Just in time to go along with his Christmas eggnog the Democrats have served up a nice “bah-humbug” pie for Trump to put under his tree. According to a REPORT on politicususa.com the 16 ranking Democratic members of the Senate committees that will hold hearings on his nominees have presented Trump with a signed list of principles that they want used to vet Trump’s nominees before they appear before the committees. They don’t mince a lot of words;
“The United States Senate has a rich, bipartisan tradition of vetting nominees to the President’s Cabinet. We hope to continue that tradition with our colleagues in the Republican Majority because the American people are entitled to a fair and open consideration process for all executive nominations. Therefore, a Cabinet nomination should only proceed to a mark-up in Committee if:
The nominee has cleared an FBI background check
The nominee provides a completed financial disclosure statement and ethics agreement signed by the Office of Government Ethics
The nominee has satisfied reasonable requests for additional information and Members have time to review that material.”
This should be fun to watch. We all know how much Trump likes to be told what to do. Welcome to governance Don of Orange. Apparently the vetting process for Trump nominees is slow going, due to the fact that so many of them are filthy rich shitpokes, with financial entanglements all over the place. The New York Times is REPORTING that the going is even slower because some of the Trump nominees are submitting incomplete forms, especially AG nominee Jeff Sessions who is just not bothering to fill in shit he doesn’t want to disclose. And this is the guy Trump wants running the Justice department.
You can't blame these guys for thinking they can get away with this juvenile stuff, after all, their boss, Glorious Leader is less transparent than a sheet of dry wall. But the threat is clear, if the Trump team doesn’t want to properly vet these nominees, the Democrats on the committees will, and Trump and his nominees might not like very much what they find.Trump is learning that members of Congress, especially opposition members, are not as subservient as people he pays.
This raises an interesting thing to keep an eye on. Now that not only Trump, but his nominees as well are on notice that the vetting process is going to be thorough, how many of them start peeking in their closets, looking for Zoe Baird “Nannygate” moments that could blow up on them in committee. Politicians spend their careers trying to keep their closets clean, although they don’t always succeed. Rich dudes have been getting away with shit for all their lives, it’ll be interesting if any of them decide to pull their nominations rather than risk the public exposure and knock to their reputations.