Donald Trump’s nominees to lead important cabinet posts — Robert Kennedy Jr. (secretary of Health and Human Services), Matt Gaetz (attorney general), Tulsi Gabbard (director, Office of National Intelligence), Pete Hegseth (secretary, Department of Defense) and Lee Zeldin (secretary, Environmental Protection Agency), otherwise known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Plus One — are by far the worst nominees ever selected to head cabinet-level positions.
Robert Kennedy Jr. is a purveyor of vaccine falsehoods and various health conditions. Among other things, he’s claimed vaccines cause autism, anti-depressants cause mass shootings, and suggested that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. He is disinclined to understand the role of scientific method, clinical trials and peer review in establishing drug efficacy.
Kennedy states, with no discernible rationale, that he will act to fire 600 employees from the National Institute of Health. The NIH, the federal governmental agency responsible for medical research, can claim 174 of its scientists as Nobel Prize winners. Does Kennedy even realize this?
Matt Gaetz is almost universally loathed by his congressional peers. Investigated for sex trafficking and illicit drug use, he resigned from Congress rather than face the release of an ethics inquiry. In the halls of Congress, he has flaunted photos of women with whom he has had sex, and before a cheering Conservative Political Action Committee said the FBI should be abolished. Qualifications: He practiced law for two years.
Tulsi Gabbard is demonstrably unfit for this position. No other public figure has parroted Russia’s propaganda more than Tulsi Gabbard and has said favorable things about the murderous Syrian dictator, Bashar Al-Assad. If approved by the Senate, she will curate intelligence information for the president’s daily briefing. It will be slanted to favor Vladimir Putin’s world view.
Pete Hegseth is a radical white supremacist. While in the National Guard, Hegseth’s superiors received information from a fellow guard member reporting that Hegseth sports the “Deus Vult” tattoo on his arm. “Deus Vult” is a tattoo favored by white supremacist groups.
A few years back, Major General William Walker of the District of Columbia National Guard received a message from Master Sergeant Derrick Gaither indicating that Hegseth, a Guard member, is an “internal threat.” Hegseth is a commentator on Fox News and has no discernible qualifications to manage the Pentagon’s $800 billion budget and 2 million active duty and civilian workforce.
Lee Zeldin, our former congressman, received a rating of 14 out of 100 from the League of Conservation Voters. Among other things, he voted against a bill to protect 1 million acres of federal land near the Grand Canyon from Uranium mining. Zeldin is a climate denialist and the opposite of the well-known conservationist former president Teddy Roosevelt.
Mike Anthony
Westhampton
Anthony is a former chair of the Southampton Democratic Committee — Ed.
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