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Donald Trump’s Senate allies are racing to defend Tulsi Gabbard, his pick to lead US intelligence services, in what could become the next test of the president-elect’s bid to install provocative nominees — and of any Republican appetite to stop him.
Gabbard and another contentious Trump pick — Pete Hegseth, who has been tapped to lead the Defense Department — came under sharpened scrutiny Sunday as the spotlight shifted from Matt Gaetz, Trump’s toppled choice to be attorney general.
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Senators bracing for confirmation battles over unorthodox Trump Cabinet picks
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth warned of Gabbard: “I think she’s compromised.” The Illinois senator brought up Gabbard’s visit to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2017 and policy positions where she’s appeared to mirror Russian propaganda talking points.
But Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, speaking to Dana Bash on the same show, said such claims were “ridiculous” and “outright dangerous” and called for Duckworth to retract them.
The extraordinary public debate over whether a president-elect’s pick to oversee US intelligence agencies is a compromised asset is a taste of the massive upheaval that likely awaits next year in his second term.
Key questions as Thanksgiving week opens
But it’s far from the only question that Trump’s political comeback has sent swirling around Washington heading into the Thanksgiving holiday this week.
Trump’s pick of Hegseth is also facing uncertainty after the release last week of a 2017 police report detailing an alleged sexual assault in California. The former Fox News anchor says the encounter with a woman in California was consensual. He denies wrongdoing and was not charged.
One big unknown is whether Republican senators are again prepared to challenge Trump’s judgment after it quickly became clear that Gaetz wouldn’t have enough of their votes to be confirmed amid his own sexual misconduct allegations, which he denies. One theory is that the incoming GOP majority won’t simply be a rubber stamp for an all-powerful president. But the withdrawal of Gaetz — who was already widely disliked in Congress — may leave senators feeling they owe the president-elect on his other highly controversial choices.
Trump’s new selection for attorney general, Pam Bondi, is meanwhile being welcomed by many Republicans, suggesting she’ll have an easier path to confirmation than Gaetz. But the former Florida attorney general’s past vow that “prosecutors will be prosecuted” raised expectations that the president-elect plans to press ahead with his promise to use the powers of the Justice Department to seek retribution on those who have investigated him, including over his attempt to steal the 2020 election.
A sense that the president-elect is deeply serious about his vow to gut government was bolstered by the choice on Friday night of Russell Vought to again lead the Office of Management and Budget. Vought was one of the key authors of Project 2025 — the conservative blueprint disavowed by Trump on the campaign trail that involved a defenestrating of the bureaucracy. Trump has already tasked Tesla pioneer Elon Musk and former GOP primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy with drawing up massive government cuts.
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