strategy of telling his nonwhite opponents to go back to their birth places, but this morning the president began his weekend by unloading on the majority-black middle class baltimore district led by elijah cummings, calling the 7th district the most dangerous, dangerous, rat and rodent infested mess. in the midst of it all, calling cummings a bully. this week cummings led the house oversight committee vote to subpoena sensitive white house communications, this after cummings led the grilling of trump s acting homeland security head over conditions facing detained migrants on our southern border. but today s attack marked the latest insistence in which this president failed to do his
hispanic. trump is on track to have at most just three of his nominees confirmed tomorrow, his first day in office, james mattis, secretary of defense john kelly, secretary of homeland security and possibly mike pompeo as cia director. that s compared to seven for both president obama and george w. bush. but the cabinet is only the tip of the proverbial federal bureaucracy iceberg. there are about 4,000 positions for political appointees. of those, 690 are crucial, trump has announced his picks for just 30 of them. meaning 96% of these key offices won t even have a nominee when he takes over the government according to an expert on transitions, the brookings institution, it s just there is no other word for it, weird, for those of us who have been involved in government for decades. observers are most concerned about the national security council. politico reports most of the nsc s key policy jobs are still open including senior directors handling such issues as the middle east, ru
it s important to understand that the president is now entering a world of public service. he s going to be asking his own appointees to make sacrifices. he s going to be asking our men and women in uniform to risk their lives in conflict around the world so, no, i don t think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be the president of the united states of america. walter shaub, the director of the heretofore office of government ethics has become a kind of unlikely hero in the fight against the conflicts of interest created by trump s decision to make tim kaine a stake in his vast business empire. he s become a thorn in the side of congressional republicans who are determined to look the other way of trump s many ethical quandaries. that s been the case with the chairman of the house government oversight committee jason chaffetz who you may remember last week publicly criticized schaub for refusing to meet with him since the election, even
to and the early indicators with his nominees for cabinet posts, he said he was going to drain the swamp. excuse me, these are the powerful the, the billionaires, the bankers, et cetera, he s populating his cabinet with. i think people are troubled already. he s made a very clear claim that only he can fix what s wrong in your life. right? obama s metric was is washington different? did i change the culture? republicans kind of controlled that because if they didn t work with him, obama was a failure. trump says no, i am going to pal papally and tangibly take your life. people can figure out after two years whether what he said is true so if he doesn t deliver on it and nothing he s proposing is going to make those people s lives different, that approval rating which is low today is more dangerous for him two years from now. do you think it s dangerous for the other people in his party? donald trump has a different political calculus, but the
i ved that happen to many many times with connie. it was mean spirited. chairman wyden, a ranking member, he was doing his job, he was pointing out the delays in this hearing were because of trump s delays in moving slowly and vetting badly and picking billionaires, that was the reason. he was pointing out problems with mnuchin not turning in some of his paperwork and getting this disclosure. so wyden was doing his job. roberts knew that and i don t want to talk a lot about senator roberts but there is no room for that kind of personal stuff. my view is always it s whom you fight for and what you fight against and i don t want to fight against any of my colleagues personally. i want to fight against what they re doing and i don t like what this committee is doing with mnuchin, frankly. senator sherrod brown of ohio, thank you for your time, appreciate it. still to come, days of