The Three Stooges

RFK Jr., Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard were in the hot seat this week as votes on their confirmations loom.

It’s often hard to keep track of important developments, especially amidst the chaos and zone flooding by the Trump White House. A prime example is Trump’s cabinet nominees. Three of his most controversial picks were on Capitol Hill this week at the same time, facing tough confirmation hearings.

RFK Jr., Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard all sat before Senate committees that will vote whether to send their nominations to the full Senate. These Committee votes could wind up proving decisive in some cases, because while the GOP has effectively a four seat majority in the full Senate, in some of these committees one or two “no” votes from GOP senators could tank the nomination.

And that has got some of the nominees worried.

The anti-vax quack

Kennedy is up for Secretary of Health and Human Services, which is only one of the three great ironies I’ll cover today. Over two days of confirmation hearings, he was grilled about his conspiracy theories, his flip-flops on abortion rights, and his radical anti-vax beliefs. My colleague at The Big Picture, Todd Beeton, wrote an excellent and detailed write-up of those hearings, which you can read here, so I’ll spend a bit less time on Kennedy in this piece.

Here’s the main takeaway: Kennedy faced some of the toughest questioning from Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), who has surprised many with his pointed and devastating questioning of Trump’s nominees. Sen. Bennet caught Kennedy in blatant and false denials, including his denials that he ever claimed that chemicals in our water are turning boys and men trans and that Lyme disease was highly likely a militarily engineered bioweapon. He did indeed say those things.

But it was Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician, whose questioning made everyone lean forward and listen closely. Sen. Cassidy nearly begged Kennedy to state that vaccines do not cause autism. And yet Kennedy wouldn’t do so unless he was shown “the data,” which Sen. Cassidy reminded him already exists.

Based on the hesitancy he expressed in his opening and closing remarks, Sen. Cassidy could decide to vote down Kennedy at the Committee phrase, dooming his nomination. He has already been hearing from legions of RFK Jr. fans, so if you’d like to make your voice heard to urge him to oppose Kennedy, please call his office at 202-224-5824.

Kash me if you can

Trump’s FBI Director pick, Kash Patel, got caught in several lies as he testified before the Judiciary Committee. Patel is the most brazenly political pick ever nominated to head the FBI, and he has made no secret of his intent to remake it entirely into a weapon to be used by Trump.

Patel knew he had to dissemble, weave and dodge just enough to squeak through his confirmation. So rather than answer direct questions, he played dumb or claimed not to remember. It led to some memorable, heated exchanges.

For example, Patel was asked repeatedly whether he would waive his rights over the confidentiality of his grand jury testimony in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. When asked to appear, Patel had initially pleaded the Fifth—the first time ever that a nominee for FBI Director had sought protection against self-incrimination—but then testified later under an immunity arrangement with the Justice Department.

Prosecutors and the court can’t release that transcript to any third parties, but Patel has the ability to make it public. Yet he repeatedly dodged when asked to do so by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). Patel insisted stubbornly that there was a court order preventing the release of the transcript and told the senators to go ask the court for it if they want it so badly. That of course would go nowhere without Patel’s express waiver of confidentiality, which he repeatedly declined to give outright. (Narrator: Patel really doesn’t want that transcript ever made public.)

Patel also denied knowing white nationalist Stew Peters, even though, as Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) noted, Patel has appeared eight times on Peters’s podcast.

Journalist Jordan Uhl stitched all eight of those appearances together to drive this point home.

Even Stew Peters himself seemed deeply offended that Patel had pretended not to know him, declaring on his broadcast, “Clearly Kash Patel is lying. He absolutely does know who I am.”

Patel also claimed, falsely, that he had nothing to do with a song performed by some of the January 6 defendants to help raise money for them, even after earlier bragging about producing it. The Senate Judiciary Dems produced receipts showing Patel was lying.

Indeed, Patel was squirming so hard at this point that he had to argue the word “we” did not include himself when he said it. Here’s Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) skewering him on this point.

Patel also lied openly about his prior claims of a stolen 2020 election. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) asked him directly whether he ever said that Donald Trump has “every right to tell the world that in 2020, 2016, and every other election in between was rigged by our government because they were.” He claimed he did not recall, but here is a clip of him saying those exact words:

The most memorable moment in the hearing was when Sen. Schiff asked Patel to turn around and look officers in the eye and tell them he was proud of what he did to help raise money for the January 6 defendants. These officers included some who were injured on January 6 and had come to hear Patel’s testimony.

Patel declined to do so.

I don’t want to sugarcoat this. The math says that Patel likely will be confirmed by the Senate because there simply aren’t enough Republicans with spines to oppose him. Those who might even consider taking a stand against him would likely later find themselves the targets of Patel’s FBI.

Patel’s confirmation, should it happen as expected, will be a very dark day for the rule of law in the U.S., as Sen. Schiff eloquently stated. “How did we get here?” Schiff demanded. “And where are we going? History is littered with democracies that lost their freedoms and didn’t notice it while it was happening. Let’s not be one of them.”

Russia’s girlfriend

Trump wants to install Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. Among all of Trump’s nominees, Gabbard appears to face the most amount of resistance, including from GOP senators uncomfortable with her prior positions and statements and her current apparent affinity for criminals and despots.

Once again, Sen. Bennet of Colorado put the nominee in the hot seat, repeatedly seeking an answer to a simple question: Is Edward Snowden, who broke the law by leaking U.S. intelligence and currently resides in Moscow, a traitor to his country? Gabbard remarkably declined to answer this very straightforward question.

Sen. Bennet also pinned Gabbard down over her amplification of Russian talking points on Ukraine, blasting her for tweeting about Russia’s “legitimate” security concerns after it had invaded its peaceful neighbor.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) asked a similar question and received a similar non-answer from Gabbard. Lankford, who said he had previously supported her nomination, had considered the question a “softball” but after Gabbard responded the way she did, Sen. Lankford said he had “a lot of questions after it, yeah.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) drove the point home further. “What message would it send to have a DNI who would celebrate the work of a member of the IC or a contractor that, on their own volition, would decide what’s appropriate to leak?”

Gabbard seemed to fumble softball questions lobbed by Republicans on the Committee. At one point, Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) asked Gabbard if Russia would “get a pass in either your mind or your heart.” Here was a prime opportunity for Gabbard to put distance between herself and the Kremlin, but instead of taking this and running with it, she responded that she was “offended by the question.”

Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) left the hearing unimpressed. “With Ms. Gabbard, I have said that it was like having a sheet of music that was missing notes. I had hoped that listening to the hearing today that she would fill in those gaps,” Sen. Curtis stated. “Frankly, there are many notes still missing and a number of sour notes and awkward silences that simply don’t ring true as a political philosophy on critical national security issues.”

So will they get confirmed?

While it’s nice to hope that Republican senators will draw the line at confirming the woman whom Kremlin propagandists have openly called “our girlfriend,” we should never underestimate how cowardly these senators can be when faced with the prospect of denying Trump his pick.

Recently, per reporting by Politico, Sen. Tom Tillis (R-NC) was a solid “no” on Pete Hegseth, meaning the nomination was pretty much doomed, after speaking directly to Hegseth’s former sister-in-law about his abusive behavior toward his second wife. That witness even came forward with a sworn statement with the understanding that Tillis was a “no” and that this was enough to prevent Hegseth from being confirmed.

But when it came to the vote, Tillis backed down and changed his vote to a “yes” after threats of a primary challenge from the radical MAGA right. Hegseth was confirmed 51/50 after a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance.

There is a chance, however, that a similar push by the right might fail here. For starters, there are three nominees in the spotlight, and so any resistance to them from the GOP would be less visible. If, for example, Cassidy was a “no” on Kennedy and Curtis and Lankford were a “no” on Gabbard, it all might get lost in the shuffle. Kennedy and Gabbard are also seen by many Trump voters as Blue MAGA Democrats to whom less allegiance and support is owed.

The next few days will prove pivotal as GOP senators make up their minds about these nominees and their many apparent shortcomings and troubling, even dangerous, positions. I’m not holding my breath that the GOP will do the right thing, and I will be pleasantly surprised if even one of these nominees gets knocked out of contention.