Project 2025 — the conservative blueprint disavowed by Trump on the campaign trail that involved a defenestrating of the bureaucracy. Trump has already tasked Tesla pioneer Elon Musk and former GOP primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy with drawing up massive government cuts.
• With most of Trump’s top picks complete, pending official nomination and confirmation, attention is turning to what impact a planned policy blitz and his power-flexing could have inside the US and around the world. For instance, while opting for massive disruption in some areas, several of his economic picks have the ear of Wall Street, including hedge fund manager Scott Bessent for Treasury and Howard Lutnick, the head of financial services giant Cantor Fitzgerald, for Commerce secretary. They’ll likely have the job of easing fears in the markets about Trump’s planned tariff hikes, which are designed to hurt foreign trading competitors but could spike inflation and harm American consumers.
• After a week of alarming escalations in the war in Ukraine, Trump’s vow to end the fighting is now becoming one of the first big foreign policy tests of his new term. His incoming national security adviser, Rep. Mike Waltz, asked on “Fox News Sunday,” “Where is this escalation going?” The Florida Republican added that the conflict had degenerated into World War I trench warfare and that Trump was “incredibly concerned about the carnage that is taking place there. And … how do we restore deterrence and how do we bring peace?” Trump has vowed to end the war quickly, but there are fears in Ukraine that he’ll do a deal that validates Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of a sovereign democracy by letting Moscow keep vast swathes of territory it seized.
• The pace of Trump’s staff rollout and the ideology of his picks suggest a political whirlwind will hit the capital when he is sworn in on January 20. But after Trump won the Electoral College and the popular vote, Republicans — who won control of both the Senate and the House — are insisting he has authority for sweeping change. Still, Trump’s apparent determination to use power to satisfy personal vengeance raises the issue of whether his administration will be sufficiently focused to perform the radical reinvention of government he’s promising. And after an election that turned partly on the question of voters’ economic insecurities, is the president-elect about to attempt the kind of overreach that often trips up presidents who think they have a mandate?

Gabbard looms as next confirmation controversy

The selection of Gabbard to be director of national intelligence encapsulates Trump’s deep mistrust of intelligence agencies that he is convinced conspired against him over the Russia investigation in his first term.

Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, has very little experience working with high-level intelligence. And she has taken positions that are opposite to those of the US espionage community. She defended Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, who were behind two of the biggest US national security leaks of the 21st century. She also made arguments about the wars in Ukraine and Syria that appeared closer to the foreign policy positions of the Russian government than the American one.

And CNN reported Friday that Gabbard had once been placed on a Transportation Security Administration watchlist — which, even if it was for benign reasons, would be highly unusual for a nominee for a top position.

The 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate has now embraced Trump’s “America First” philosophy. Democrats seem to see her selection as vulnerable, or at least as a chance to make Trump pay a political price for choosing her, as they seek traction after a disastrous election.

Duckworth, who said there were questions about whether Gabbard was a Russian asset, added: “I do think that we have a real deep concern whether or not she’s a compromised person. … The US intelligence community has identified her as having troubling relationships with America’s foes. And so, my worry is that she couldn’t pass a background check.”

Sen.-elect Adam Schiff of California, who served on the House Intelligence Committee until GOP leadership kicked him off last year, also criticized Gabbard’s nomination, describing her Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” as “someone with very questionable judgment and no experience,” while also raising her visit to Syria.

But Mullin, who had raised questions about the Gaetz selection, forcibly defended Gabbard from Duckworth. “For her to say ridiculous and outright dangerous words like that is wrong,” the Oklahoma Republican said on “State of the Union.” He said Gabbard “commands a Reserve unit here in Oklahoma and Missouri. If she was compromised, if she wasn’t able to pass a background check, if she wasn’t able to do her job, she still wouldn’t be in the Army.”

Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt also defended Gabbard, saying on NBC, “I think it’s really interesting that anybody that has a different political view now is being cast as a Russian asset. It’s totally ridiculous.” The Republican senator said that such accusations were insulting. “It’s a slur, quite frankly,” he added.

And Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty said on ABC News’ “This Week” that while he didn’t agree with Gabbard on everything, she’d be responsible for implementing Trump’s policies, not her own views. “President Trump will fire people that don’t do their job well,” said Hagerty, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Japan during his first term.

Still, it is clear there is some disquiet about Gabbard’s qualifications among Republican senators who will be asked to confirm her once she’s officially nominated when Trump is sworn in.

“We will have lots of questions,” Oklahoma’s senior senator, James Lankford, told Bash on “State of the Union.” He added: “She met with Bashar (al-) Assad. We will want to know what the purpose was and what the direction for that was as a member of Congress. We will want to get a chance to talk about past comments that she’s made and get them into full context.”

Bondi shows that while Trump won’t get Gaetz, he may still seek retribution

But Lankford had few reservations about Trump’s pick of Bondi, who amplified the president-elect’s false claims of election fraud in 2020 and his claims the Justice Department was weaponized against him.

“I think it’s entirely appropriate for Pam Bondi to step in and to say, or whoever that is as attorney general, to be able to step in and say, ‘We’re not going to allow someone to try to undercut the president of the United States in this Department of Justice,’” Lankford told CNN. “You have got to actually be balanced and about justice, not about attacking the president.”

The selection of Bondi comes as the Trump team signals it intends to replace Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, who still has three years left in his term. The president-elect has long argued the bureau plotted against him, especially after his indictments for hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort after he left office and over his attempt to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election.

One potential new FBI director is Kash Patel, one of Trump’s most outspoken supporters, who was chief of staff to the former acting secretary of defense in the first term. Patel is regarded as one of the most vehement proponents of Trump’s MAGA movement, but multiple sources familiar with the Trump transition process expressed deep concern at the possibility he could be nominated, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reported last week. A spot as FBI director would put Patel in position to investigate Trump’s enemies and to purge career civil servants that he and the president-elect believe are part of a corrupt “deep state.”

One option might be to pick someone easier to confirm for the top job and have Patel serve as deputy director, CNN reported last week. But that would still leave the question of who is acceptable to Trump while being confirmable in the Senate.

Patel left no doubt on Fox Business’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that he’d seek to relitigate past investigations. “Put out the documents. Put out the evidence. We only have gotten halfway down the Russiagate hole,” Patel said. “The people need to know that their FBI is restored by knowing full well what they did to unlawfully surveil them. The people need to know that there has been a de-weaponization, a defanging of the Department of Justice and their houses of worship will no longer be raided.”

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