Dem
47
GOP
53
Tuesday, Pete Hegseth was grilled by the Senate—not giving an inch and denying everything. Yesterday, AG nominee Pam Bondi and secretary of state nominee Marco Rubio took their turns. As with all confirmation hearings, they are meaningless. The nominees have been carefully coached by a team of lawyers in advance, telling them what they should say to get confirmed. Once the senators have heard the answers they want and the nominees are confirmed, the nominees can do whatever they want without regard to what they said at the hearing. The whole exercise is kind of pointless. What would be needed to fix it is a change in the law so that a confirmation was valid for, say, only 1 year, after which time the confirmation would expire and the Senate could haul the candidate back for more questions before giving a permanent confirmation. That is not going to happen, so the hearings are just kabuki theater.
Bondi gave the right answer to most questions. She said she will apply the law as Congress wrote it and politics will play no role. She could hardly have said: "If the president orders me to prosecute his enemies, of course I will obey. After all, he is the president." She is much too smart to say anything like that. What will actually happen when Trump indeed tells her to prosecute Joe Biden or Liz Cheney or Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) remains to be seen. She may not even know right now. One approach might be to stall for a year gathering "facts" and then tell him: "If you want me to indict them, I will, but the chance of getting a conviction is basically zero because there is no evidence and when the jury declares them innocent, you will look like a fool. I want to spare you that embarrassment."
When pressed by Schiff and the other California Democrat, Alex Padilla, on whether she will investigate the Jan. 6 House committee, she refused to answer, calling the question "hypothetical." When Padilla asked for yes or no answers to questions about the 2020 elections, she launched into long tirades and didn't answer the questions. When Padilla cut her off, she accused him of bullying her. She will surely be confirmed, probably with at least some Democratic votes, because she is about the best the Democrats can hope for. Everyone Trump nominates for anything mouths what he wants them to mouth, but at least she has a track record of being reasonably competent, something that cannot be said of many of the other nominees. She is definitely a cut above Jeff Sessions, the first AG in Trump v1.0. And she is many cuts above Matt Gaetz, the first AG nominee for Trump v2.0.
At the end of the hearing, Schiff gave her a quiet warning: "Our concern comes when that loyalty to the president conflicts with your duty. It came to everyone, it will come to you, and what you do in that moment will define your attorney generalship." She probably knows that already. Again, her strategy, when asked to do something unethical or illegal, will probably be to delay and hope Trump, with his generally short attention span, moves on to something else. Of course, if he insists that she go forward, that's when we will find out what she is really made of.
Rubio's job interview yesterday was with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It went much smoother than Bondi's hearing. First of all, Rubio is a senator and knows everyone on the committee very well. Second, at Bondi's hearing, the senators wanted to know what Bondi would do when Trump orders her to break the law. No one expects Trump to order Rubio to break the law, so he won't be on the spot nearly as much. Consequently, the hearing was much more polite than Bondi's. There were questions on China, but they were easy. Rubio sees China as the U.S.' biggest enemy and thinks they should be treated as such. No senator challenged him on this. He also supports NATO, which Trump doesn't, but a decision to withdraw from NATO won't be Rubio's to make.
One question specific to Rubio was from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), whose father fled from Cuba. He asked Rubio if Cuba was a sponsor of terrorism. Rubio responded instantly: Without a question. He has long supported sanctions on Cuba, so that was easy. This was really a "messaging" question, since Joe Biden ordered Cuba to be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism late last week.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) wanted to know how Rubio would deal with the conflict of interest likely to arise from him negotiating with countries in the Middle East at the same time the Trump Organization was negotiating business deals with companies in those same countries. Rubio said he would always put the interests of the United States first. Of course, that is easier said than done, especially when dealing with the bad actors Eric Trump wants as business partners. In any case, Rubio is certain to be confirmed with a large bipartisan majority. His problem is how long he will last (see below).
Finally, former DNI John Ratcliffe appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee as nominee to run the CIA, a lower job than he had as DNI. He said he would stay out of politics and probably will—mostly. He is more than qualified for the job and might even get 80 or 90 votes in the Senate. (V)