Category: Daily Musts

The quadrennial gladiatorial contests known as Senate confirmation hearings start today. Gladiator I is Pete Hegseth, nominated to run the Department of Defense, who comes before the Senate Armed Services Committee today. Fox Digital reports:

President-elect Donald Trump nominated Hegseth to shake up the Pentagon as his defense secretary, but the former Fox News host has been entangled in controversies that Democrats on the committee can be expected to question him about. 

“Democrats certainly aren’t going to make this a walk in the park by any means,” one Republican aide said. 

Hegseth faces a “skeptical Senate,” according to an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. An emerging line of attack: The FBI report on Hegseth is insufficient:

One missed opportunity came when the bureau did not interview one of Mr. Hegseth’s ex-wives before its findings were presented to senators last week, according to people familiar with the bureau’s investigation.

“Quite a few of the women with significant allegations against him have not been interviewed by the F.B.I. investigators,” Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois and another member of the panel, said on MSNBC on Monday evening, adding that some of those women feared for their safety and that of their children.

The New York Times points to other issues Hegseth’s opponents will raise. Hey, it takes a big guy (or gal) to fill Lloyd “I Forgot to Phone in Sick” Austin’s shoes. This will be an action-packed week with Kristi Noem (Homeland Security) up tomorrow, AG nominee Pam Bondi also facing her hearings tomorrow and Thursday, and State Department nominee Marco Rubio tomorrow. Here is the schedule for Senate confirmation hearings. The Hill suggests that Democratic hopes of derailing Trump nominees are fading fast. Former Trump National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien urges that the entire Trump National Security team, including DNI-nominee Tulsi Gabbard, be confirmed immediately.

President Joe Biden yelled and whispered a valedictory (please let it be valedictory!) address yesterday at the State Department in which he looked at his foreign affairs record and pronounced it remarkable. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal strongly disagrees:

The President might have regained some credibility had he asked Congress to begin rebuilding U.S. defenses. Instead he proposed a cut in defense after inflation in every one of his budgets. He leaves Mr. Trump having to rebuild the military amid a budget deficit in the range of $2 trillion a year thanks to his blowout domestic spending. If this is a “strong hand,” what would a weak one look like?

Not wanting to be another Karen (Bass), President Biden was forced to cancel his trip to Rome to meet with Pope Francis because of the California wildfires. But he gave the Holy Father a blessing. The Wall Street Journal’s Bill McGurn comments:

The award comes as each nears the end of his time in office. With less than a week to go in Washington, Mr. Biden will leave behind a weakened American presence on the world stage at a time of heightened global conflict. In Rome, meanwhile, Pope Francis has diminished the papacy’s moral witness in similar ways and for similar reasons.

May I digress just a moment to mention that Pope Francis is sending perhaps the most liberal Cardinal in Cardinaldom to serve as Archbishop of the Washington, D.C. Archdiocese? Robert Cardinal McElroy is an outspoken critic of Donald President-elect Trump, and so this could be considered a poke in the eye of the incoming President.

The Los Angeles wildfires are still burning with a new blaze erupting in Ventura. The devastation is terrible. “I can think of few healthy, un-incarcerated people in this world I would less prefer to be right now than Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass,” Jeffrey Blehar writes at National Review. But Blehar adds:

Karen Bass isn’t the real answer to any of these questions, and [California Governor Gavin] Newsom is well aware of it. That’s why he would prefer, more than anyone else, that we focus our attentions on her rather than him. If you don’t think that Newsom is terrified of what the Los Angeles fires portend for his national hopes as a presidential candidate, then just watch his body language in every interview he’s given since the fires began burning. He’s running scared. 

There is a recall effort against Newsom, and this time it might work. While the risks of wildfires grew, California officials focused on climate change, according to an article in City Journal. A PJ Media post says that California officials want to blame the fires on global warming but that 95 percent are started by people. Newsom’s policies “tilted at carbon emissions,” but not fire mitigation,” according to an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke suggests that California may be at a tipping point:

Lest I be misunderstood, when I propose that California is “really badly run,” I do not mean that it is run by people with whose politics I disagree — although that is undoubtedly true. I mean that it is run by people who are incompetent at the tasks of taxing and spending, passing and enforcing laws, representing their constituents, and dealing with emergencies. 

Binging on National Review this morning, Ms. Must also calls your attention to Rich Lowry’s “It’s Okay That We Don’t Have More Female Firefighters.” The LAFD Chief thought otherwise but she may—or may not—be learning that diversity doesn’t put out wildfires.

Joe Biden isn’t the only person doing valedictories: Jen Rubin announced with a Substack post that she has quit her columnist job at the Washington Post. Not enough Trump hatred at the Post, apparently. Rubin is partnering with Obama White House ethics czar Norm Eisen to start a new venture, to be called The Contrarian (The Bulwark is already taken):

The startup’s tagline, “Not owned by anybody,” is a pointed reference to billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and other moguls who, in Rubin’s view, have “bent the knee” to President-elect Donald Trump.

Norm Eisen said last night on the news that there will even be a humor column. I can hardly wait.

Former Senator and economist Phil Gramm has an op-ed on “the immigrants America needs” in the Wall Street Journal, which advises that the U.S. limit asylum claims, reduce welfare, and open the door to highly-skilled foreign nationals. Senator Gramm starts with a charming portrait of Soon Nam Char, the grandmother of his wife, Wendy Gramm, a beloved board member in IWF’s early days.

Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren writes in the same esteemed outlet that she will lead Democrats on the Banking Committee to help Donald Trump “unrig” the economy—is there an ambush in here somewhere?—and Gerard Baker says that Treasury Secretary-designate might find it very hard to carry through with his good plans.

In our system, it’s the job of juries and judges to convict or acquit. So the President-elect has a point when he goes on a Truth Social tirade against former prosecutor and his own personal Inspector Javert Jack Smith, who says that Trump would have been convicted of election interference if he had not won the election. From the post:

“Deranged Jack Smith was unable to successfully prosecute the Political Opponent of his ‘boss,’ Crooked Joe Biden, so he ends up writing yet another ‘Report’ based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks  and Thugs ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED, because it showed how totally innocent I was, and how completely guilty Nancy Pelosi, and others, were,” Trump raged.

Funny How People Aren’t Subservient When You’re Going Out of Power Instead of Coming In: The Free Beacon has a piece on Hunter Biden Special Counsel David Weiss slamming the President for attacking the Hunter prosecutors as biased against the prominent abstract expressionist artist. Looking ahead to next Monday, we have it on good authority that our favorite vehicle is going to be in the inaugural parade.  

THIS JUST IN: Even better, 33 Hamas hostages are reportedly being released. Please let them all come home before the Inauguration.