GOP Senators Signal Trump To Drop Weakest Nominees Before 'It Gets Ugly'
Tulsi Gabbard
According to Ryan Nobles of NBC News, Donald Trump is getting dire warnings from Republican lawmakers that some of his more problematic nominees for his Cabinet are in for rough sledding if they don't drop out before their nationally televised confirmation hearings.
Appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe and speaking with host Willie Geist, Nobles explained that there are fears about what will come out if nominees like Fox News personality Pete Hegseth and ex-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard are forced to explain their views under hostile questioning.
"These Republicans want him to win and when they go through the advise and consent role here it's not because they want to trip him up, not because they want to make his life difficult," Nobles reported. "It's because they want him to have the best people around him in these Cabinet posts when he takes office on January 20th and beyond."
"So what they would like to see happen is, behind the scenes there is a conversation, they talk to the administration, they talk to these sherpas that are working with these candidates and they say, 'Do you know what? It's just not going to happen. If you go through this confirmation process it's going to be ugly, we're going to have a hearing where, remember, Democrats get to ask questions, they're going to expose a lot of these issues that have come up in media reports. Your nominees are going to have to deal with all of this and it's ultimately going to look bad for you, and then, at the end of all of it, after this brutal situation, we may have to vote against you and make it look like we are in opposition to you," he added.
"The other path is behind the scenes we quietly talk about how this isn't necessarily the right person for this job for a whole range of reasons, why don't you find someone else and let that person bow out on their own," he elaborated. "That's how it worked with [failed attorney general nominee] Matt Gaetz because it was clear that under any circumstance Matt Gaetz was not going to get the votes," he elaborated before remarking, "Trump got that message. '
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Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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