From Washington: President-elect Trump Rolls Out The Cabinet
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Saturday, November 16th, 2024. I'm Jessica Rosenthal. The president-elect named several people to critical positions in his incoming administration this week, but some of them may prompt a fight, as many will require Senate confirmation. And then a number of other nominees who are going to have uphill positions

At least public relations battles, it may ultimately be confirmed, but it's going to require them to basically weather a couple of months worth of tough press. We'll see how they handle it. I'm Ryan Schmelz. A historic week on Capitol Hill as Senate Republicans elect a new leader for the first time since 2007. Well, you never quite know how these leadership races are going to turn out. It was generally thought that John Thune had the advantage. This is the Fox News Rundown from Washington.

The president-elect announced plans to put several people in various positions across his administration, including Congressman Mike Waltz for NSA, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik for U.N. Ambassador, South Dakota Governor Christine Ohm for Homeland Security Secretary, Fox's own Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary.

Some of those are named to new positions that haven't previously existed, like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will head DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency. We're assembling the brightest minds in the country. This is the equivalent of a modern Manhattan project to take on. I think the major problem holding our country back, it's the federal bureaucracy. Vivek told Fox's Sean Hannity this week that a lot of allocated funding is within programs that have already lapsed or expired.

I think that is the root cause of our failure as a country, is this unelected fourth branch of government. And I think they look at elected officials as these cute little puppets that come and go every little while. Not anymore. There's a new sheriff in town. Donald Trump's the president. Former Hawaii Democratic congresswoman turned Republican Trump surrogate Tulsi Gabbard has been named as the president-elect's director of national intelligence. She told Fox's Jesse Waters this week...

I was grateful and honored to accept President Trump's offer to serve our country and support his objective to defend the safety, security and freedom of the American people as the director of national intelligence. Now, some of those picked may have a harder time than others getting through Senate confirmation. After Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz was named as the pick for attorney general, Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman called it God level trolling.

know how hard will they simp for him and vote for that guy. To me that's like maybe that could be the next next level kinds of test for loyalty. Reporters asked about people like Gates and Gabbard. There are some appointments that I've seen that I'd be I didn't absolutely vote for that and then there's others that I just it's just a bridge too far and and certainly there's some that both sides aren't going to vote for.

uh like the ones that happened tonight but i'm not gonna freak out like oh my god i mean it's like that's really what that's what he wants you know federman said his republican senate colleague eric schmidt formerly ag of missouri would have been a better pick and that despite political differences he would absolutely vote to confirm florida senator marco rubio for secretary of state he's

Well ahead of the pace that he had eight years ago laying out his first cabinet. Karl Rove is a Fox News contributor and former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush. And it's without some of the...

sort of the tapestry and ballet of eight years ago. Remember, he had Mitt Romney come to have dinner with him in New York, a very public dinner. He said, I wasn't going to appoint him. I'm not not appointing him to the cabinet. And but this time around, it's sort of bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, which, you know, is good. You've got to get out of the box. And he's clearly thought about a bunch of these things.

The initial ones seem to be sort of reassuring. Michael Walls is a national security advisor, Marco Rubio is secretary of state. But the ones in the last couple of days have been sort of more confrontational and more, as a result, controversial.

Matt Gaetz, probably the least popular Republican member of the House of Representatives among not only Democrats, but also Republicans. And then a number of other nominees who are going to have, you know, uphill, at least public relations battles. It may ultimately be confirmed, but it's going to require them to basically weather a couple of months worth of tough press. We'll see how they handle it.

Yeah. Are we being told things?

anything with a Gates pick. I've heard some other Republicans say that not that they're concerned, but that they're a little bit surprised given that Gates had been under investigation for, I think it was sex trafficking that was dropped by DOJ, but he was still under an ethics investigation. And then he immediately resigned from Congress, right? Following this potential appointment. Are we supposed to glean anything from picking somebody like him?

Yeah, well, first of all, Gates has made it clear that he will wreak vengeance upon the Department of Justice and burn it from top to bottom, which fits with President Trump's reaction to the

efforts of the Biden Justice Department to investigate him. But it you know, that this is really sort of in a way you'd think if if Gates was comfortable that that investigation was going to by the House Ethics Commission committee was going to come to the same conclusion that the Department of Justice did where they said that we declined to prosecute, that he would have stayed and let the report come out on Friday.

The fact that he skittered out of Congress in order to bring an abrupt end to it. The Ethics Committee has no authority over former members, only current members. So the fact that he quickly...

resigned, thereby scuttling it, is going to raise doubts in people's minds. Why he did that, only he knows, but it's going to leave suspicion. And look, in a confirmation, at least the underlying evidence is going to come out. Certainly, the woman who was at the time

who claims to have had sex with him at the age of 17, her lawyers have already surfaced and said she's willing to come forward. So to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Durbin of Illinois, who will lose that post when the new Congress is sworn in, him being a Democrat and then being in the minority. But he's nonetheless sent an official letter to the House Ethics Committee saying, preserve all documents. We're going to want to see that. And I suspect that

The members of the Senate are going to want to see it. And it's frankly important for the country one way or the other to come to a conclusion about it. If if if they don't see if we don't see the report and he gets confirmed, then there's always going to be doubts about him. And if he doesn't get confirmed, then people are going to say, well, it was on the basis of rumor and innuendo. So it's better for the country to have it all come out before we even got anything.

picks right carl we got rejections we got uh notified that mike pompeo nikki haley would not be a part of this administration i i just i know that's a little bit of old news but i think it's important right because we were like you said the this happened more quickly right he moved more quickly but also it sounded like wanted to tell people you know i'm not i'm specifically not going with these types of people

Well, I thought it was unnecessary and unhelpful to the former president. This is a moment of unity. It made him look small. And this is a moment where the country needs the new president to look big. He didn't need to say anything about him.

He didn't need to. Just simply the fact that he didn't pick them at the end of the day would have been enough. But for him to go out of his way to say neither one of these people will be invited to serve in my administration, I thought was unnecessary and missed and sort of a waste of time. I mean, he most he's got only a limited amount of time to get up and get going, and he's making by and large the best use of it. But that was a wasted day. That was a day where the news was

He's not bringing in his principal opponent in the presidential primaries this year, and he's not bringing in the highly respected director of the CIA and secretary of state from his last administration. So, you know, nothing, he didn't advance the ball that day. Every day, he and his people ought to say, how can we advance the image of us being a strong, effective administration that's uniting the country, moving forward on our agenda and putting forth strong people?

Carl, I wonder about – I'm so interested in hearing everyone's thoughts about DOGE because I think logistically there are so many fascinating questions about how this is all going to come together, this Department of Government efficiency. Congress is in charge of the purse. So how much does this new department run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy –

How much do they need? Like, how important is it then that the Republicans have the House and the Senate if they're going to need to go to Congress and say, hey, let's let's get rid of all these programs?

Yeah, well, look, we don't have kings. We have constitutional government, so an unappointed committee cannot make decisions unless the Congress grants it the authority to make decisions like we did with the base reauthorization committee, the BRAC.

And with that, that committee could make a recommendation and it was guaranteed that it would be voted up or down as a package rather than individual decisions to close this or that facility. And but Congress ultimately had to make the decision. What I understand and we don't you know, I may be wrong in this. My understanding is, is that the object is for them to give their report by 2026, the middle of 2026. Well, that's problematic.

because we'll be months away from a midterm election. I hope that the leaders of this committee say, are objected to recommendations as we move along so that in January and February of 2025, we can begin sending recommendations up to the Hill for them to digest. Because the last thing that will happen is they come out with a gigantic plan

A list of stuff in June or July of 2026 is everybody's getting ready to run, you know, the final sprint to the finish of the election. Oh, my gosh. It's going to be zero, zero. Carl, that is such an amazing point, right? Like no one wants to put their name on a vote or maybe I'm sure there will be some people who will. They'll gladly say let's let's vote whenever. But you're right. I mean, why? Why put that on their laps at that time? And look, that's that's an amazing point.

And also, in order to get things done, you need to have people on the Hill be able to digest it, even if it's a great idea. For example, we have with Medicaid a work requirement, which I think would be wildly popular among Republicans on the Hill and more importantly, wildly popular with Americans. Yes, we want to help people who are in difficulty and in need. And we want them to be responsible, which means they need to have a job or be looking for work actively, that kind of thing.

Why wait until 2026? Look at what the savings would be from that and make a recommendation sooner rather than later. So my hope is that the Doge leadership is thinking about how can we set up a process by which we make decisions

early decisions about some things and don't wait until the summer of 2026 to lay it all out. Such an interesting point. Okay, finally, this past week, we saw the big meeting at the White House between the POTUSs, the POTUSi, President Trump and President Biden. Karine Jean-Pierre said that President Biden wanted it relayed to the press that Trump came with detailed questions

And after the meeting, Trump himself, I think, told the New York Post that he picked the president's brain. He mentioned the Middle East. What do you make of sort of what's come out of this meeting? Do you think it was pretty foreign policy focused?

Well, I don't know, but I was glad it happened. It's symbolic. And right now we need symbols of the peaceful transfer of power and of comidity. There was Donald Trump sitting next to Joe Biden and Joe Biden sitting next to Donald Trump. And you can imagine in the recesses of both of their minds, there might be some strong feelings about things. And yet both of the men were cordial to each other. And it was good for the country to see that.

So I don't know what happened, but I'm glad it happened. And I'm glad both of them, both men behave themselves and acted in the way that we want the American people want to see, which is. But waiting for almost two hours, Carl, that's that's that's a long time. Well, you know, it's.

And it does probably mean that, look, Trump is a, my sense of him is that he likes to collect information. He's a SOP for information. So he's sitting there with Biden, and he's smart enough to know that Biden knows things that he may not know. And even if there are things that Trump has an opinion about, it was probably useful for him to solicit Biden's opinion. So I'm glad it happened. I'm glad it took that long.

I thought it was the only down note for me was Jake Sullivan. Mr. You know, remember his famous report just before the October 7th.

Yep. Invention of Israel, where he said everything in the Middle East is copacetic. We've cooled it all down. Hasn't been this quiet in 20 years, was the quote. 20 years, he says. The night before the two presidents met, he sort of went out there and took a whack at Trump, giving him advice, public advice on what he ought to do. Well, sorry, Jake, you lost that opportunity. You have an opportunity to give him private counsel, but stop grandstanding. Karl Rove,

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Right now at Blinds.com. Rules and restrictions may apply. For the first time since 2007, Senate Republicans have a new leader. Current Senate Minority Whip John Thune will replace Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving party Senate leader in history. After defeating two fellow Republicans in a closed-door election, the next Senate Majority Leader promising a better path forward. We have a mandate from the American people.

A mandate not only to clean up the mess left by the Biden-Harris-Schumer agenda, but also to deliver on President Trump's priorities. He will join House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was unanimously chosen to return as the GOP's nominee for speaker. We have to deliver for the American people beginning on day one in the new Congress, and we will be ready for that.

But while both are excited to work together and work with the incoming Trump administration, the two already have their work cut out for them. Speaker Johnson will see his majority continue to shrink, with President-elect Trump selecting a couple of House members to fill Cabinet positions, while Thune will have to get Republicans on the same page to get Trump's Cabinet picks confirmed.

including those who have divided the GOP. Well, you never quite know how these leadership races are going to turn out. It was generally thought that John Thune had the advantage. Fox's senior congressional correspondent, Chad Pergram, explains how Thune won a historic election and challenges he faces. But there was certainly this concerted effort by the MAGA forces on Capitol Hill and mostly outside of Capitol Hill.

Hill, frankly, for Rick Scott. He ran against Mitch McConnell two years ago. He got 10 votes then. He got 13 this time, but it wasn't enough. And in a three-way race, one wondered if it was going to make it a little more dangerous for John Thune, because if he went to a second ballot -- and per the Republican conference rules here, the person with the least votes drops out for the next round.

And so Rick Scott dropped out. Where did that slate of votes go? So it was reasonably tight in the end, 29-24. J.D. Vance, the Republican senator and vice president-elect, he was there and apparently voted. We don't know who he supported, although I hollered a question to him in the hall. You know, some people, in fact, I talked to one Republican senator who worried about Vance possibly putting his thumb on the scale there. But John Thune is the leader.

And this is the question now. Immediately, John Thune got a test. This nomination of Matt Gaetz to be the attorney general, Tulsi Gabbard, the former representative from Hawaii, to be the director of national intelligence. A lot of people on Capitol Hill immediately, even in Republican ranks, started to take a very dim view of those two picks, Gaetz in particular. You had a lot of Republican senators saying, well, we will do our due diligence.

You had Susan Collins of Maine saying, well, you know, there's a reason we have background checks, you know, before somebody goes through the confirmation process. So how that's going to work out for John Thune, we don't know. Was this really just an effort by Matt Gaetz to leave the House and

and avoid an ethics committee report later this week about how he was doing. There was this probe of him and alleged sex trafficking and things of that nature to get out of the House, avoid that, shut down that investigation. That investigation ends if you leave the House of Representatives. But that's the exact type of concern that many senators have, even on the Republican side of the aisle. And John Thune

In his first question about this, somebody in the hall, one of our folks from Fox, said, what about the Matt Gaetz nomination? He said, well, I think that's a question for the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. So read into that what you will, Ron.

And you could also argue the Pete Hegseth nomination for defense secretary is probably one that's going to draw a lot of criticism, too, from Democrats. And then there could be some Republicans who might be questioning that pick as well. So we'll have to wait and see how that goes. And, of course, I think one of the first questions Thune was also asked, Chad, was, are you going to support President Trump's

idea for using recess appointments to confirm some of these or in seat some of these nominees and it didn't seem like Thune full-on committed that he said he would still like to see them go through the process of going through a committee going through hearings and then still having the votes on the floor so I think in some ways we're already kind of seeing whether or not Thune's gonna have that test of doing what President-elect Trump wants which is to get these people through as quickly as possible

And that is the test here, because, again, you know, John Thune was committed to that, but he is also committed to Senate prerogatives. He indicated in his kind of acceptance speech, he said that he would maintain the Senate legislative filibuster. So that's important to many Republican senators. But you're right. What if he kind of strays from where, you know, president elect wants him to be?

That's going to be a real test of all these Republican senators when it comes to these controversial nominations. And don't forget that there has been a precedent where you've had an administration, a Republican administration, not that long ago, remove the Senate majority leader, kind of building up pressure to do so. That happened in 2002.

You had Trent Lott, who had been the majority leader from Mississippi. And really Republicans were kind of looking, some Republicans in the Bush administration, this is George W. Bush, were looking for a reason to remove him.

He said some things about Strom Thurmond and about the Civil War and all that type of thing. Strom Thurmond, the late senator from South Carolina, his 100th birthday, and he talked about him running for president back in the '40s and said maybe if he had been elected we wouldn't have some of these same problems we have today. So Republicans kind of latched onto that and said, okay, we can't have John, we can't have Trent Lott in the Senate being the leader anymore. They removed him, put in Bill Frist from Tennessee,

I'm not saying that that's going to happen yet with John Thune, but there is a precedent for that. And considering how President-elect Trump did not weigh in on this leadership race, that was very interesting. Maybe if he's not getting the results he wants, he can be hard to please. Maybe he will weigh in at some point on how John Thune is doing. He certainly did so with Mitch McConnell, the outgoing GOP leader.

And from what I heard, some senators believe that one of the reasons you didn't hear the president elect weigh in is because they feel that that would could set up for a toxic relationship or maybe just a contentious relationship if the person he picks ultimately didn't win. Now, of course, he decided not to weigh in. And we we now have John Thune as majority leader going into the next Congress. But, you know, Chad, what what do we know about the relationship Thune and Trump have and how does it compare to maybe the relationship Trump and McConnell had?

Well, the Trump and McConnell relationship, that was pretty bad, frankly. I mean, I don't think Mitch McConnell had much respect for Donald Trump at all. He ironically engineered some of his biggest successes of his administration, muscling through these three Supreme Court justices, changing the filibuster provisions for Supreme Court nominees. That was certainly what he did with Neil Gorsuch.

and then getting Amy Coney Barrett through right before the election in 2020. I mean, when he let the nomination of Merrick Garland sit out there for months and months and months under President Obama back in 2016. I mean, that was pretty raw, bold politics by Mitch McConnell, but he didn't get much love from Donald Trump. So yes,

There have been situations where John Thune and Donald Trump have been on different pages. Back in 2016, after the Access Hollywood tape, you had a situation where John Thune said, look, I think that the nominee, Trump, should step aside. Mike Pence should be the Republican nominee.

the second impeachment trial. He said that he believed that President Trump had subverted democracy, at least tried to, even though he voted to acquit in that impeachment trial. But they seem to have patched things up a little bit. But again, there's going to be a test of the limits here.

And if we could transition over to the House, Chad, Speaker Johnson has been selected as the speaker nominee for the Republican conference, but that doesn't guarantee that he is going to have the votes on the floor to become speaker officially just yet.

Right, exactly. And so, you know, there was a little bit of resistance there with Speaker Johnson. You know, something that they've agreed to here is to kind of raise the bar to remove a speaker. We had that last fall with Kevin McCarthy. And rather than just having one person, you know, say, hey, I'm going to move to vacate the chair, who ironically enough, it was Matt Gaetz, by the way, they're going to raise that bar to nine, at least nine members.

He seems to have the support Johnson does of President-elect Trump. I mean, he said he's my guy in the meeting. But still, there are some conservatives who just haven't been mullified on this. Again, they seem to just not like how anything is done in the House of Representatives. That's always the problem here. They talked about running somebody, but they didn't.

So, you know, they can have a lot of concerns and issues with Johnson. But if you can't run somebody and let alone win, that's another problem. I mean, it's one thing to complain, but they can't actually do something about it. So, yes, could there be some people defect from Mike Johnson on the floor? It can't be many.

If it's going to be this narrow majority next year, you know, it's all about the math, as I always say. This is why we went 15 votes with Kevin McCarthy to get elected speaker in January two years ago. But I asked Johnson the other day, I said, do you think that some of this drama has gone away? And he said, yes.

And it probably helps that he has the full backing of President-elect Trump. You know, that kind of gives the blessing there and the imprimatur that this is the guy. Because if, be honest with you, if they screw around for several days with a speaker vote and everything else, I mean, you know, they're not going to get anything done. They can talk all they want to about changing policies and environment and wokeism and everything else. But if you can't elect a speaker, then you are dead in the water right out of the gate.

And a lot of this surrounds the rules package and some of the issues that conservative members have. It looks like they've come to an agreement and a compromise, like you just mentioned, on the motion to vacate threshold. But there's still some other aspects of the rules that are outstanding. Can you kind of get into what those are and what Johnson probably needs to do here in order to get some more members on board so that we don't have any drama when he goes to the floor to become speaker?

Well, that's the whole thing about this motion to vacate. I mean, that seems to be the big one, but they want, you know, a more open amendment process. They want things to gurgle up from the members and the committees. But at some point, Mike Johnson is going to have to move a bill to fund the government. This Congress, before December 20th, that's not that far away, frankly, or there's going to be a government shutdown. Okay, we didn't even talk about that, frankly. They're going to probably have to raise the debt ceiling in the early part of next year, probably in the first month or two.

And those are bills that, you know, just don't, you know, that you don't have hearings and you don't have time and you just, I mean, it's just not how that has historically worked. And that's what these guys want. You know, the conservatives, the arch conservatives. And again, we'll see. I mean, you know, we talked about the tenuous nature of John Thune. We think that maybe things are a little bit better for Mike Johnson, but you never know. Let's see how things go early next year.

And if we could touch on the government shutdown, there's reporting that Leader Schumer is eyeing another omnibus or minibus. I believe a couple of months ago, Johnson said there is absolutely no way he's doing another omnibus or minibus to fund the government into fiscal year 2025. There's also been conservative members who would like to see maybe a CR here and a short term spending package to fund the government, maybe like March or February and pretty much allow omnibus.

a Republican Congress and President-elect Trump to put together the funding package for the next fiscal year. Where do you think we stand on that and what do you think happens next? The person who has not weighed in on this is the incoming president.

And probably what he decides that he wants is what they will try to do here on Capitol Hill. I mean, in spite of what Schumer wants, I mean, Schumer is going to advocate for democratic policies because you have, you know, some of this money on the books right now is reflected by the democratic majority, the current democratic majority in the Senate and also President Biden. So he's going to fight for that. But if they can't come to an agreement, I mean, we've spent three or four days here just organizing the Congress.

They've done very little in the way of legislation. They do have until the 20th of December. We don't know what Mr. Trump is going to ask for here, but can they get that in? And again, keep in mind that every time they had to fund the government, they funded it with this Republican majority with Democratic votes. Let me say that again. In other words, the majority didn't have the votes. They did it with the minority. And the Democrats, unless they get what they want here, might say, you know, guys,

You're going to be in the majority. Push back from the table. Have at it. Thanks for playing. See you in church. And, you know, Republicans can't move those bills with the votes on their side of the aisle. And maybe there is a risk for a government shutdown if they don't have any Democratic assistance. I mean, the Democrats carried, you know, all sorts of water for the Republicans in the House all Congress long.

And I think that they're probably going to be very reluctant to do that, at least on this spending round right now, especially if Republicans insist on something that doesn't have any of these Democratic priorities in there.

And keep in mind, you know, Republicans still only have a very small majority in the House. Democrats still have control of the Senate until January. And President Biden is still occupying the White House. And that's all going to play into this, too. And, you know, Republicans do have some leverage with the fact that they're taking over Congress. But in the meantime, it's still the Democrats Senate and it's still President Biden's White House. Yeah. And that's the problem right there. Democrats still have some sway and that will be a factor in this spending round.

All right, Chad, looks like we are up against the clock, but thank you as always for the awesome insight. My pleasure. Thank you.

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That'll do it for this edition of the Fox News Rundown from Washington. Tomorrow, we speak with West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito, the chair-elect of the Senate GOP Policy Committee. She'll tell us about Republican priorities in the Senate, and she'll preview the confirmation process for President-elect Trump's cabinet nominations. I'm Jessica Rosenthal. Thanks for listening to the Fox News Rundown from Washington.

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