Feedback On Trump's Nominations

I’ve done some transcripts that provide enlightening insight into the Trump National Security appointments. Before I get to that, however, I’ll beat my chest a bit with a h/t to commenter American Cardigan, who has pointed me to a Fox article that claims that Trump secretly supported John Thune in return for some sort of agreement on Trump’s nominations. This is what I suggested several days ago, pointing out that Thune had traveled to MAL to talk with Trump. It remains that Thune is not controlled by Trump—nor can Thune control all senators. How this develops will be a work in progress that will depend on multiple factors, including the character of specific nominees. Thune may have committed to specific nominees while he and Trump may have agreed to differ on others.

Trump's private support for Thune, as Daines [senator and Thune ally] suggested, came despite the South Dakota senator's hedging on committing to allow recess appointments after Trump publicly requested that the leader candidates agree. 

Thune simply said that everything was on the table when it came to confirming Trump's selections for his administration, without committing to letting him confirm them unilaterally during recess. 

So, onward.

First up we have Danny Davis and Chas Freeman—a hugely experienced guy in National Security—discussing the Hegseth and Rubio nominations. Mostly Hegseth, which is the part I transcribed. The entire video is well worth your time. I was quite surprised at Freeman. He’s definitely no Trump fan, but he was surprisingly gentle in his treatment of Hegseth, who—in a video that I transcribe—displays himself to be shockingly shallow.

Trump, Putin, Netanyahu: Who'll Lead the Way w/Amb Chas Freeman

DD: As all eyes in Washington continue to stay on President Trump and his emerging cabinet and who he selected for the various positions, there's other audiences that are paying a great deal of attention, too, and those are international actors--both friends and foes alike. Trying to figure out, 'Where is Trump going to be going?' and how can different people leverage things to their advantage, or, are they concerned about things that may be coming and what counteractions may they be taken in anticipation of what could be happening here. Lots of moving pieces here, a lot of complexity, nothing is as simple as it seems on the surface--and to try and help us make sense out of all this we have one of the masters at making sense out of complex things, Ambassador Chas Freeman, back with the show today.

After other discussion, DD plays a video of a now viral interview with Pete Hegseth. Bad as the bit about nuclear war is, his utter shallowness regarding Russia—its history, culture, politics, security concerns—is also pretty shocking.

Q: Are you worried about nuclear war, are you concerned about nuclear war?

Hegseth: I mean, Yes, in a general sense, I guess. I just, I found overinflated from the beginning this idea that Vladimir Putin's attack on Ukraine was going to lead to nuclear war, or war across the continent. I've always felt like it was, from the beginning, like a couple days in, I, like, this feels like, uh, Putin's give-me-my-shit-back war. It kind of feels like [his view of Putin's thinking]:

'I feel like you've [US/NATO] been pushing pretty hard, and we used to have the former Soviet Union, and we're pretty proud of that, and Ukraine was a part of it and all these other countries--I want my shit back and I think I'm at the right time where I'm powerful enough to do it and you're not quite on my border yet, and Biden's AWOL, so I'm going for it! And just like I did under my minor incursion under Obama, I got what I could, I got Crimea, now I waited under Trump, now I'm going to get my ...'

And this idea that I hear all the time, and I have friends who would probably agree with us on most things, they're like, 'Well, if you don't stop him in Ukraine then he's going to go all the way to Poland!' he's, I don't think he's, I mean, maybe in a perfect world where he had unlimited capabilities and he could crown himself king of Europe he would. I think he probably knows enough to know that he's probably not going much further than Ukraine.

DD: [Freeman is shaking his head] I want to focus on that first part, when he was asked about nuclear war he's like, 'Yeah, kind of,' I think that exactly illustrates your concern, and this guy's going to be the Secretary of Defense!

CF: Well, I think his mandate is to root out woke people and generals who have blow-dried hair and little military ability. If he sticks with that maybe it's okay. If he starts playing games with the Russians in the nuclear area I think that could be disastrous. But, you know, it isn't the Secretary of Defense who makes policy. The chain of command goes from the Joint Chiefs directly to the president. The Secretary of Defense is a policy adviser and he's also the manager of the biggest outfit in the world, the Defense Department, so the question for Mr Hegseth is, What are your management credentials? What have you managed? Do you really understand defense procurement? What are you going to do about waste, fraud, and mismanagement in the Defense Department, or are you going to leave that to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy?

So one of the issues with all of the appointments is whether the talents and experience of the people being appointed--quite aside from their political views, the president's entitled to have strong support from his supporters and, if they agree with him, that's that's--but what are their qualifications? Is the Secretary of State someone with strategic reasoning ability? Management ability? Does he listen? Can he reduce policy to comprehensible terms that are still sufficiently complex to deal with a increasingly complicated world?

Can the Secretary of Defense fix the Defense Department--which has failed every audit that it has attempted and which now takes almost all of our discretionary spending? Between the defense budget and the related budgets hidden away in other departments we're at about the $1.5 trillion level in terms of spending on National Security--and this at a time when we have to borrow every penny of that! And apparently we're looking to borrow more. So I think he's got a pretty important job if he gets it through the Senate confirmation process and it isn't so much about nuclear games with Russia as it is with fixing a pretty badly damaged defense establishment.

The same thing is true of the other appointments. My reaction to some of these appointments is, 'Hey, you know, when I was a kid I worked in a gas station, so I should be Secretary of Energy. When I was a kid I drove a taxi, so I should be Secretary of Transportation--maybe I should try to do both at the same time!'

Let's be serious!

DD: Long as you got the credentials, that's cool!

CF: Are we competing effectively? Do the people we're bringing into power--because they are in powerful positions, they will be in powerful influential positions--do they have the competence to hold their own against the competition abroad?

DD: Right, yeah, that's pretty stark--matching up qualifications of our Defense Secretary, Secretary of State, or some of these others against those that they're going to be dealing with--both friends and foes!--I think we're not coming out on top on that.

CF: I hope I'm wrong about some of this but I'm afraid I'm not.

Next, I’ll simply highly recommend this Judge Nap video. I believe readers will be highly interested in what Tony Shaffer says about the supposed Trump - Putin phone call and about our own surveillance state. I also like the way the Judge calls Shaffer out and reveals his shallowness on other matters.

LtCOL. Tony Shaffer : How to End the Ukraine War

Lastly, we have excerpts of Judge Nap talking to Gilbert Doctorow about the Trump NatSec appointments. Specifically, Doctorow explains the Russian view—which is quite positive. Notably, Doctorow wears a rather amused or sarcastic smile through most of the interview, but he also has positive things to say about Trump himself—especially with regard to the Tulsi Gabbard nomination. Here I’d also like to take issue with something Doug Macgregor said recently. Mac recently stated that the Russians have as little understanding of our politics as we have of theirs. I would beg to differ. I believe—and I think Doctorow’s comments are confirmation of this—that the Russians run a very professional diplomatic service that feeds very intelligent intelligence back to the Kremlin:

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Will Russia Protect Iran?

Judge: What has the Kremlin's reaction been to the election of Donald Trump?

GD: Generally pleased with [Trump's] nominations. Until he made the nominations they weren't saying very much, but the opinion of the people who are closest to the Kremlin has been made very clear. They have looked down the list--his nominations for Defense, for the the intelligence services, for the State Department--and they've concluded that, overall his candidates are soft on Russia and hard on China, and for their purposes that is relatively good. In the news today they were speaking about Tulsi Gabbard, whom they have featured in the past for her very brave positions on foreign policy issues. So generally they're content with what he's doing and I think it gives them confidence that his claim to be a positive force in ending this war must be taken seriously.

Judge: Do they not see problems in the ueber aggressive attitude toward Iran on the part of Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth and--actually, before you get there, how would you compare Marco Rubio with Sergey Lavrov?

…

GD: The Russians are generally optimistic about something good happening in this Administration. Perhaps they overestimate Trump's ability to get his candidates through the Senate. ... Yesterday they were just smiling from ear to ear.

...

I have more confidence in [Trump's] judgment after his appointment of Tulsi Gabbard to the post of [DNI] reining in the three letter agencies [the intel agencies]. This is the most remarkable appointment, and I think there you see reason to take confidence that Trump is not a fool--nothing of the sort. He knows very well where his interests are where the country's interests are. Starting war that is highly risky with Iran is not an American interest.

[GD expresses his belief that the Deep State will do all in its power to sabotage Trump and any peace initiatives, but he believes that assassination is now off the table.]

[Regarding how long till the end of the war, GD stresses Russia's determination to minimize their casualties. “If they wanted to they could end this in a matter of weeks.” I would add, that the prospect of further NATO attrition is also an attraction for prolonging the war.]

Obviously the Russians are elated at what they see as the overall weakness of Trump’s cabinet. With the exception of Tulsi.