Trump’s Cabinet picks face tests of loyalty during upcoming confirmation hearings
CNN
Senate confirmation hearings set to begin this week are likely to reveal a defining trait uniting Donald Trump’s incoming Cabinet, regardless of their diverse political backgrounds and uneven qualifications: an unflinching allegiance to the president-elect.
Senate confirmation hearings set to begin this week are likely to reveal a defining trait uniting Donald Trump’s incoming Cabinet, regardless of their diverse political backgrounds and uneven qualifications: an unflinching allegiance to the president-elect. For weeks, Trump’s handpicked nominees have undergone rigorous preparations for their high-stakes Capitol Hill appearances — including intensive studying sessions, contentious mock hearings and heavy-handed coaching from Republican senators. Over long hours behind closed doors, Trump’s allies and advisers have forced candidates to confront their vulnerabilities, perfect their pitches and practice sidestepping traps laid by Democrats. The intense rehearsals are not all too different from Trump’s first term, when his team prepared its nominees during practices by interrupting their answers with protests, shouting matches between stand-in committee members, personal attacks and other outbursts intended to derail their concentration. What distinguishes this round of confirmations, however, is the heightened expectation that Trump’s picks will present not just their own expertise but a clear and unwavering loyalty to the president-elect’s agenda — a public display of fealty that was not always assured during his first term. “This time, people view the nominees as an extension of Donald Trump and his agenda,” said Sean Spicer, who helped ready Trump’s nominees while serving as his first press secretary. “They’re not there to defend their own views; they’re there to defend Trump’s policies.” “The movement was in a very different place,” Spicer said of the days after Trump’s first election in 2016.
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The Biden administration on Friday targeted Russia’s energy sector, including its oil industry, with some of its harshest sanctions to date meant to cut off funding for Moscow’s war against Ukraine.