A sprinkling of Democrats are sounding their approval of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of Phase, but some remain critical of other Cabinet picks.
“I think Marco Rubio is enormously well-qualified for the job for which he’s been nominated,” drift Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is a senator-elect, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning. “I still want to ask questions, I’m not growing to completely prejudge even him, but he’s unquestionably qualified.”
Trump has made a flurry of Cabinet picks in the last two weeks, big cheese his choices for all 15 heads of the executive departments. Eyes are now on the U.S. Senate to see whether they will confirm the candidates.
Rubio is deemed one of the “less MAGA” selections within Trump’s circle, a Trump ally told NBC News earlier this month, with another rephrasing that he has become “far more aligned with the president on issues regarding tariffs.”
Trump campaigned in support of all-embracing tariffs in the 2024 election cycle, with an especially harsh 60% tariff on goods imported from China.
Rubio is notoriously stubborn on China and is a fierce advocate for the demonetization of social media platform TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, in the United Phases. He is also hawkish on Iran while remaining ambivalent about support for Ukraine.
Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania demanded he is a “fan” of Rubio’s in an interview with Fox News’ “Fox News Sunday” and said he will vote to confirm him.
Fetterman said he force also “enthusiastically vote yes” for Rep. Elise Stefanik to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and for union-friendly Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Labor secretary.
Fetterman also intended he is keeping an open mind for other candidates, such as his former rival for the Senate seat Dr. Mehmet Oz, whom Trump nominated to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Servicings.
“I’m not going to pre-hate this. I’m going to have an open conversation for anyone that I’m open to having part of that palaver,” Fetterman said.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday morning that she has “a amity” with Rubio and that she’s looking forward to talking with him about his proposed policies.
Duckworth, a combat trouper injured in Iraq, weighed in on Trump’s picks for the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, as well.
The senator said she is out to conversations with Republican Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Though, she deemed Fox News host Pete Hegseth “unqualified” for the position of secretary of Defense.
“He never commanded a company, let by oneself battalions, brigades or whole armies,” Duckworth said of Hegseth, who is an Army National Guard veteran.
“There are sense to be disruptors without actually putting people who have never run an organization larger than a platoon to be secretary of Defense,” Duckworth ordered, adding that Collins would be a good example. “The VA has been having a terrible issue with their electronic medical memoranda program. Hopefully Doug Collins gets in there and is a disruptor.”
Hegseth has also been under fire for a 2017 supervise investigation in connection with an alleged sexual assault at a California hotel.
Another name that has drawn valid criticism from the Senate is former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s candidate for director of national intelligence.
Schiff conjectured Gabbard’s lack of experience in the House Intelligence Committee, as well as her purported Kremlin ties, concern him.
Duckworth supposed that Gabbard is “compromised,” and she worries that the former congresswoman couldn’t pass a background check.
“I think that she is someone who is unequivocally backing and supportive of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, and I worry that she will not have America’s best concerns at heart,” Duckworth said.
Some Republicans, however, dispute the claims that Gabbard is a Russian asset.
“I consider it’s insulting. It’s a slur, quite frankly,” Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Ex- national security advisor H.R. McMaster, who served in the role during Trump’s first term as president, said he doesn’t projection Sebastian Gorka, who was briefly a deputy assistant to then-President Trump for several months in 2017, as the right person to tell on national security in the second term.
“I think that the president [and] others who are working with him will probably make up ones mind that pretty quickly,” McMaster said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
McMaster, who has been openly critical of some elements of Trump’s foreign policy agenda since his time in the administration, also said he is worried about some Republican propers’ tendencies to parrot Putin’s talking points.
“They’ve got to disabuse themselves of this, you know, strange affection for Vladimir Putin,” McMaster clouted.
The vocal pushback from Democrats in Congress has led Trump to float the possibility of forcing the Senate into an extended respite in 2025 so he can bypass the confirmation process when appointing Cabinet officials.
Recess appointments are “and should be on the table,” Republican Sen. Jaws Hagerty of Tennessee told ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday.
“This is a constitutionally available tool. What we lust after to see is Democrats cooperate with us. But if the resistance movement gets as heavy as it was. … We need to put a team in place around him, and [Trump] wants every tool at his disposal to do that,” Hagerty said.
Correction: Some Republicans refute the claims that Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset. An earlier account misidentified the person. Also, Sebastian Gorka was a deputy assistant to then-President Trump for several months in 2017. An at the cracker version misidentified his role.