Politics
/
November 15, 2024
These freakish and unqualified cupboard picks, from RFK Jr. to Matt Gaetz to Tulsi Gabbard, present that Trump is clowning you.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump shake fingers throughout a marketing campaign rally at Desert Diamond Area on August 23, 2024, in Glendale, Arizona.
(Rebecca Noble / Getty Photographs)
Inside only a few hours of President Joe Biden’s welcoming President-elect Donald Trump to a comfy two-hour Oval Workplace assembly (which truthfully made me queasy), Trump made any right-thinking American queasy, too. He shortly nominated former Democrat-turned-quisling Tulsi Gabbard his director of nationwide intelligence, accused pedophile Matt Gaetz as lawyer common, and womanizing, serial liar, dead-baby-bear-defiling, whale-head-removing, worm-in-his-head anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of Well being and Human Providers.
That was simply after he nominated Christian nationalist Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel.
What to do? Properly, if Republicans resolve to carry on to their energy to substantiate the president’s nominees—new Senate majority chief John Thune mentioned he was open to Trump’s demand to make recess appointments—I hope they won’t affirm any of them. Clearly, when you’re a Democrat, you be sure that each Democrat votes in opposition to confirming them.
However earlier than the affirmation dramas start: Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, former president Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, Invoice and Hillary Clinton—and truthfully, each Democratic member of Congress–should observe the lead of the late Consultant John Lewis, who skipped Trump’s first inauguration, and decline their invitation to the inauguration on January 20.
“It will likely be the primary one which I miss since I’ve been in Congress,” Lewis mentioned in January 2017. “You can’t be at dwelling with one thing that you simply really feel that’s unsuitable, isn’t proper.” Lewis died in July 2020, earlier than he might attend Joe Biden’s inauguration. However I do know he’s nice with that. And if he had been right here now, I do know what he would do. That is an in the end inauthentic authorities, hateful of information and science. And other people. All however the folks they see of their boardrooms.
Please don’t legitimize this, Madame Vice President.
Present Challenge
I’ve written about RFK Jr. a number of instances in our pages. He helped me to my most humiliating skilled expertise: publishing, at Salon, his just about fact-free indictment of childhood vaccines for his or her function in inflicting autism. Examine it right here.
He principally falsified transcripts to make it appear that medical investigators had discovered a connection between childhood vaccines and autism (he denies falsifying, however observe the hyperlinks). He fooled me, and Jann Wenner, at Rolling Stone, our copublishers, too; it was the largest embarrassment of my profession. However far worse than the embarrassment is that he might idiot anyone, and at HHS, can weaponize this misinformation on a complete new stage.
It could waste treasured moments of my life to element his depredation. Let’s simply say: He has no {qualifications} to be HHS secretary—in reality, he has destructive {qualifications}.
Oh, hey, the identical is true of Matt Gaetz working the Division of Justice, and Tulsi Gabbard as director of nationwide intelligence.
First, Gaetz: In case you missed it, he’s been investigated a number of instances regarding youngster intercourse trafficking allegations, together with by the Home of Representatives (and there’s a bipartisan clamor for that report). He’s by no means been charged, not to mention convicted, I need to add. However one among his greatest associates was, each, and his testimony was something however disculpatory for Gaetz. Gaetz needs to abolish the DOJ and the FBI.
The place can we begin with Tulsi Gabbard, the freak-show former Democrat whom the BBC not too long ago described as an ally of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Syria’s Assar Bassad? Proper there. That’s the place we’ll cease. She’s been a poison to our democracy, in my view, although she has her followers.
I believe it’s going to get more durable for institution Democrats to uphold the performative pageantry we demand each 4 years. Biden did it Wednesday, however no person else has to do it this January 20. Each appointment, and plenty of issues that come out of Trump’s mouth, require Democrats to face up. We will’t merely ask it of Congress; we should ask it of the Obamas and Clintons and Bushes, and naturally Harris and Emhoff.
I heard speaking heads on cable all day counsel that Biden will probably be there. He won’t. The president greets his or her successor (I’ll say “her” till I die) on the White Home, then takes Marine One to his final vacation spot. So it’s humorous to look at these very younger folks—I like younger folks—counsel that Biden’s Wednesday sit-down foretells an enormous look on the large stairs. Joe received’t be there, however Kamala might. Similar with the entire gang.
They greatest not. Now’s the time to demand that they cease with enterprise as regular and switch their backs on the sorry spectacle.
Standard
“swipe left beneath to view extra authors”Swipe →
We can’t again down
We now confront a second Trump presidency.
There’s not a second to lose. We should harness our fears, our grief, and sure, our anger, to withstand the damaging insurance policies Donald Trump will unleash on our nation. We rededicate ourselves to our function as journalists and writers of precept and conscience.
At the moment, we additionally metal ourselves for the struggle forward. It’s going to demand a fearless spirit, an knowledgeable thoughts, sensible evaluation, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Undertaking 2025, a far-right supreme courtroom, political authoritarianism, growing inequality and document homelessness, a looming local weather disaster, and conflicts overseas. The Nation will expose and suggest, nurture investigative reporting, and stand collectively as a group to maintain hope and risk alive. The Nation’s work will proceed—because it has in good and not-so-good instances—to develop various concepts and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to additional solidarity in a nation divided.
Armed with a outstanding 160 years of daring, impartial journalism, our mandate in the present day stays the identical as when abolitionists first based The Nation—to uphold the ideas of democracy and freedom, function a beacon via the darkest days of resistance, and to ascertain and wrestle for a brighter future.
The day is darkish, the forces arrayed are tenacious, however because the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! That is exactly the time when artists go to work. There isn’t any time for despair, no place for self-pity, no want for silence, no room for worry. We converse, we write, we do language. That’s how civilizations heal.”
I urge you to face with The Nation and donate in the present day.
Onwards,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Writer, The Nation
Extra from The Nation
California and the opposite highly effective Democrat-led states would be the first line of protection beneath Trump’s new administration.
Sasha Abramsky
The as soon as and future president tried to oust Thune from the Senate in 2022. Thune received one other time period. Now, he’s the Senate majority chief.
John Nichols
The get together continues to function in an overcredentialied fever dream within the face of an America turning into ever extra crimson in tooth and claw
John Ganz
A dialog with former Biden main challenger Consultant Phillips on the election, his run for presidency, and the way forward for the get together.
StudentNation
/
Owen Dahlkamp
Democrats are falling over themselves to hail Marco Rubio’s nomination as secretary of state.
Aída Chávez
