It has been a little over a week and Donald Trump is already being criticized over purportedly inexperienced people he says he intends to nominate to his Cabinet.
Investigative reporter Nina Burleigh joined “The New Republic’s” Greg Sargent to discuss her cover story about the new U.S. reality and those ready to fight back.
The two agreed that the appointments of former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will likely cause Americans a lot of anxiety, but it isn’t without heartburn for Trump too.
“It’s really hard to say which of these two will be more of a disaster, but taken together, the message is very clear: We may be in some serious trouble,” said Sargent, who posted the transcript with the title, “Matt Gaetz’s Meltdown Suddenly Gets Much Worse for Trump.”
Also Read: Why Trump and the GOP are burning the entire system down
“It’s pretty clear that shock and awe is the road that they’re going to travel,” said Burleigh. “That was predicted to me, when I was working on this article that you referenced about what might happen, by the people who were predicting that—thought that—he would do shock and awe on day one, on the inauguration day when his hand came off the Bible.”
She said that this is the groundwork for things to get a lot worse.
Burleigh also said she was shocked to see Trump bring Kennedy in since he’s so far out on issues other than vaccines, like putting fluoride in the drinking water and even abortion.
“It’s the make America great again, which is, let’s go back to 1950 and let’s really disinter the paranoias and the way that anti-government sentiment was expressed then, which is, Oh God, they’re putting this stuff in the water and like reinvigorating that kind of paranoia,” she said, claiming that such paranoia is about to become American policy.
Sargent said that it’s going to put Republicans in a difficult position where they have to support candidates in confirmation hearings where they “actually start to expose in a very high-profile way the views of this nut.”
He also said that Trump was the establishment in 2020 and buckled under the crisis Americans were facing. In 2024, he was able to run as an outsider again. But he wondered if the “superficial understanding of what Trump represents” is “now looking like it’s going to be really disastrous.”
Burleigh agreed that kind of overreach could be the “seeds of his demise.” She continued that some Republicans might be willing to join with Democrats and say, “Let’s get this guy out of here.”
She said the disaster could be a “boomerang” back at Trump, in which the Senate and presidency face off against each other, and the Supreme Court must step in.
Listen to the full interview right here.
