Trump nominees Kennedy, Patel, Hegseth are unorthodox picks. That’s the point

Last week, I shared a few thoughts on a few of once and future President Donald Trump’s nominees for cabinet positions. Some readers were more incensed about nominees I didn’t mention than those I did. Good thing I promised to return this week with more thoughts on more nominees.

At the top of the list of Nominees that Gazette Columnist Althea Cole Conspicuously Neglected to Mention Last Week: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kash Patel for Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. You know, all the really “controversial” ones.

A quick aside: I’m not the only conservative that noticed long ago that media outlets tend to be more liberal with their use of the word “controversial” when describing Republican ideas and officials.

The nominations of Kennedy, Patel and Hegseth are what I would call outside the box. And while I don’t normally like to speak on behalf of all conservatives and Republicans, I’ll make an exception this week: We know they’re unorthodox nominees. That’s the whole point.

Granted, not all of the picks are unusual. A number of them are the same longtime politicians prone to Beltway-style business as usual — distinct from their Democrat-appointed predecessors regarding policy, sure, but similar in the sense that they’re … well, politicians. New York Rep. Elise Stefanik for United Nations ambassador, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for U.S. Ambassador to Israel and several others all seem fairly typical in terms of political nominations.

Of course, “typical” appointments include those for loyal supporters, whether or not the president is Donald Trump. Loyalty was likely behind the nomination of former U.S. Ambassador to Argentina Noah Bryson Mamet in 2014. Mamet, a big-dollar fundraiser for former President Barack Obama, had to admit at his confirmation hearing that he had never actually been to Argentina. (Cringe!)

Appointments for loyal supporters aren’t always a bad idea. I think former Acting Attorney General and Iowa football player will do a great job as U.S. Ambassador to NATO. And this Cyclone doesn’t just hand out compliments to Hawkeyes.

Perhaps it would be better understood by everyone else if I framed the conservative consensus on Trump’s more “controversial” picks in the least generous of terms: Conservatives, including your friendly neighborhood opinion columnist, don’t hate these nominees — at all, let alone as much as the anti-Trump opposition demands.

It’s kind of amusing, in fact. Not terribly long ago, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was floated as a potential EPA pick for then-incoming President Barack Obama. Most of RFK Jr.’s political history and policy positions look like something out of a Democrat playbook: fighting Big Pharma and their drugs, Big Ag and their pesticides, and Big Energy and their hydraulic fracturing. Take his name off the plan and call it something other than MAHA (“Make America Healthy Again,”) and Democrats might even support RFK Jr.’s desire to rid the American diet of ultra-processed foods and other factors that supposedly contribute to chronic illness.

RFK Jr.’s past positions on vaccines, whether real, imagined or misunderstood, have enabled many to claim he would eradicate the polio vaccine.

Such would be a dealbreaker for a lot of us. To wit, RFK Jr. has confirmed that he does not intend to eliminate the polio vaccine. Trump has insisted he would not pursue any such policy. Unless Trump is lying as blatantly as President Joe Biden did about pardoning his son, I see no path forward for radical changes to vaccine authorization without proper and plentiful scientific evidence — an understandably tall order.

Much more so than RFK Jr., I’m excited for some of the outsiders Trump has nominated for lower HHS posts, That includes Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon, professor and policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University to lead the Food and Drug Administration and Jay Bhattacharya, an economist, physician and Professor of Medicine at Stanford to lead the National Institutes of Health, the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world.

Despite their credentials and their positions at some of the most elite universities in the country, Makary and Bhattacharya faced scrutiny and ridicule for their positions on COVID-19 mitigation strategies early in the pandemic — positions that turned out to be right.

Bhattacharya in particular coauthored the Great Barrington Declaration with two other infectious disease experts. In it, they warned against school closures and other lockdowns, arguing that those measures could have worse effects on physical and mental health in low-risk populations than COVID-19 itself.

After the declaration’s release, then-NIH Director Francis Collins immediately dismissed Bhattacharya and his coauthors as “fringe epidemiologists,” claiming in an email to lead COVID-19 pandemic adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, “There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down” of their warning against lockdowns.

Time, scientific data and our own realizations have since proven Bhattacharya and his cohorts right while public health bureaucrats Collins and Fauci, among others, have gone on to admit that their advice wasn’t always based on solid scientific evidence and their communication with the public did more harm than good.

Both Fauci and Collins have left the NIH. Assuming he is confirmed, Bhattacharya will have Collins’ old job, which a Wall Street Journal op-ed described as “karmic justice.” For everyone who suffered the effects of lockdowns and mask mandates, justice starts with the notion that the highly-qualified outsider Bhattacharya might actually do well at it. He’s certainly battle-tested.

So might Kashyap Patel, the “outsider” nominee for FBI director who the media has largely portrayed as nothing more than a Trump loyalist determined to jail his leader’s enemies. According to former colleagues, an agenda of jailing Trump’s enemies isn’t exactly representative of Patel’s background as a federal prosecutor and public defender.

“The only explanation for someone to take [the public defender] path is because they believe in the justice system in the way Kash does,” wrote former Patel colleague Michael Spivack in a recent op-ed. “He understands that … the best way to keep people free is to keep the justice system impartial and keep government abuse in check.”

Patel certainly has his work cut out for him to lead a bureau whose leaders are usually chosen from within, where people close ranks to protect their allies and those viewed as detrimental to the team get squeezed out.

So does Pete Hegseth, should he survive the confirmation process to become Secretary of Defense.

Though chosen to lead the Pentagon for the same reasons Patel was tapped for the FBI, Hegseth, a former Army National Guard officer, Iraq War veteran, veterans’ advocate and Fox News host, has a bumpy road ahead to be confirmed. In Hegseth’s past are two contentious divorces, anonymous accusation of sexual assault with an accompanying nondisclosure agreement and anonymous claims of mismanaging two veterans’ organizations where he was employed and allegedly drank on the job.

Hegseth should have the full right to defend himself from all of those arrows, just as senators should have a right to discern and seek more information, lest we face another confirmation fiasco with Kavanaugh-esqe implications. If allegations turn out to be false or can otherwise be explained away, the only thing that should stand between Hegseth and the role of Defense Secretary are questions about his merit as the contender for the job.

That said — if I were a senator, and if Hegseth’s background check comes back clean and the stories all have explanations, I would still take a moment to advise him not to drink a drop of alcohol in public and avoid crossing paths with any woman who isn’t his wife. He’s potentially got a big enough job ahead of him as an outside-the-box pick for Secretary of Defense.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that Trump and his team understand what his voters have been asking for: not just a different president, but a different direction for the country. Far be it from me to rain on that parade and suggest more of the D.C. insider type.

Trump, the “shake things up” candidate, can’t shake off the whole Beltway bureaucracy. There are too many D.C. insiders with too many personal interests depending on the bureaucracy to remain intact. Not enough outsiders have the poise, patience and skills — not to mention the will — needed to permanently reform government.

But even if they only number a relative few, these Trump nominees are a dramatic departure from their predecessors.

That’s not a coincidence. It’s the whole point behind Trump’s return to the White House — a point made resoundingly by American voters willing to try for better.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com