The Babylon Bee boasts that it is “America’s Most Trusted Source for Fake News”, and have lived up to that reputation with their coverage of the Senate confirmation hearings of President Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees.
Their headline about the questioning of HHS Secretary Nominee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr:
Senators Pause RFK Hearing To Announce This Next Round Of Questions Is Brought To You By Pfizer
As usual, their satire hits home. Kennedy showed why during the hearing, when he called out the Senators who have received contributions from ‘Big Pharma’.
It’s just this very sort of “interest group pressure” the framers of our Constitution had in mind when they vested Cabinet appointment power exclusively in the President. The United States Supreme Court acknowledged so in 1997:
By vesting the President with the exclusive power to select the principal (non-inferior) officers of the United States, the Appointments Clause prevents congressional encroachment upon the Executive and Judicial Branches The Framers anticipated that the President would be less vulnerable to interest-group pressure and personal favoritism than would a collective body.
Framer Alexander Hamilton explained their intentions in the “Federalist”, a series of writings by three of the drafters that is universally considered the foremost authoritative source on the Constitution:
The blame of a bad nomination would fall upon the president singly and absolutely. The censure of rejecting a good one would lie entirely at the door of the senate; aggravated by the consideration of their having counteracted the good intentions of the executive.
President Trump’s nominees reflect what he promised during the election campaign that he intended to do. Democrats are attempting to counteract “the good intentions of the executive” to fulfill his campaign promises.
Having watched some of the televised confirmation hearings of President Trump’s nominees — for the comedy value — the Senate Democrats didn’t disappoint me.
Several years ago I wrote about the sound-byte responses by Biden judicial nominees to some questioning during their confirmation hearings.
This time around the sound-byte nonsense is coming from the questioners.
For the most part, the Senate Democrats weren’t really asking questions — at least not in the sense of being seriously interested in the answers. They were giving mini-speeches impregnated with talking points as they postured for the media.
There are ample examples to be found on Youtube. Here, for instance.
As a lawyer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sued pharmaceutical companies for injuries they’ve caused to consumers (product liability). Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren wanted Kennedy to commit to not suing them after he leaves office.
That’s LOL funny — because while Kennedy was suing Big Pharma, Warren was accepting political contributions from them.
Warren has received $498,074 from health professionals, $126,056 from the pharmaceutical industry and $109,065 from hospitals and nursing homes over the same period. Massachusetts is home to Moderna, the manufacturer of an mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, which was just awarded a $590 million by Biden’s HHS to combat H5N1.
So …. Warren is demanding that Kennedy commit to not suing companies from whom she receives money. Leaving aside that such a “commitment” by Kennedy is not legally or ethically binding on his actions after he leaves office, Warren’s posturing is first-rate political farce.
Related to Kennedy’s known hostility to pharmaceutical manufacturers is his criticism of vaccines — which was the primary focus of Democrats’ attacks on him. Their questions not only distorted his actual prior statements, but were reminiscent of the worst COVID fearmongering about supposed “science”.
Showing common sense rare in politicians, Republican Senator Rand Paul (a medical doctor) called out his Democrat colleagues on their fallacious claims of scientific certitude about the vaccines.
Democrat Senators did not confine their foolishness to RFK, Jr. There was this playground-level questioning of Director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard, by Colorado Senator Michael Bennet.
The best laugh here was Bennet saying, “This is not a moment for social media”. That’s all it was — for him. Saying Gabbard was refusing to answer his questions… when he clearly interrupted her every time she began to answer.
And let me address the “Answer the question, Yes or No!” nonsense. Since 1993, the Florida Supreme Court has certified me to be an expert trial attorney. I’ve questioned many hundreds of witnesses in official proceedings. I’ve been a professor of trial advocacy at a law school where I taught how to conduct both direct and cross-examination of witnesses. All that patting myself on the back is to say I’m qualified to render an expert opinion on what appears to be Bennet’s obvious lack of skill in questioning witnesses.
A tell-tale sign of an inept attorney questioning a witness is to demand that the witness answer “YES or NO”. No witness has to respond only the way a lawyer wants a question answered.
As for interrupting, if Bennet questioned a witness in a courtroom the way he questioned Gabbard, the judge would have admonished him to “Allow the witness to answer!”
“But”, you say, “that wasn’t a courtroom…”
Yes it was. It’s the court of public opinion — in which we the people are both judge and jury. If at any point watching that, you said to yourself “Let her answer”, you rendered your unfavorable verdict of Bennet’s performance.
Had Bennet acted that way in any legal arena where I’ve practiced, he’d be the object of ridicule by experienced attorneys. I’ve had jurors comment on how it annoyed them when a lawyer behaved that way toward a witness.
Warren, Bennet, and every other Democrat Senator I watched questioning a nominee were clearly more interested in scoring partisan political points than actually assessing qualifications. That is the problem with televising the hearings. Rather than serious proceedings, they too often turn into political theater where Senators seek to outdo each other in fake outrage and feigned intellect.
The Constitution does not require public hearings – or any hearings at all. The Senate could simply hold a vote on each candidate. But in today’s media-driven politics that would deprive Senators of the opportunity for a moment of glory on TV to bloviate, pontificate, posture, and virtue signal.
It’s easy to laugh at them. Unfortunately it’s also a sad reflection of our hyper-partisan politics.
But even as funny as I find these Senators behavior, perhaps I’m failing to grasp the true depth of the comedy. It’s possible the framers had Nostradamus-like prescience, and foresaw these media publicized hearings as affording the public an opportunity to see their elected officials making fools of themselves.
One of those framers, Benjamin Franklin, was the Elon Musk of his era. A visionary genius, with a keen wit. When asked after the Constitutional convention what sort of government had been given to the citizenry, he replied “A republic. If you can keep it!”
I can see him looking down on this senatorial circus, shaking his head and laughing along with me.