did for zoe baird. one of the things with zoe baird, the problems she ran into were completely unimagined at any point prior to that. so i don t know. i m talking about with tillerson there could be some new thing that is the 21st century version of zoe baird that none of us thought of that suddenly becomes relevant. i want to listen to what john mccain has said about this, because he s going to be an important player on this. let s listen to this. i am not making a judgment about mr. tillerson. i will wait and the questions will be asked. that s why we have hearings, advise and consent, and i will withhold judgment, but i think that i have concerns about what kind of business we do with a butcher, a murderer and a thug, which is exactly what vladimir putin is. clifford krauss, obviously, that s the way john mccain would pose the question, but luckily for rex tillerson, he s not on
have legal status, she could not pay social security taxes for the woman, and she was wrong about that. she explained all of this to bill clinton before bill clinton nominated her. no one thought it would be a problem. orrin hatch, the season nior republican on the committee said it seemed like an honest mistake to him. i think was clearly a mistake. i choose to accept your explanation that it was an honest mistake, although you knew that it was a violation. that was the first day of zoe baird s confirmation hearing. joe biden was the chairman of the committee. joe biden seemed to take the immigration violation more seriously than some republicans did, but he told the new york times, this is not a deal breaker. this is not anything that should keep her from being attorney general. that s what all the pros believed. smooth sailing, no problem on the confirmation.
until senators phones started ringing after that first confirmation hearing and the senate started turning against zoe baird. there were enough democrats in the senate then to get letther the senate without any republican votes. but the southern democrats, and yes, there used to be southern democrats in those days, the southern democrats turned against her first, and soon she had less than 50 supportive senators. then bill clinton nominated another working mother, kemba wood. she ran into a similar problem as zoe baird. kemba wood had employed a nanny who was undocumented. judge wood had paid the social security taxes for that nanny. but bill clinton had to withdraw kemba wood s nomination too, before she even had a hearing then, president clinton turned to the never married and
childless janet reno as the woman who would become the first woman confirmed as attorney general. rex tillerson is the same age as zoe baird. he has four children and is more than rich enough to have afforded some domestic help when his children were growing up in texas. what are the odds that rex tillerson has a zoe baird problem, what are the odds that he always found nannies and gardeners and domestic help in texas who were american citizens or properly-documented foreign workers? what are the odds that rex tillerson paid social security taxes on workers in his home before zoe baird taught the country that you had to do that? as i said, most people had no idea there was anything wrong with paying domestic workers with just cash. most people had no idea you were supposed to pay social security
realized that before tax-writing senators realized it, realized that the law in this area needed to be complied with of about the zoe baird problem came to washington. anything can happen in confirmation hearings. the conventional wisdom now is that rex tillerson will probably be confirmed. but he is already facing more resistance than zoe baird faced when her confirmation process began. the fbi background check on rex tillerson may be the most complex background check that the fbi has ever had to conduct on any nominee for any government position in history. this is a man who has had multi-billion dollar dealings over decades with many foreign countries, including now most prominently russia. the russian government is