Who’s in Control?

The answer to the question posed in the title of this post is – the inmates are running the asylum.
Let me explain.

The original plan for my blog post today was to do a review of a new book that I’ve been reading. I even had some of that review set up ready to finish this morning. Then I listened to The Daily Podcast from the New York Times, Pete Hegseth Was Toast – The Maga Swarm Came to His Rescue.

Much of the podcast centered around the pressure put on Joni Ernst, the Republican senator from Iowa, to change her mind about supporting Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. She’d initially not been in favor of him being in charge of the U.S. military. In fact, once his nomination was announced, she was quite outspoken with all her reservations about the possibility of him having that position.

As a military combat veteran, she saw a problem with him having said on Fox News in the past that he was against women in combat. And as a woman who’d experienced sexual harassment, assault, and rape, she had issues with his history of assaulting and harassing women.

In efforts to force her to change her mind, the MAGA supporters of Trump launched a massive campaign threatening her political future, as well as making her life miserable with smear campaigns. Television ads aired in Iowa in support of Hegseth that urged people to call their senator to ask them to vote in favor of Hegseth when the nomination came to the Senate for approval. The money behind some of that advertising came from Elon Musk, who is wielding an unprecedented amount of power in government right now, merely because he’s the richest man in the world. 

Last week, Hegseth told Fox News correspondent Aieshah Hasnie that “Republican senators should not be primaried (sic) if they don’t vote for him.” He continued with, “this is not a political process.”

Huh?

First, that’s a huge contradiction. The primary process is political.

Secondly, isn’t the way nominations for top level positions in government are approved a “political process?”

According to Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution:

The President nominates and appoints officers of the United States, including ambassadors, judges of the Supreme Court, and other public ministers and consuls. The Senate must confirm the appointment of principal officers, but Congress can appoint inferior officers with the President’s approval. The President can also make temporary appointments when the Senate is not in session, but these appointments are only valid until the next Senate session ends. 

The Framers of the Constitution debated how the power of appointment should be structured. They considered giving the power to a single person, a select committee, or a single person with the consent of a select committee. They ultimately decided to divide the power between the President and the Senate, giving the President the power to nominate and the Senate the power to confirm. A perfect political check and balance system.

That system has been blown out of the water in recent decades, getting worse since 2016. Loyalty to tRump is the litmus test for decisions made for approval of nominees, and too often fear of retribution is the deciding factor. What an incredibly sad state of affairs that is. 

In attempts to redeem Hegseth from his past actions toward women, even his mother came forward to say that an e-mail she’d written to him in 2018 was a mistake. Something written in haste, without thinking.

Here is just part of that message:

“I have tried to keep quiet about your character and behavior, but after listening to the way you made Samantha feel today, I cannot stay silent. And as a woman and your mother I feel I must speak out.

“You are an abuser of women — that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”

In her recent interview on Fox & Friends she reiterated that writing the email in haste was a huge mistake and what she’d said was patently false.

As a mother with grown sons, if I’d learned of any dishonorable behavior that I then decided was serious enough to write them a letter, that certainly would not have happened in haste. No mother would ever want to have to write a letter like that to her son. So Penelope Hegseth can say, over and over, to placate the MAGAs, that she did write that letter without thinking, but there is no way that I, or any other mother, could ever totally believe that was true.

It’s obvious in the wordage that she’d thought about this off and on for years, and the anguish in her heart at having to write the message was palatable.

Which brings me back to the question of who is in charge of our government today.

By all appearances it’s the MAGA people who have the loudest voices and who’ve been drinking tRumps Kool-Aid since 2015. All those people who think it’s just fine to threaten and use violence to get what they want. All those people who think storming the Capital in 2021 was just fine. All those people who believe that tRump is going to help them. All those who believe that money and power rule.

My heart aches for this country and what the future holds.

I hope my fears are unwarranted.

That’s all from me for today, folks. I thank you for reading my missive.