"A clown car collection of cabinet members." With Mother Jones' David Corn
The Bill Press Pod
BP Pods
4.7 • 601 Ratings
🗓️ 17 December 2024
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s guest is David Corn, the Washington Bureau Chief for Mother Jones, the progressive magazine and website. He is also and MSNBC contributor. He and Bill talk about the slate of cabinet nominees selected by President Trump, highlighting concerns about their lack of qualifications, experience, and potential conflicts of interest. David says Trump has assembled a "crank" cabinet of "cronies and oligarchs" who are unqualified and inexperienced for their positions, such as Peter Hegseth for Secretary of Defense and Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence. Many of the nominees, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services, hold extreme ideological views that are at odds with the mission of the agencies they would lead. Key Trump loyalist Kash Patel, who has pushed conspiracy theories about the Russia investigation, could use his position as FBI Director to go after Trump's political enemies. David is concerned that the media and some corporations appear to be pre-emptively caving to Trump, settling lawsuits and making donations to curry favor rather than standing up to his attacks on the press and democratic institutions. He also criticizes Democrats for not doing enough to forcefully oppose these problematic nominations and Trump's broader authoritarian agenda.
David writes a great newsletter, “Our Land,” which you can get here: MotherJones.com/OurLandNewsletter.
Today’s Podcast is supported by The United Food and Commercial Workers Union. More information at UFCW.com.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good day, good friends. Happy holidays and welcome to this latest edition of the Bill Press |
| 0:12.7 | Pod. You know, Charles Dickens was wrong. It's not the best of times and the worst of times. |
| 0:18.8 | There's nothing best about it. It's only the worst of times |
| 0:22.9 | already and only promises to do nothing but get even worse still. But this is the hand we've |
| 0:31.1 | been dealt with and somehow we have to figure out how to survive, how to fight back, and how to get back on top. |
| 0:39.8 | This is an especially important challenge for members of the media, especially progressive |
| 0:45.2 | broadcasters and columnists who've been critical of Donald Trump and whom he has threatened |
| 0:50.7 | with retaliation. And among Trump's harshest and most consistent critics is |
| 0:56.3 | Mother Jones. That great progressive magazine has been around for a long time. And for the last |
| 1:02.3 | eight years, under Trump president and Trump ex-president and candidate, their reporting has been |
| 1:09.2 | right on target, tough and totally fact-based, which makes |
| 1:13.9 | them a special target for Donald Trump. So today, we're lucky to be joined by David Korn, |
| 1:21.1 | the Washington Bureau Chief for Mother Jones, award-winning author, and author of the weekly |
| 1:27.0 | newsletter on Mother Jones, Our Land. |
| 1:30.8 | David Corn, so good to reconnect with you. Thanks for joining us here on the Bill Press pod. |
| 1:35.8 | Yeah, glad we could do this while 2024 is still with us. |
| 1:42.1 | Yeah, we have another month where we can breathe a little easier, maybe. |
| 1:45.9 | So, David, you and I have been around this town for a long time. |
| 1:48.6 | We've watched administrations come and go. |
| 1:51.0 | We've seen new cabinets formed. |
| 1:52.9 | We have never quite seen a collection of cabinet nominees like this one for sure. |
| 1:59.4 | What's your general take on what Trump's trying to do with |
... |
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