It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.
The old saying applies to kids playing with BB guns.
In January it will apply to confirmation hearings for President-elect Trump’s Cabinet nominees.
Fun and games are a good bet to break out during the hearings because so many of Trump’s picks are laughingly unqualified.
That will be so true of a nominee who once claimed to have a worm in his brain and admitted driving around with a dead bear — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to run the nation’s top agency for health care — Health and Human Services.
But at the Kennedy hearing, people will be at risk of getting hurt.
Trump’s own former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb said flatly that having Kennedy in charge of HHS “will cost lives in this country.” The conservative Wall Street Journal editorialized that he is set to “disrupt access to life-saving medicines.”
Seventy-seven Nobel Prize winners signed a letter in opposition to Kennedy citing his criticism of proven medical treatments such as fluoride in drinking water. He also has voiced conspiracy claims about COVID-19 and treatment for AIDS.
“[RFK Jr.] wants to stop parents from protecting their babies from measles, and his ideas would welcome the return of polio,” warned Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), himself a polio survivor, criticized Kennedy’s efforts to undermine vaccines, calling them “not just uninformed — they’re dangerous.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) once sponsored a resolution with bipartisan support, titled: “Vaccine Saves Lives.”
“As a mother and a grandmother… Doctors have told us time and time again that the science is clear: vaccines save and improve lives,” she wrote in 2019.
But now, Blackburn supports the nomination of the world’s most famous vaccine denier, claiming he will “honor his commitment to put the health of Americans first” and praising him as “another great choice by President Trump.”
Blackburn, McConnell and their GOP colleagues are looking for ways to justify support for Kennedy. Already, several GOP senators are saying the president-elect has the right to pick his own Cabinet.
Kennedy’s defenders argue that vaccine mandates are a state and local issue. They say big drug companies are behind criticism of Kennedy because he would challenge them.
But Kennedy is on the record saying:
“If you’re walking down the street… and I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby, I say to him, ‘Better not get him vaccinated.’”
A private comment is reckless. Broadcasting it to an entire nation is criminal.
Kennedy has some fans on the left.
He joins progressives in voicing concerns about the corrupting drive for profit that results in a lack of attention to public health among leaders in the food and pharmaceutical industries. But his vaccine misinformation far outweighs any good he might achieve.
Every senator who votes to confirm Kennedy is complicit in the harm he will cause to public health and the lives of America’s children.
It’s hard to decide which of Trump’s second-term Cabinet nominees is the most troubling. Some merit ridicule; others, alarm. It is fair to say that most of his nominees lack leadership experience in the federal operations they seek to lead.
Seeing former football player Herschel Walker seek confirmation to be the U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas merits a smirk and not much more.
But the stakes rise dramatically with Trump’s nomination of Kennedy as well as Pete Hegseth, a former soldier facing allegations of a troubled personal past, to be secretary of Defense.
Similarly, flashing warning lights and alarms are already triggered by the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard, with her questionable ties to foreign regimes, as director of national intelligence.
Already there is fear of the FBI being used to harass and intimidate Trump critics with the nomination of Kash Patel as FBI director.
All these appointments put the functioning government at risk through incompetence.
Loyalty to Trump is their top qualification along with being known for voicing strong opinions on conservative talk shows.
Their Senate hearings will be a ratings hit as a reality version of the television show that first made Trump famous — “The Apprentice.”
In this made-for-TV series, the contestants have to unleash fire at all critics, mostly Democrats, questioning their lack of qualifications. They get extra points if their defense exposes their critics to charges of being elitists.
The hearings will come down to the GOP Senate caucus’s loyalty to Trump. And every nominee’s most important qualification will be their loyalty to Trump.
Consider the disastrous legacy of George W. Bush’s crony appointment of Michael Brown to lead FEMA. Brown’s lack of experience in disaster management left New Orleans in ruins after Hurricane Katrina. Trump’s nominees, however, threaten to replicate such incompetence on a far greater scale across the federal government.
The audience will be on edge to see if Republican senators who fear alienating Trump are willing to defy him and reject any of his nominees.
Oh, what a show, what kabuki theater, as an entire country pretends these nominees are really being judged on qualifications.
The difference between fun television and reality will hit when unvaccinated children are crippled.
Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel, a prize-winning civil rights historian and author of “New Prize for these Eyes: the Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement.”
