I watched most of the testimony of Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel, and most of the first day of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s. Here are my impressions.
I give Tulsi Gabbard credit. Her testimony was largely devoid of the “confirmation conversions” we’ve seen from several of Donald Trump’s nominees (and, of course, some nominees of previous presidents).
Gabbard declined multiple invitations to say that Edward Snowden is a traitor. As far as I can tell, nearly every member of the committee before which she appeared (the Intelligence Committee) believes Snowden is. The committee chairman, Tom Cotton, has said so.
Yet, Gabbard’s oft-repeated response to the question was to say that Snowden violated the law. Senators complained that this answer is non-responsive, but I disagree. It’s clear from her rote answer that Gabbard does not consider Snowden a traitor.
It’s also clear that Gabbard’s failure to say he is has hurt her confirmation prospects.
To be sure, Gabbard could not easily have called Snowden a traitor. After all, in 2020 she sponsored legislation calling on the federal government to drop all charges against him.
But Gabbard could have said her legislation was a mistake. That’s not a great admission to make, but it probably would have served her better than refusing to call Snowden a traitor when key GOP members all but begged her to.
Sometimes a cigar really is a cigar. Gabbard just doesn’t think Snowden is a traitor. Nor, relatedly, does she think his actions hurt our national security. She wouldn’t affirm that proposition, either — to the disappointment of key GOP Senators.
Gabbard also stuck to her guns on her controversial (and in my view disgusting) visit to Syria during which she met with the butcher Assad (and others nearly as bad). When asked if, in hindsight, she would not have made the visit, Gabbard answered that she would have.
Whatever one’s views on these two subjects, Gabbard gets high marks for honesty. But honesty can be a treacherous road to Senate confirmation. This nomination is probably in real trouble.
Kash Patel took a different, more promising path. With a sincerity that’s hard (but not impossible) to fake, he presented himself as a non-partisan who would never dream of using the FBI for partisan purposes or (more relevantly in a Trump administration) as a tool for vengeance. Patel insisted that he’s only interested in looking forward. Let bygones be bygones, he seemed to imply.
Patel even went so far as to say he disagrees with the pardons Trump granted to violent January 6, 2021 protesters. He seemed like the very model of a measured, non-partisan, by-the-book law enforcer.
The problem, of course, is the series of statements he made on various podcasts in recent times. Statements such as his proposal to “shut down the FBI Hoover Building on Day 1 and reopen it the next day as a mausoleum of the deep state” and “we need to hunt down the people in the fake news media who made the deep state a reality.”
Confronted with these kinds of statements, Patel’s default answer was “I don’t have that in front of me.” A non-answer, even by the standards of a confirmation hearing.
Later Patel characterized the questions about these statements as grotesque distortions. But in real time, he did not dispute having made them, and Amy Klobuchar, for one, was able to cite chapter and verse.
Who is the real Kash Patel? Probably not the over-the-top showman who performed on those podcasts. Definitely not the choir boy who testified before the Senate.
But it was the over-the-top performances that helped induce Trump to nominate him to direct the FBI. And even if he’s more choir boy than I think he is, Patel will have to remain at least somewhat true to his podcast persona if he wants to stay in Trump’s good graces.
That’s true, though, of anyone Trump would select to run the FBI.
The bottom line, though, is that Patel will be confirmed. He may even have played the choir boy effectively enough not to require JD Vance’s vote.
As for Kennedy, as I said, I only saw his testimony before the Senate Finance Committee. I did not see his testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. I wish I had because that testimony apparently was more eventful. But with Gabbard and Patel testifying the same day, the zone was “flooded.”
In the testimony I saw, Kennedy walked a middle path. As this report by Caitlin Owens of Axios puts it, “He [did] not declare himself an entirely new man — on vaccines, on abortion or on many of his Democratic views.” However, he began his testimony by saying that he’s neither anti-vax nor anti-industry.
The middle ground Kennedy tried to stake out on vaccines was that he won’t take any preconceived notions — such as his oft-stated position that vaccines cause autism — into the office with him. Instead, he will look at the data.
The problem is that Kennedy surely has already looked at the data. If not, then his persistent claims about vaccines have no evidentiary basis. In that case, he clearly shouldn’t be confirmed.
Kennedy must have concluded from the data that vaccines do cause autism and, more broadly, that the harm from vaccines outweighs the benefit in many (if not most) cases. The scientific community overwhelmingly rejects that view, but that’s not my point. My point is that Kennedy’s promise to look at the data is an absurd cop-out when it comes to the issues he has hammered for years.
It’s possible that as Secretary, Kennedy might change his position not due to data, but due to politics and/or demands from the administration. But relying on confirmation conversions is risky enough. Hoping for a post-confirmation conversion is downright foolish.
Nonetheless, I thought Kennedy was fairly effective overall in his testimony before the Finance Committee. He held his own under fierce questioning from Elizabeth Warren and others.
Where he stumbled was in response to non-hostile questions from Bill Cassidy about Medicare and Medicaid, neither of which he seemed adequately to understand. Cassidy, a medical doctor, is thought to be the key Republican vote on this nomination. Yet, I came away from this hearing thinking Kennedy probably will be confirmed.
It appears, though, that Kennedy had a tougher time on the second day. I gather that Cassidy, who chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was unsatisfied with Kennedy’s answers regarding both Medicaid/Medicare and vaccines.
At the end of the hearing, Cassidy told Kennedy that he is "struggling with your nomination." Cassidy asked, rhetorically:
[Can someone] who has spent decades criticizing vaccines and who is financially vested in finding fault with vaccines — can he change his attitudes and approach now that he'll have the most important position influencing vaccine policy in the United States? Will you continue what you have been, or will you overturn a new leaf at age 70?"
I should note that Cassidy has an independent streak. In fact, after Trump’s second impeachment trial, he voted to convict the then-former president on the article of impeachment charging him with “incitement of insurrection.”
But note, too, that Cassidy is up for re-election in 2026.
Will the Senate confirm Kennedy? I agree with Axios that it looks like a coin flip.
An addendum to my previous comment. Regardless of your feelings about the controversial persona;tires Oliver Stine and Edward Snowden, if you have not seen Stone’s documentary Snowden I suggest provides a lot of nuanced insights into the story, I am not a fanboy of Snowden, and as a result almost did not attend a screening to which I was invited. But since I make it a practice to attempt to keep an open mind with regard toco plex subjects of which I have limited knowledge, I decided to attend and was very glad that I did.
From what I heard and have read, I agree with your conclusions regarding the odds of the confirmation of each of these three nominees. Also agree with your comments regarding the pros and cons of Patel’s likely confirmation, but on balance believe the pros of him heading the FBI far outweigh the cons . Comey and Wray both were disasters in my opinion, and exemplified the worst if the deep state.
With regard to Kennedy, just as his approval is probably a coin flip ( but perhaps with the coin weighted in Trump’s favor, not Bobby’s as a reason why he might be confirmed) , I also think that the pros and cons of him heading the agency are a close call but it is so in need of major reform that I think only an insider can succeed and that he has devoted his whole life to improving the health of our citizens , even if I disagree with some of his conclusions I support his zeal in reexamine the science of our medicine ( the approval of the mRNA not really vaccines for the general public and particularly our healthy youth almost certainly took more lives than they saved) and to highlight the problems with our food supply and thus in the end I would also cheer his confirmation.
I am prepared for Tulsi to not be confirmed but nevertheless will be devastated if she is not. Unfortunately, there is no chance any Democrat will vote for her, both our of their enforced party unity and because most of them genuinely despise her for “deserting the party “ and while doing so calling out its wokeness. I agree with her stand on Snowden, but would have phrased my reply as “ I do not regard Snowden’s intent was traitorous , but whether he is legally a traitor would have to be decide by a jury, and I understand why he does not want to subject himself to that risk”. And from hearing her discuss the situation in other contexts, I think that is actually her nuanced position. I have no opinion on her Assad visit, but I do not think that a vote to approve her should be decided on whether you agree or disagree with her in two discrete instances. Rather , in the role of DNI you want an obvious patriot, thoughtful , well informed, intelligent person who has strong convictions and will forcefully and articulately argue for those convictions while understanding the chain of command and that she serves at the please of the Commander in Chief. You do not want a Swamp Creature who sticks their finger in the wind to decide their position and how strongly to advocate for it. She has served our country in the military and in Congress, and put country above party by her decision to leave the Democrativ Party ( or in reality recognizing that they left her) and opening herself to incredible abuse by the MSM. As you cal tell, I am a real fan, and have been for years. In fact.early in the 2020 primary proves a very good friend of mine who is centrist life long Democrat if there were any iffy candidates I would vote for as the Democratic nominee and much to his surprise I replied. “ from what I know and have seen about her Tulsi Gabbard” . and the country would have been I firmly better off for the last four years with her as President rather than Biden.