5 takeaways from the confirmation hearings for RFK Jr., Gabbard and Patel
Three of Trump’s more controversial nominees faced pointed questions from senators as they sought to clarify or downplay their past comments.
WASHINGTON — In a crucial day for President Donald Trump’s nominees, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel descended on Capitol Hill for confirmation hearings Thursday.
Kennedy, the nominee for health and human services secretary; Gabbard, chosen for director of national intelligence; and Patel, selected for FBI director, have all generated controversy for a similar reason: Each has launched searing criticisms of the entities they’ve been chosen to lead. Trump is testing the Republican-controlled Senate on where it will draw the line between disruption and institutionalism.
They all sought to clarify or downplay past stances or remarks that have landed them in hot water with senators who will decide whether they’re confirmed.
Here are five takeaways from the day’s Senate committee hearings.
A Republican chairman’s warning for Kennedy
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., the chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, issued some pointed remarks at the end of the hearing about Kennedy’s long history of anti-vaccine rhetoric. Cassidy, a doctor, said that he agrees with Kennedy on issues like processed food and obesity but that Kennedy has used “selected evidence to cast doubt” on proven treatments.
“My concern is that if there is any false note, any undermining of a mama’s trust in vaccines, another person will die from a vaccine-preventable disease,” Cassidy said.
“And that is why I have been struggling with your nomination,” Cassidy said, making it clear that he hasn’t made up his mind about his vote and has more questions for Kennedy — a rarity for a Republican committee chair with a Trump nominee.
“You may be hearing from me over the weekend,” Cassidy told him.
Senator gets personal with Kennedy about autism
A tumultuous hearing that featured flailing arms, a pounding gavel and shouting matches suddenly ground to a halt when Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., spoke about her son, who has cerebral palsy, causing a silence to fall over the room.
Hassan grew emotional as she spoke of not having a day go by when she thinks “what did I do when I was pregnant with him that might have caused the hydrocephalus that has so impacted his life?” She then grew emphatic: “So please do not suggest that anybody in this body of either political party doesn’t want to know what the cause of autism is.”
It was one of many intense exchanges with Kennedy that played out Thursday. While he was given numerous chances to reject theories that vaccines cause autism, he wouldn’t do it.
Patel seeks distance from MAGA persona
Patel startled some senators with the degree to which his cookie-cutter presentation before the Judiciary Committee departed from the MAGA flamethrower persona he has exhibited for years on social media and right-wing shows.
He had said “cowards in uniform” violated the “chain of command” in discussing the response to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots — he now says the remark was about senior officials’ failing to deploy the National Guard. He has called for going after people “in the media,” either “criminally or civilly” — he told senators it was a “partial quotation.” Patel also told senators the FBI would take “no retributive actions” on his watch, despite his previously expressed desires to punish Trump’s perceived foes.
It left some members of the committee scratching their heads.
“There is an unfathomable difference between a seeming facade being constructed around this nominee here today and what he has actually done and said in real life when left to his own devices,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.. “Conduct shows character. And if you look at history, you see the danger of security chiefs in authoritarian regimes’ becoming the tools of political power. The characteristics that they often show is that they are vengeful, that they are grandiose, that they are intemperate, that they are partisan and blindly loyal, that they are servile and won’t say no.”
Patel breaks with Trump on Jan. 6 pardons
Under pointed questioning, Patel made a break with Trump on his decision to issue pardons or commutations for 1,500 Jan. 6 criminal defendants, including those who confessed to assaulting police officers. Patel argued that certain violent offenders didn’t deserve leniency.
“I have always rejected any violence against law enforcement, and I have, including in that group, specifically addressed any violence against law enforcement on Jan. 6,” he said. “And I do not agree with the commutation of any sentence of any individual who committed violence against law enforcement.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who introduced Patel and defended him throughout the hearing, said he also disagrees with Trump’s move to pardon the violent rioters. “I’ve been thanking these Capitol Police officers, and I told them I actually thought that the pardons of people who did harm to police officers sucked,” he said.
Gabbard grilled about Edward Snowden
As the DNI nominee, Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who’s now a Republican, was grilled about her ability to oversee a U.S. intelligence apparatus she has vocally criticized and broken with over core issues for years.
She was peppered with questions from multiple Republican senators about her past praise of Edward Snowden — the former intelligence contractor who leaked a trove of classified information before he fled to Russia — as a “brave whistleblower.”
Gabbard stopped short of disowning her previous remarks or calling him a “traitor” as multiple members of the committee have, saying only that he “broke the law” and revealed important information in doing so.
“Even as he broke the law, he released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs that are happening within our government that led to serious reforms,” she said.
Gabbard also faced questions about her shifting positions on warrantless surveillance of foreign targets under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, from calling to repeal it to saying recently that she now supports it. She said her past opposition during congressional reauthorization was about highlighting “egregious civil liberties violations that were occurring at that time” under the program.
Separately, when Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., asked whether Russia gets “a pass in either your mind or your heart,” Gabbard replied, “Senator, I am offended by the question, because my sole focus, commitment and responsibility is about our own nation, our own security and the interests of the American people.”
_____
NBC News