Takeaways from the second day of Trump Cabinet confirmation hearings
CNN
Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees for key roles in the intelligence, foreign policy and law enforcement agencies all pledged to keep politics out of their offices amid concerns from Democrats that the president-elect will carry out his vows to go after his political enemies once in office.
Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees for key roles in the intelligence, foreign policy and law enforcement agencies all pledged to keep politics out of their offices amid concerns from Democrats that the president-elect will carry out his vows to go after his political enemies once in office. Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, repeatedly insisted she would not allow politics to infect her Justice Department – accusing President Joe Biden’s DOJ of being responsible for politicizing law enforcement against Trump. “Every case will be prosecuted based on the facts and the law that’s applied in good faith, period. Politics have got to be taken out of the system,” Bondi said before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “This department has been weaponized for years and years and years, and it has to stop.” In addition to Bondi’s pledge not to be influenced by politics, Trump’s nominee for CIA director, John Ratcliffe, said he would not impose “political litmus tests” at the agency, while secretary of state nominee and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, defended the importance of NATO, an alliance Trump has often questioned. The confirmation hearings for Trump’s Cabinet picks kicked off Tuesday with a highly contentious session for defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth. On Wednesday, the slate of a half-dozen hearings struck a much more conciliatory tone, where the concerns raised by senators were about the conduct of the president-elect and not the nominees themselves. And Democratic senators made clear they were not going to blanketly oppose all of Trump’s nominees, including their colleague, Rubio. Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado introduced Trump’s Energy secretary nominee, fracking CEO Chris Wright, who is also from Colorado.
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