Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson criticized the hysteria from Democrats over President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks during a podcast on Friday, reminding listeners of the appointees under the Obama and Biden administrations.
Since Trump began announcing his Cabinet appointees after winning the 2024 presidential election on Nov. 5, Democrats have pushed back against some of his nominations. On “The Victor Davis Hanson Show,” Hanson acknowledged that while some of Trump’s nominees may not have traditional bureaucratic resumes, appointees under former President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden had the credentials but were still ineffective.
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“The left is going hysterical, almost all of them, because they’re so non-traditional. So can I just have a little excursus and remind our listeners, who are probably as informed or better informed than I am?” Hanson asked. “But I would like to remind everybody of the Obama and the Biden appointees. They had little letters after their name.”
“They had resumes, but John Brennan the CIA director lied twice under oath. He was spying on Senate staffers of the United States Senate. James Clapper lied under oath, and when he was caught he said I gave the least untruthful answer,” Hanson said. “Anthony Blinken the secretary of state was the architect of the 51 intelligence authorities. Remember them? That lied and lied and said that the laptop was a product of Russian disinformation, and that affected the [2020] election.”
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Hanson continued to criticize U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, highlighting how Sullivan promoted a hoax in 2016 by claiming the Trump campaign was connected to Moscow through a secret back channel.
“You could almost say that Anthony Blinken was an election interference person. Jake Sullivan was the architect of the — well, he really led with the Alpha ping hoax. Remember that? When they were saying Trump in 2016 had this bank ping in his computer and he was communicating with the Alpha Russian Bank. That was all made up. That was Jake Sullivan that was peddling that story,” Hanson added.
The senior fellow also brought up Democratic U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and his special counsel appointee, Jack Smith, who has been overseeing multiple cases against the former president, including allegations of election interference and mishandling classified documents.
“Let’s just get a grip before we get hysterical. We are coming out of an era where we had some of the worst appointees, and they had all the right little numbers and letters and resume,” Hanson said. “They were all bad people. They were put in there either — Jennifer Granholm was Energy Secretary. She didn’t even know how many barrels of oil we were pumping a day. It was just a joke, all of those people.”
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Over the past week, Democrats have criticized Trump’s nominations of Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general, former Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Fox News host and veteran Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense. Following the announcement of Kennedy’s potential role in Trump’s second administration, CNN brought on two doctors who expressed their “concerns” about the choice. One guest even said that people “could die” from Kennedy’s views, particularly regarding vaccines.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.