“I expect our Republican Senate is going to confirm all of President Trump's nominees,”
They work really hard to become Senators, they start campaigning on their first day in office and do so for the next 6 years, for what? So they can cede all the power given them by the Constitution over to Donald J. Trump! It's a perfect system!
What a bunch of selfish cowards these Republican Senators are. Willing to put aside morals and vote for these horrible people who will have 4 years to spin lies and disinformation to try and keep all of us off balance and exhausted. It’s really despicable.
Since the Constitution and rule of law no longer matters to the Republicrat craven and the Demopublicans have nothing to offer them either, the outcome is likely assured. Senator Warren probably expressed it best in an interview over the weekend - hang the inevitable results of Project 2025 on the necks of the Republicrats and make sure that T. Rump voters realize that what they thought they were voting for is not what they will be getting. Sigh.
Correct, however, when they realize that the people T. Rump is privileging are elite billionaires and their lives are not thereby improved it may be possible to peel a tiny minority away. Probably too little and too late to save the Constitution and rule of law, though. Hence, sigh.
Turns out the biggest mistake the founders made was thinking that a legislative branch would fiercely defend its constitutional authority. The whole checks & balances and separation of powers thing works only when each branch vigorously exercises its power.
No checks means no balance & that’s where we find ourselves. Sobering indeed.
Cotton cites that only 2 of Clinton’s nominees were rejected. The low quality of character and experience matters. Senator Cotton knows this and, my guess is, hates some of these choices. He is right on one point: the American voters who brought Trump to victory deserve to get the chaos they voted for.
Cotton's comment is deeply bad faith pushing the misleading conclusion that the present senate should follow the norms of the past even though the circumstances are totally different. No president-elect has nominated so many criminals, criminally-minded, compromised or completely unqualified people based only their expressed willingness to swear loyalty to Trump over the Constitution. Cotton leaves that important point out. And speaking of norms-- Republican have forfeited the right to cite norms.
I've felt this since the election: Trump's worst is coming and there's not a damn thing we can do about, except to get ready, hunker down and hope to ride out the initial storm to fight another day.
It'll be at least a year (or two) before any serious kind of push back will be possible. It's going to take that long for the general public ("You know...morons") to really start to feel the effects of Trumpism.
Has it not occurred to Tom Cotton, an Ivy League graduate, that the reason so few Cabinet nominations are rejected is because... in the thirty years he researched, so few of the nominees were so egregiously unqualified?
What a maroon!, as Bugs Bunny would say.
I guess someone has to graduate in the bottom half (or at the bottom, even) of their class, even at places like Harvard.
Then again, what the Trump Movement has shown is that there is no bottom.
Perhaps he should have gone back 50 years. Although most were ultimately approved (even when the opposing party was in control of the Senate) there were some very heated hearings in the Nixon and Reagan years.
I don't have time to look back but I suspect there were plenty of minimally qualified Cabinet Secretaries and agency heads. Egregiously unqualified is probably on the spectrum for Republicans.
These morons are neither coming in with qualifications nor interested in the learning curve to become more qualified. And some of them are a direct threat to our national security. I also heard that Trump intends to waive national security clearance requirements.
Nixon made a pair of truly awful SCOTUS nominations that were voted down by Senate floor votes. Harrold Carswell was one. He was an unabashed white supremacist, and many of his rulings as a Federal district judge were overturned on appeal. Despite his obvious unsuitability, this is what one of Carswell's _supporters_, Sen. Roman Hruska (R-NE), said about him in May 1970:
"Even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises and Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that."
Call me hyper-sensitive, perhaps, but when Hruska cites three of the Jewish Supreme Court justices to that point (there were two more, btw, one of whom was forced to resign over a conflict-of-interest!), as examples of being _not_ mediocre, I cannot but hear antisemitism — or at least a sort of "Jew Envy" — in the remark.
IIRC, during Saturday Night Live's first season (1975-76), they put on a fake advertisement advocating "affirmative action for the incompetent."
I truly appreciate this. Hruska was MY Senator at that time! I don't know where he fell on the Anti-Semitism spectrum but he was probably in the same class as most Nebraskans of his age. He was himself replaced by a Jew in the Senate.
I am so sick of them using the word "landslide" for trump's victory. 77 million? Biden won 81 million in 2020 and I know the Republicans did not refer to that as a landslide!
But these people know if a lie is repeated enough, their supporters will believe it.
I read some Facebook comments on pages representing some media figures or Sunday news shows. The parroting of talking points uttered by Trump fans tells me they are watching too much right wing media.
Sickening.
They're all despicable.
“I expect our Republican Senate is going to confirm all of President Trump's nominees,”
They work really hard to become Senators, they start campaigning on their first day in office and do so for the next 6 years, for what? So they can cede all the power given them by the Constitution over to Donald J. Trump! It's a perfect system!
What a bunch of selfish cowards these Republican Senators are. Willing to put aside morals and vote for these horrible people who will have 4 years to spin lies and disinformation to try and keep all of us off balance and exhausted. It’s really despicable.
What does Senator Cotton expect to get from his behavior on behalf of the incoming president?
Since the Constitution and rule of law no longer matters to the Republicrat craven and the Demopublicans have nothing to offer them either, the outcome is likely assured. Senator Warren probably expressed it best in an interview over the weekend - hang the inevitable results of Project 2025 on the necks of the Republicrats and make sure that T. Rump voters realize that what they thought they were voting for is not what they will be getting. Sigh.
Trump voters knew exactly what they were voting for--for trump to remake America into a right-wing authoritarian state.
Correct, however, when they realize that the people T. Rump is privileging are elite billionaires and their lives are not thereby improved it may be possible to peel a tiny minority away. Probably too little and too late to save the Constitution and rule of law, though. Hence, sigh.
LOL Nothing matters!
We are so fucked….
I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
Turns out the biggest mistake the founders made was thinking that a legislative branch would fiercely defend its constitutional authority. The whole checks & balances and separation of powers thing works only when each branch vigorously exercises its power.
No checks means no balance & that’s where we find ourselves. Sobering indeed.
Cotton cites that only 2 of Clinton’s nominees were rejected. The low quality of character and experience matters. Senator Cotton knows this and, my guess is, hates some of these choices. He is right on one point: the American voters who brought Trump to victory deserve to get the chaos they voted for.
Cotton's comment is deeply bad faith pushing the misleading conclusion that the present senate should follow the norms of the past even though the circumstances are totally different. No president-elect has nominated so many criminals, criminally-minded, compromised or completely unqualified people based only their expressed willingness to swear loyalty to Trump over the Constitution. Cotton leaves that important point out. And speaking of norms-- Republican have forfeited the right to cite norms.
Good stuff Marc! Good luck at Axios! You'll be missed here.
Awesome.
I've felt this since the election: Trump's worst is coming and there's not a damn thing we can do about, except to get ready, hunker down and hope to ride out the initial storm to fight another day.
It'll be at least a year (or two) before any serious kind of push back will be possible. It's going to take that long for the general public ("You know...morons") to really start to feel the effects of Trumpism.
Has it not occurred to Tom Cotton, an Ivy League graduate, that the reason so few Cabinet nominations are rejected is because... in the thirty years he researched, so few of the nominees were so egregiously unqualified?
What a maroon!, as Bugs Bunny would say.
I guess someone has to graduate in the bottom half (or at the bottom, even) of their class, even at places like Harvard.
Then again, what the Trump Movement has shown is that there is no bottom.
Perhaps he should have gone back 50 years. Although most were ultimately approved (even when the opposing party was in control of the Senate) there were some very heated hearings in the Nixon and Reagan years.
I don't have time to look back but I suspect there were plenty of minimally qualified Cabinet Secretaries and agency heads. Egregiously unqualified is probably on the spectrum for Republicans.
These morons are neither coming in with qualifications nor interested in the learning curve to become more qualified. And some of them are a direct threat to our national security. I also heard that Trump intends to waive national security clearance requirements.
There is no bottom!
Nixon made a pair of truly awful SCOTUS nominations that were voted down by Senate floor votes. Harrold Carswell was one. He was an unabashed white supremacist, and many of his rulings as a Federal district judge were overturned on appeal. Despite his obvious unsuitability, this is what one of Carswell's _supporters_, Sen. Roman Hruska (R-NE), said about him in May 1970:
"Even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises and Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that."
Call me hyper-sensitive, perhaps, but when Hruska cites three of the Jewish Supreme Court justices to that point (there were two more, btw, one of whom was forced to resign over a conflict-of-interest!), as examples of being _not_ mediocre, I cannot but hear antisemitism — or at least a sort of "Jew Envy" — in the remark.
IIRC, during Saturday Night Live's first season (1975-76), they put on a fake advertisement advocating "affirmative action for the incompetent."
And here we are.
I truly appreciate this. Hruska was MY Senator at that time! I don't know where he fell on the Anti-Semitism spectrum but he was probably in the same class as most Nebraskans of his age. He was himself replaced by a Jew in the Senate.
Of course Cotton knows that. But the rubes don't, so...
And have Musk threaten to primary with unlimited funds
I am so sick of them using the word "landslide" for trump's victory. 77 million? Biden won 81 million in 2020 and I know the Republicans did not refer to that as a landslide!
But these people know if a lie is repeated enough, their supporters will believe it.
I read some Facebook comments on pages representing some media figures or Sunday news shows. The parroting of talking points uttered by Trump fans tells me they are watching too much right wing media.