Jon Stewart on Thursday checked those who he said are “missing the mark” in their assessment of Donald Trump’s series of controversial Cabinet picks.
“These picks are there to do exactly what the Trump voters wanted them to do,” Stewart said on an episode of his “Weekly Show” podcast.
He continued, “And, in a large degree, [what] a lot of Democratic voters have been begging the Democrats to do, which is get out of the status quo institutional thinking and make government more responsive and agile, if you can.”
Stewart dismissed the argument that it’s a “downside” for the president-elect to pick allies who won’t be “sufficient stewards of these agencies and administrations,” arguing that that’s not what they’re there to do.
“I actually think that’s why they’re running on dismantling,” said Stewart of Trump, who has vowed to “dismantle the deep state” in Washington.
“It’s when we say, Iike, ‘I don’t think that Linda McMahon will be an efficient steward of the Department of Education,’ like, right. She’s not there to do that,’” said Stewart of Trump picking the billionaire World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder for secretary of education.
“She’s there to help like dismantle it in the same way that RFK Jr. is there to dismantle HHS.”
The president-elect pledged during his campaign to dismantle the education department in a move that he toyed with when he first ran for president.
Trump, during a campaign rally last month, also said he’d let his health secretary pick — conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — “go wild” on health policy in the role.
“They ran on, ‘These institutions are not serving,’” Stewart said.
“It’s the thing that we’ve been hammering Democrats on for decades. These bureaucracies have to be addressed and they didn’t do it and they weren’t able to do it efficiently and they weren’t able to do it agilely … they’re suddenly governing with urgency.”
Democracy In The Balance
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