Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) expressed his sincere bafflement Tuesday about President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks, which have caused widespread concern for multiple reasons including that at least four of them have been accused of sexual misconduct.
Trump nominated former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who was investigated for allegedly having sex with a 17-year-old, to be his attorney general. He also nominated former Fox News host and veteran Pete Hegseth, who was investigated for sexual assault in 2017.
McGovern, on the House floor, said these nominations are “beyond insane.”
“Someone who is credibly accused of having sex with an underage girl,” the congressman noted Tuesday. “Someone who sucks up to foreign dictators and has attracted major concern that they can’t be trusted to protect America’s secrets from our adversaries.”
Trump nominated former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) to be his director of national intelligence, despite concern over her 2017 meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“Someone who paid hush money to cover up a sexual assault accusation, you know, to lead our military. He’s picked because Donald Trump likes him on Fox News?” McGovern said, referring to Hegseth.
“Someone who says that tap water turns kids gay?” he continued. “I mean, this is the dream team? This is the dream team? Really?”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Trump tapped to be secretary of health and human services, reportedly argued on his podcast in 2022 that man-made chemicals in food and water are acting as “endocrine disruptors” that could be making children homosexual or transgender, pointing to their documented effect of turning some male frogs female. Such effects have not been found in humans. Dr. Andrea Gore, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Texas at Austin, told CNN last year that things in the environment can affect frogs’ sex but sex for humans is set at conception.
McGovern argued that this “would be funny if it weren’t so sad” and concluded by hoping that the U.S. Senate “has a backbone and insists on a thorough confirmation process,” which former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) recently wagered would happen.
Democracy In The Balance
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Gabbard left the Democratic Party after running for president in 2020 and became a Fox News contributor before endorsing Trump in his 2024 presidential bid. She notably sued former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for suggesting she was “a Russian asset.”
Hegseth allegedly sexually assaulted someone during a Republican women’s conference in California and caused contusions to her right thigh, according to a report from the City of Monterey. The woman filed a police report four days later, but no charges were ever filed.
Gaetz was the subject of a yearslong investigation by the Justice Department over alleged sex trafficking and sex with a minor. A House Ethics Committee probe looking into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, improper gifts and more ended when he resigned from Congress immediately after his attorney general nomination.
“Having written three books on Trump, spent hours with him, the goal is to give him all the say, all the power,” journalist Bob Woodward told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki on Monday, adding: “It makes no sense and it’s a form of giving his middle finger to the American people.”