On Wednesday’s edition of The View, co-host Whoopi Goldberg was reading a rant off an index card. (This happens a lot with the liberals on The View, so you can wonder who’s actually writing these lines. They often sound like a DNC Info-Pak.) Whoopi was outraged about the lack of experience in the Cabinet. No one on the set asked how she is qualified to be a pundit because she co-starred in Ghost and Sister Act. She is a high-school dropout.
The subject was Dr. Ronny Jackson's delayed confirmation as Secretary of Veterans Affairs, and co-host Sunny Hostin was suggesting the problem was Trump's utter lack of government experience.
WHOOPI GOLDBERG [reading]: May I just point something out? You know, Rick Perry, who wanted to dismantle the Department of Energy, is now running it. Scott Pruitt, who is a climate change skeptic who’s been funded by the fossil-fuel industry is head of the EPA!
Ben Carson, a medical doctor -- maybe somebody who could have done some good in the V.A. Where is he? He’s in charge of Housing and Urban Development, because one time, he passed a project! And Jim Bridenstine, who has no background in science whatsoever is the new head of NASA. So this is not -- this is normal!
Does this pass all the fact checks? Let's just look at Bridenstine, who has bachelor's and master's degrees, but not in science. He's a former Navy fighter pilot with combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, including a total of 1,900 flight hours and 333 aircraft-carrier landings to his name. (Pilots often become astronauts.) He has also served as executive director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum & Planetarium. In the House, Bridenstine has served on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee.
The website Physics World included Bridenstine's liberal scientist critics, and supporters:
Bridenstine’s supporters point out that neither James Webb, NASA’s administrator during the build-up to the Apollo Moon-landing programme, nor Sean O’Keefe, who led the agency from 2001 to 2004, had experience in space projects before their appointment.
Bridenstine demonstrated an interest in space issues in 2016, when he sponsored a bill called the American Space Renaissance Act in Congress. “It’s a very thoughtful look at needed reform,” says John Logsdon, professor emeritus in George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute. “He’s not coming in naïve.”
G Scott Hubbard, former director of NASA’s Ames Research Center and overseer of the agency’s first Mars program who is now at Stanford University, agrees. “He has exhibited a significant interest in the policy,” he says. “He wasn’t just grabbed from the hallway.”
But Whoopi may have borrowing from the liberal site Vox. Their hit piece was titled "Trump’s next NASA administrator is a Republican congressman with no background in science." They suggested NASA should ideally be led by a global-warming alarmist wearing a pro-LGBTQIA bracelet.
