Unless a candidate is a real stinker, presidents are generally given broad latitude by the Senate when it comes to their advising and consenting to cabinet picks.
That does not necessarily mean their confirmation process will be easy. Just that eventually the nominees will probably get the job. Because President-elect Trump has an apparent obsession with Fox News, it turns out that several of the nominees are friends or at least acquaintances of mine.
Not Matt Gaetz, who I debated on Hannity’s show a couple of times but otherwise avoided.
As nominations go, his was a real stinker that united much of the country in revulsion. Not only was he reliably accused, but never prosecuted of whore mongering, at times with an underage girl, he also promised to purge the Justice Department, the very agency he was nominated to lead as attorney general.
Gaetz was going to be the blowtorch crazy Steve Bannon wanted to scorch the earth under the DOJ. Too bad for Steve & Co., Gaetz flamed out.
His designated successor as attorney general, Pam Bondi is not perfect. There are misgivings about her failure to prosecute the Trump University debacle when she was Florida’s AG, but she is a far more qualified candidate than Gaetz. That is a low bar, so here are her credentials.
First and foremost, unlike Gaetz, she is a real lawyer. She is a former county prosecutor and Florida state attorney general, the first woman to hold that position. She served competently from 2011 to 2019, having been re-elected in 2014 with 55% of the vote.
A frequent guest on Hannity and my old Fox News weekend show “Geraldo At Large,” she commented knowledgeably on various high-profile criminal cases. A Fox favorite, she also co-hosted “The Five” for several episodes.
While I often agreed with her tough-on-crime commentary, I did not appreciate her opposition to Obamacare or her cheerleading the “Lock Her Up” chant at the 2016 GOP Convention. But while I disagreed with her partisan politics, she is a capable, fair-minded professional, a nice person and should be confirmed. Pam is a breath of fresh air, especially when compared to Matt Gaetz.
Major Pete Hegseth is having a tough time in Washington as the designated Defense secretary. As I have been saying since his nomination was announced, he is a courageous, combat veteran, twice awarded the Bronze Star. He is also one of the nation’s foremost veterans advocates.
My wife Erica and I know Pete and his wife Jennifer, a Fox News producer, and I am sorry he is getting put through the confirmation wringer.
Not many folks I know support Major Pete’s call to remove women from combat roles in the military, especially since several female members of Congress have served.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth lost both her legs when the helicopter she was piloting was shot down. Former Congresswoman and fellow cabinet nominee Tulsi Gabbard is still an Army Lt. colonel and a combat veteran.
Because Major Pete’s view of women in combat will never prevail, I don’t find it disqualifying, but there are other problems with his nomination. His role in getting pardons for GIs accused of war crimes will also get scrutinized, but not nearly as much as Major Pete’s lack of administrative experience.
The Pentagon is a sprawling, 3-million-employee-strong organization. He lacks administrative experience, but he can learn. On the plus side, most senators support Major Pete’s call to refocus the DOD bureaucracy to make the Armed Forces more lethal and less woke.
He will ultimately be confirmed, despite a 2017 allegation of sexual assault that is still being probed and which he vehemently denies. Unlike Gaetz, only grownups were involved in the alleged encounter. It seems a “he said, she said,” and did not result in any criminal charges. Still, my friend Major Pete is going to have to survive a ferocious Justice Kavanaugh-scale Senate interrogation.
Who doesn’t love Dr. Mehmet Oz, the president-elect’s choice to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid?
A renowned heart surgeon and inventor, he became a world-class communicator. We met when we both had syndicated talk shows in the 1990s. Dr. Oz ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate two years ago.
If they are both confirmed, he will be working closely with designated HHS Secretary RFK Jr. and his crusade to make the medical industrial complex more effective, user-friendly, and less profit-driven. Hopefully, Dr. Oz can tame some of Bobby’s vaccine craziness.
On CNN Friday, I was asked what I thought of another ex-Fox News colleague, former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino.
He has just been named by the president-elect to head the vital agency that protects our leaders. Bongino and I clashed on-air frequently and sometimes nearly violently. He once accused me of playing “emotional games” and spreading “misinformation.”
I replied, calling him a “provocateur with his own set of facts” and, more coarsely, a “punk.”
When CNN host Brianna Keeler asked what I thought of his nomination to head the vital Secret Service, I replied, “If I was a target and Bongino was on the job, I feel that Bongino would keep me safe. He would do the job.”
When it comes to protecting presidents, especially those like Donald J. Trump who have narrowly escaped assassination, that is what counts.
Geraldo Rivera is an author, lawyer, journalist and political commentator who worked with Fox News for more than 20 years. He is the correspondent-at-large with NewsNation.