Summary
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) dismissed the necessity of FBI background checks for Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees, claiming the public prioritizes implementing Trump’s policies over vetting appointees.
On ABC’s This Week, Hagerty criticized Biden officials and supported Trump’s expedited transition process, despite reports that many nominees, including Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard, have bypassed FBI checks.
Moderator Jonathan Karl expressed concern over abandoning standard vetting practices, but Hagerty argued the FBI is “weaponized” and insisted checks would be completed quickly, though no evidence supports his claims of agency bias.
Why would anyone be shocked by this?
Their leader is a felon. Any pretense of norms or the rule of law - gone.
People in the media need to stop feigning fucking shock over this shit.
If you’re still shocked you’re complicit because these assholes have been telling you very clearly who they are and what they plan to do for over ten years now.
How do you expect us to take you seriously as arbiters of the truth when you’re fucking constantly shocked stupid by the reality that’s been staring you in the face for a decade. At a certain point, it beggars belief that you’re somehow still shocked that shitty people who promised to be shitty people are indeed shitty people doing the shitty things they promised to do.
If you’re truly, genuinely shocked at this point, you’re an idiot.
The folks who are shocked seems to be because they can’t interpret beyond the exact literal words they say.
I think way too many people in journalism were taught that they should be stenographers who should be mostly concerned about having access to politicians, and being overly gun-shy of being labeled “liberal” (ZOMG! Not liberal!).
Thing is, the nuts will call them “liberal” no matter what, so playing the bullshit “objective” game of trying to find “both sides” to every story, no matter how much one side is fucking lying their ass off, is just not going to prevent the wingers from calling corporate outlets “liberal”.
It’s an abdication of journalistic responsibility, this refusal to contextualize and explain. It’s all just repeating the surface of what people said today, without any attempt to communicate what’s at stake and why it matters. This is the journalistic equivalent of the useless manager who does nothing but forward emails.
My local news channel yesterday kept repeating “so called hush money”. It’s not so called he was fucking convicted.
The problem is that the people who need to get their head out of their ass and start paying attention aren’t watching the medias that would confront the politicians defending Trump.
A felon is president-elect. It doesn’t matter about the cabinet. It’ll just be whatever oligarch has his ear this week that will dictate his policies
Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense and Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence—have not gone through the FBI process, as Trump does not trust federal background checks.
the donvict wouldn’t even pass a background check himself.
Remember when Jared had to resubmit his SF86 like a dozen times before Trump said “fuck it, just give him a clearance”
That’s what they mean by the FBI being “weaponized” against them: it’s doing the job effectively and rightly identifying Republicans as crooks and spies.
Funny thing… the FBI is “weaponized” against people who have dodgy backgrounds. I can see how that could present issues for the modern Republican party.
That said… I’ve had that check done. It took about 4 months. Obviously, I’m not as high a priority as the US executive team, but Trump is in a situation where he needs to get everyone vetted by mid-December. That’s better than what he did last time around, where he didn’t even begin most of the vetting for appointments until after inauguration.
I had a top secret clearance in my old job. The whole process usually takes less than 9 months and anything outside a year usually means there’s something fishy with your background. It boggles my mind that members of Congress aren’t required to have security clearances and waiving background checks is completely insane. They’re clearly hiding a lot of nefarious and dodgy crap that would otherwise disqualify them from office
In my experience, if you’re white, male, and have a semblance of your shit together, you’ll be done in 6 months or less. I’ve seen minorities stuck in the process for years, despite having the squeaky-cleanest of records. (On the flip side, I heard a rumor that someone in the building recently got their reinvestigation processed successfully despite having recently received their 3rd DUI…) The exception to that is if you’re in the military, as the government will have a record of anything you’ve ever done, and if you’re an officer then you probably already have a clearance to begin with.
The process must have slowed down considerably. About two decades ago I had a security clearance (just a basic one for access to some military bases for contract work) and that process, although the paperwork was a nightmare, got cleared in under 2 months. I’m sure a higher level of access takes longer, but equally someone being vetted for one of the highest offices in the world is certainly going to be a higher priority than some military contractor pleb.
About a decade ago there was a huge Chinese hack into one of the security clearance contractors, who then lost the contract, so the final remaining contractor has been playing catch up ever since.
That was fucking insane. I remember being dumbfounded to learn that the clearance agency had fired all of the investigators from that contractor, only for a new contractor to rehire them all and win the contract to process clearances again. Horrorshow.
There is nothing normal about this, stop trying to normalize it.
He didn’t vet people after the inauguration last time. He didn’t do it at all.
He vetted them for not being like Hitler’s generals at a record pace afterward though
Background checks bad, genital checks good.
This is how you get people into positions where they can be blackmailed
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Translation: “You don’t seriously expect me to oppose the doings of Trump and the GOP, do you? I’ll lose my job!”
Hot take here. Please listen to the interview if you want to debate it. I took the Senator as saying the background checks should be done expeditiously by the FBI. That was his long answer. I don’t think the “Certainly” quoted in the text of the article was a direct answer to the question of if he was saying they are not needed.
I’m going to be a bit provocative here and ask people:
What are YOU doing about it?
What are YOU doing about it?
Nothing. I fought my fight for years. I’m done.
This is a dumb situation caused by years of stupid people not understanding democracy.
Popcorn?
Scooping up old pressure cookers on Craigslist.
Eating popcorn and futilely hoping the fallout stays mostly contained to America.
Rawlsian veil of ignorance
strikes againwould once again be awesome to use.Imagine that one side gets no background checks, and the other does, but you don’t know which side gets what. Do you agree to that?
the republicunts care only about preserving their power and money. they are worthless traitor filth that a just society would force to account.
