Comment on Can Trump Really Claim a Mandate?

“President Joe Biden has decided to issue a pardon for his son Hunter and is expected to announce it Sunday night,” NBC News reports, “The decision marks a reversal for the president, who has repeatedly said he would not use his executive authority to pardon his son or commute his sentence.

What do anti-vaxxers and abortion opponents have in common? They both see an ally in David Weldon, who is now President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The physician and ex-Florida congressman‘s track record includes introducing legislation that would have stripped the CDC of its authority to conduct research on vaccine safety and instead given it to an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services.

“Several Republican lawmakers fell in line on Sunday behind President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to choose Kash Patel to lead the FBI, defending the incoming president’s right to install a loyalist who has vowed to use the position to exact revenge on Mr. Trump’s adversaries,” the New York Times reports.

Tom Nichols: “For Trump, naming Patel to the post serves several purposes. First, Trump is taking his razor-thin election win as a mandate to rule as he pleases, and Patel is the perfect nominee to prove that he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. Even knowing what they know, Americans chose to return Trump to office, and he has taken their decision as a license to do whatever he wants—including giving immense power to someone like Patel.” “Second, Trump wants to show that the objections of senior elected Republicans are of no consequence to him, and that he can politically flatten them at will.

In the middle of the Thanksgiving holiday stretch, Donald Trump announced what might be his most extreme and controversial appointment yet: Kash Patel for FBI director. There are many reasons why this decision is outrageous. Patel is a MAGA combatant who has fiercely advocated Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and who has championed January 6 rioters as patriots and unfairly persecuted political prisoners.

KEVIN FREKING WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s drive to upend the FBI was welcomed by Republican senators although it was not clear on Sunday how strongly members of the incoming majority party would embrace his move to install ally Kash Patel as the next director of the Justice Department’s top investigative arm. Patel, a onetime national security prosecutor who is aligned with the president-elect’s rhetoric about a “deep state,” “must prove to Congress he will reform & restore public trust in FBI,” said Sen.