Politics
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November 15, 2024
These freakish and unqualified cupboard picks, from RFK Jr. to Matt Gaetz to Tulsi Gabbard, present that Trump is clowning you.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump shake fingers throughout a marketing campaign rally at Desert Diamond Area on August 23, 2024, in Glendale, Arizona.
(Rebecca Noble / Getty Photos)
Inside only a few hours of President Joe Biden welcoming President-Elect Donald Trump to a comfortable two-hour Oval Workplace assembly (which truthfully made me queasy), Trump made any right-thinking American queasy, too. He rapidly nominated former Democrat-turned-quisling Tulsi Gabbard his Director of Nationwide Intelligence, accused pedophile Matt Gaetz as legal professional common, and womanizing, serial liar, dead-baby-bear defiling, whale-head-removing, worm-in-his-head anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of Well being and Human Providers.
That was simply after he nominated Christian nationalist Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel.
What to do? Properly, if Republicans determine to carry onto their energy to substantiate the president’s nominees—new Senate Majority Chief John Thune stated he was open to Trump’s demand to make recess appointments—I hope they won’t verify any of them. Clearly, for those who’re a Democrat, you make certain each Democrat votes in opposition to confirming them.
However earlier than the affirmation dramas start: Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, Invoice and Hillary Clinton–and truthfully, each Democratic member of Congress–should observe the lead of the late Rep. John Lewis, who skipped Trump’s first inauguration, and decline their invitation to the inauguration Jan. 20.
“Will probably be the primary one which I miss since I’ve been in Congress,” Lewis stated in January 2017. “You can’t be at dwelling with one thing that you simply really feel that’s fallacious, just isn’t proper.” Lewis died in July 2020, earlier than he may attend Joe Biden’s inauguration. However I do know he’s high quality with that. And if he have been right here now, I do know what he would do. That is an in the end inauthentic authorities, hateful of data and science. And other people. All however the individuals they see of their boardrooms.
Please don’t legitimize this, Madame Vice President.
Present Challenge
I’ve written about RFK Jr. a number of instances in our pages. He helped me to my most humiliating skilled expertise: Publishing, at Salon, his just about fact-free indictment of childhood vaccines for his or her position in inflicting autism. Examine it right here.
He mainly falsified transcripts to make it appear that medical investigators had discovered a connection between childhood vaccines and autism (he denies falsifying, however observe the hyperlinks). He fooled me, and Jann Wenner, at Rolling Stone, our co-publishers, too; it was the largest embarrassment of my profession. However far worse than the embarrassment is that he may idiot anyone, and at HHS, can weaponize this misinformation on an entire new degree.
It will waste treasured moments of my life to element his depredation. Let’s simply say: He has no {qualifications} to be HHS secretary, in truth he has adverse {qualifications}.
Oh hey, the identical is true of Matt Gaetz working the Division of Justice, and Tulsi Gabbard as Director of Nationwide Intelligence.
First, Gaetz: In case you missed it, he’s been investigated a number of instances regarding youngster intercourse trafficking allegations, together with by the Home of Representatives (and there’s a bipartisan clamor for that report). He’s by no means been charged, not to mention convicted, I need to add. However one among his finest buddies was, each, and his testimony was something however disculpatory for Gaetz. Gaetz needs to abolish the DOJ and the FBI.
The place can we begin with Tulsi Gabbard, the freakshow former Democrat who the BBC just lately described as an ally of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Syria’s Assar Bassad? Proper there. That’s the place we’ll cease. She’s been a poison to our democracy, in my view, although she has her followers.
Widespread
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I believe it’s going to get more durable for institution Democrats to uphold the performative pageantry we demand each 4 years. Biden did it Wednesday, however no person else has to do it this January 20. Each appointment, and lots of issues that come out of Trump’s mouth, require Democrats to face up. We are able to’t merely ask it of Congress; we should ask it of the Obamas and Clintons and Bushes, and naturally Harris and Emhoff.
I heard speaking heads on cable all day recommend that Biden will probably be there. He won’t. The president greets his or her successor (I’ll say “her” till I die) on the White Home, then takes Marine One to his final vacation spot. So it’s humorous to look at these very younger individuals – I really like younger individuals – recommend that Biden’s Wednesday sitdown foretells an enormous look on the large stairs. Joe received’t be there, however Kamala may. Similar with the entire gang.
They finest not. Now’s the time to demand they cease with enterprise as typical and switch their backs on the sorry spectacle.
We can’t again down
We now confront a second Trump presidency.
There’s not a second to lose. We should harness our fears, our grief, and sure, our anger, to withstand the harmful insurance policies Donald Trump will unleash on our nation. We rededicate ourselves to our position as journalists and writers of precept and conscience.
Right now, we additionally metal ourselves for the combat forward. It’ll demand a fearless spirit, an knowledgeable thoughts, sensible evaluation, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Venture 2025, a far-right supreme courtroom, political authoritarianism, rising inequality and file homelessness, a looming local weather disaster, and conflicts overseas. The Nation will expose and suggest, nurture investigative reporting, and stand collectively as a neighborhood to maintain hope and chance alive. The Nation’s work will proceed—because it has in good and not-so-good instances—to develop various concepts and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to additional solidarity in a nation divided.
Armed with a exceptional 160 years of daring, unbiased journalism, our mandate at the moment stays the identical as when abolitionists first based The Nation—to uphold the ideas of democracy and freedom, function a beacon by the darkest days of resistance, and to examine and wrestle for a brighter future.
The day is darkish, the forces arrayed are tenacious, however because the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! That is exactly the time when artists go to work. There isn’t a time for despair, no place for self-pity, no want for silence, no room for concern. We converse, we write, we do language. That’s how civilizations heal.”
I urge you to face with The Nation and donate at the moment.
Onwards,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Writer, The Nation
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