It’s time for Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees to don their best white dresses and get a cracker crumb of blessings from the Senate. It’s confirmation week!
When Barack Obama put forward candidates for Senate confirmation in 2009, Mitch McConnell insisted that each of them meet a series of requirements starting with this one:
The FBI background check is complete and submitted to the committee in time for review and prior to a hearing being noticed.
However, as it turns out, those background checks were only required for people who might have been black Muslim activists friends of Saul Alinsky. Billionaires go straight to the front of the line.
As Senate Republicans embark on a flurry of confirmation hearings this week, several of Donald J. Trump’s appointees have yet to complete the background checks and ethics clearances customarily required before the Senate begins to consider cabinet-level nominees.
Et-hics? What is this Et-hics? Nothing important for approval by this Senate, that’s for sure. So get your C-SPAN and also C-SPAN warmed up, because the confirmations are going to come fast and ludicrous as Senate Republicans attempt to match the Gish Galloping ways of Trump. On Wednesday, there could be as many as five simultaneous hearings before as many committees—a train wreck designed to hide any inconvenient facts or statements that bubble to the surface.
In a letter to Senators Chuck Schumer of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the leader of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter M. Shaub Jr., said on Friday that “the announced hearing schedule for several nominees who have not completed the ethics review process is of great concern to me.”
Don’t worry. Those background checks are coming. Right after Trump’s tax returns.
Republicans say they expect the missing documents to be submitted for all the nominees eventually.
See. Eventually. So it’s all okay now.
Calendar of hearings (subject to change)
Tuesday, 10 Jan
Attorney General, Senator Jeff Sessions
Homeland Security Secretary, General John Kelly
Wednesday, 11 Jan
Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson,
Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos
CIA Director, Congressman Mike Pompeo
Thursday, 12 Jan
Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross
Labor Secretary, Andrew Puzder