The journalists around this week’s Washington Week with The Atlantic roundtable had great fun mocking president-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine and the regular moderator of the panel, set the table, keying on controversial Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) withdrawing his name from consideration as attorney general.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Matt Gaetz's improbable and ultimately impossible nomination soaked up a lot of attention this week. But many of President-elect Trump`s other nominees are equally improbable…..
He asked fellow PBS journalist Laura Barron-Lopez why Trump would nominate someone “who’s plainly unfit and plainly unconfirmable for a very important job.”
She explained that Trump “wanted pure loyalists” this time around and also explained that “Matt Gaetz is not necessarily well liked by his colleagues, including a number of Republican colleagues,” then joked about it:
Goldberg: That was very diplomatic, I think.
Barron-Lopez: Well, we are on live TV.
Next on the PBS chopping block was Pete Hegseth, a veteran and Fox News host up for the post of Secretary of Defense.
He asked the Washington Post’s Ashley Parker:
Goldberg: And so, you know, we’re talking about a president, A) who almost got us into a real jam with North Korea by referring to its authoritarian nuclear armed leader as “little rocket man,” right, and the person that this person wants to be his nuclear adviser, among other things, a defense adviser, is a television morning show host. Now, there's nothing wrong with hosting a television show, I want to note, but what is the possible argument for this nomination?....
Asked by Goldberg “to place Hegseth on the experience continuum and knowledge continuum,” Andrew Desiderio of Punchbowl News answered sharply:
Andrew Desiderio: I mean, as low as you could possibly go, to be honest with you….
Discussing the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to lead the U.S. intelligence services (“one of the oddest of all appointments,” according to moderator Goldberg).
Desiderio: ….the Senate Intelligence Committee, like the Armed Services Committee, is stacked with members on both sides of the aisle who believe in institutions, who believe in the national security tools that are used on a daily basis, things like Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Donald Trump has been railing against. He said, they spied on me and my campaign, which, of course, was not true. She has called for repealing the Patriot Act….
What? The Trump campaign was indeed spied on (Carter Page, a member of the Trump 2016 campaign, for one) no matter what euphemism the press might have used (“cloaked investigator” was a personal favorite). And let us pause for a moment at the sight of a mainstream journalist coming to the defense of government surveillance, of government spying on its own people, and The Patriot Act, just because Donald Trump is opposed.
The panel was particularly hard on Trump’s pick of Linda McMahon to head the Department of Education.
Goldberg: What does this say about the merging of -- remember that there is that great line in Gladiator, Russell Crowe, kills 50 different gladiators, and then looks at the emperor, whoever, and says “Are you not entertained?” You know, I mean, I feel like this is the most --
[Crosstalk]
Golberg: ….but what does it say that this kind of just is like, oh, yeah, we're just going to have the World Wrestling person--
Barron-Lopez came loaded for bear.
Barron-Lopez: ….what’s striking though, is that this is someone who’s about to run the Education Department who essentially lied about having a bachelor’s degree in education, and she had to resign from an education board in Connecticut because of that, because her resume wasn’t up to snuff. She also is involved in a lawsuit. She’s accused in a lawsuit of failing to stop a WWE announcer, ignoring allegations that he was grooming and sexually abusing children.
The panel managed to skip that McMahon had actually run the Small Business Administration from 2017 and 2019, during the first Trump administration, meaning she does have government managerial experience.
