Confirmation Hearing Aid: What to Ask Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and RFK, Jr.

A list of questions Senators must ask to show just how unqualified Trump's nominees for DNI, FBI, and HHS are, and how harmful to the country their confirmations would be.

From the drunken Christian Nationalist sexual predator tapped as Defense Secretary, to the Erdoğan-loving daytime TV quack tasked to run Medicare, to the pro wrestling matriarch chosen to detonate the Department of Education, Donald Trump’s picks for his various cabinet and staff positions are historically, incontrovertibly bad.

These are not serious people. At all. Each of them is uniquely unqualified for the job—and this is by design. Trump has not been coy about his plans to annihilate what he calls the “deep state.” Pete Hegseth, Dr. Oz, Linda McMahon, and his other angry-making nominees are human wrecking balls—flesh-and-blood weapons he’s deployed to destroy the federal government from within. As I wrote in Rough Beast:

Back in 2013, at a book party at his D.C. townhouse, Steven K. Bannon explained his political philosophy to the author Ron Radosh: “I’m a Leninist,” he said. “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

Time did not mellow him. Bannon went on to become Trump’s campaign chairman and then his White House chief strategist. His mission, he said in 2017, was nothing less than the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”

This was not just bluster. At the time, you might recall, Trump was busy lining his Cabinet with loyalists who hated the existence of the departments they were tasked to head, or else were too inept to do the job properly. Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education? Rex Tillerson, the former head of Exxon, at State? A climate change denier at the EPA? John Ratcliffe and Ric Grenell as DNI?

Fortunately, our institutions were strong enough to withstand their incompetent leadership. When the buildings are made of stone, there’s only so much damage an arsonist can do.

That won’t be the case in a Trump sequel. The moderating forces have been purged. Trump will appoint loyalists, lackeys, and Leninists, in the Bannon sense of the term, to positions of power. The result will be devastating. First to go: the civil service. Trump will take to heart Curtis Yarvin’s “RAGE” directive: Retire All Government Employees.

And here we are. The legacy media, bound and determined to normalize everything Donald does, will not look at Trump’s nominations through the proper frame. But our political leaders must do so. It is essential to the survival of our democracy that these grotesque appointments be shot down.

Assuming that there will actually be confirmation hearings for those nominees whose appointments require Senate approval—and assuming Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans allow said nominees to be cross-examined—I have prepared some questions for Senate Democrats to ask three of the most egregiously woeful nominees: Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and Robert F. Kennedy. Jr.

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Tulsi Gabbard
Nominated for Director of National Intelligence

—The Intelligence Community of the United States comprises 17 separate agencies. Four of those are under the aegis of the Defense Department. What are these four agencies? What is their function? How do they differ? Do you think any of them should be combined and/or eliminated, and if so, why?

—Chris Butler, aka Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa, is the founder of the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF), a fringe yogic sect based in your native Hawai’i. Please relate your history with SIF and Butler, respectively. Are you still active in SIF?

—Critics have suggested that SIF is a cult, and Butler, a cult leader. Is it? Is he? I’m asking this because, as Director of National Intelligence, you will have to be fiercely independent, and I have concerns that Butler has undue influence over your decision-making. Are you more loyal to the American people or to your “guru”?

—Ms. Gabbard, Chris Butler’s remarks about the LGBT community are repugnant. He is particularly fond of a gay slur that begins with “f.” I have heard audio of him making hateful comments about gay men that sound like the world’s worst stand-up routine—like a less funny Greg Gutfeld (if that were possible). While in your twenties, you did work for the Alliance for Traditional Marriage, an anti-gay-rights group run by your father, a Chris Butler acolyte, who was then a state senator. You have since recanted those views. How much did Butler influence your decision to do that work? What are your feelings about LGBT rights now? What can you say to reassure LGBT members of the Intelligence Community that you aren’t a hateful homophobe like Chris Butler?

—You have been such an obvious supporter of Vladimir Putin, and such a mainstay on Russian television, that even former House colleagues openly call you a Kremlin asset. Are you? And if you’re not, why do you reliably stand with Putin and other Putin-adjacent dictators like Bashar al-Assad, even when their interests clash with those of the United States? Could it be that, growing up in the SIF cult, you are more comfortable with dictators than democracy?

—What are your feelings about the war in Ukraine? Was Putin justified in ordering the invasion? If so, why? You have called for a ceasefire. How would that work, exactly, in your view? Are you aware that your position is contrary to that of U.S. foreign policy, as well as that of our NATO allies in Europe?

—As you are (hopefully) aware, the United States has an intelligence-sharing relationship with Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand: Five Eyes, this is called. Because you have no experience at all with intelligence work (other than maybe being a Kremlin asset), the other four countries are shall-we-say unenthused by your appointment for this position. What can you say to reassure them that, first of all, you’re qualified for the job, and, second, that they can trust you?

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Kash Patel
Nominated for FBI Director

—You first came into the national spotlight while working for Devin Nunes on the House Intelligence Committee. According to the Washington Times, a conservative publication, you were the one who “cracked the code.” In other words, it was you who concocted the false narrative that Christopher Steele’s dossier was somehow responsible for the FBI opening the investigation into Trump/Russia. That amounted to a disinformation campaign, and did nothing but make Mr. Steele’s life miserable and compromise our national security. Is the reporting accurate that you came up with that line of attack? Now that it has been debunked a number of times—including in 2020 by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee in Volume 5 of its report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, and also by the 2019 report written by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz—do you still believe it? And if so, why should anyone take your word over that of a DOJ Inspector General or the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee—especially when the 2020 chair of that committee, Marco Rubio, has been nominated by Donald Trump to serve as Secretary of State?

—You wrote what Salon called “the worst children’s book of all time,” called The Plot Against the King, that is basically the same debunked disinformation campaign you invented while an investigator at House Intelligence, but in the form of a kids’ picture book. What prompted you to write this toadyish ode to “King Donald?” How much money did you make from it? Did conservative organizations purchase it in bulk?

—You worked for Ric Grenell when he was Acting Director of National Intelligence. According to National Security Counsel advisor Fiona Hill, you were “improperly becoming involved in Ukraine policy and [were] sending information to Mr. Trump,” mucking up the works. How were you involving yourself in Ukraine policy? What were you hoping to accomplish? What information were you sending to Mr. Trump?

—In the last days of the first Trump Administration you were the chief of staff for Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who, on January 4, 2021—two days before the insurrection—sent a bizarre memo to the Secretary of the Army effectively neutering the National Guard in advance of January 6th. What role did you play in the drafting of that memo? Why was it sent? What were you doing on January 6, 2021, as the Capitol was being besieged by Trump’s insurrectionists? As FBI Director, how much will you prioritize the arrest and indictment of J6 insurrectionists?

—In 2022, Donald Trump designated you and the conspiracy-peddling “journalist” John Solomon as his representatives “for access to Presidential records of [his] administration.” You immediately set about trying to secure from the National Archives & Records Administration, or NARA, a “binder of materials” concerning the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation. You were not able to do this. Did you do anything else, as Mr. Trump’s presidential records designee, aside from trying to get your hands on that binder? Why was accessing that binder so important? What did you and John Solomon plan to do with it?

—Given your history with crafting false narratives, it sure looks like you intended to cherry-pick from that “binder of materials” to run a disinformation campaign about the FBI treating Trump unfairly. Is this why Trump nominated you to lead the FBI?

—In your voluminous correspondence with NARA, you claimed to have a TS/CSI level security clearance, something NARA was unable to verify. Was this ever resolved? Did you ever hold such a security clearance? If so, why was NARA unable to confirm it? If not, why did you think you did?

—In an appearance on The War Room, the podcast of convicted felon and Trump pardon recipient Steve Bannon, you were asked, “Kash, I know you’re probably going to be head of the CIA. But do you believe that you can deliver the goods on this in a pretty short order of the first couple of months so we can get rolling on prosecutions?” Here was your response:

Yes, we got the bench for it, Bannon, and you know, those guys, I’m not going to go out there and say their names right now so the radical left wing media can terrorize them. But, excuse me, the one thing we learned in the Trump administration, the first go around is we got to put in all American patriots top to bottom and we got them for law enforcement, we got them for intel collection, we got them for offensive operations, we got them for DOD, CIA, everywhere.

And the one thing we will do that they never will do is we will follow the facts and the law and go to courts of law and correct these justices and lawyers who have been prosecuting these cases based on politics and actually issuing them as lawfare.

We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.

We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminal or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice, and Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators—because we’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.

That makes it seem like you have a personal vendetta against members of the media who have been critical of Mr. Trump, as well as politicians like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, towards whom you seem to have particular animus. What did you mean by those comments? What did you mean by “criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out?” Given these comments, and the frivolous lawsuit you filed against the independent journalist Jim Stewartson, how can we be sure you won’t abuse your authority as FBI Director to “come after,” as you put it, individuals Mr. Trump perceives as being “the enemy within?”

—With your old boss Devin Nunes, you sit on the Board of Directors of Trump Media & Technology Group. What exactly do you do there? Is it not a conflict of interest for the Director of the FBI to have a highly-paid side hustle working for the President of the United States?

—In his memoir, Bill Barr recounts an exchange he had, while he was Attorney General, with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in which Meadows floated your name as FBI Director: “I told Mark Meadows it would happen ‘over my dead body’...Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency.” Bill Barr is a conservative Republican who worked for Mr. Trump; one might reasonably assume that he would therefore be more inclined to support your nomination, not the other way round. How would you respond to Mr. Barr’s assertion on your incompetence?

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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Nominated for Secretary of Health & Human Services

—No one has been a more vociferous opponent of vaccines than you. Not just covid-19 vaccines; any vaccines. The lone British study linking vaccines to autism has been so thoroughly debunked that its author is no longer allowed to practice medicine in the UK, and the urban legend of covid vaccines being used to implant chips into human beings, which the photojournalist Sandi Bachom has footage of you talking about, is so stupid as to be laughable. Why do you want to go back to a period in U.S. history where children were dying of measles, mumps, and diphtheria? Why do you want to Make Polio Great Again?

—Are you aware that vaccine disinformation is routinely disseminated by the Kremlin? If not, why not? If so, why do you still talk about vaccines being dangerous like it’s anything other than Russian propaganda expressly intended to make Americans sick?

—I’ve seen footage of you talking about your past drug use. You credited heroin—heroin!—with curing your undiagnosed ADHD. Do you still think heroin cures ADHD? If so, do you believe using a highly addictive and illegal narcotic, bought on the street and self-administered with needles, is safer than using vaccines that have been around for over a century, and are manufactured by strictly-regulated pharmaceutical companies and given at pediatricians’ offices?

—Let’s talk about raw milk. Do you have a degree in medicine? Did you study human biology in undergrad? No? Then explain why you think you know more about these subjects than Louis Pasteur.

—Your daughter tells a story in which you decapitate a whale, and then strap it to the top of your car and drive it home. Is that story true? If not, why would she make up something like that? If so, why on earth would you do such a thing? I’m also curious about why you thought it was a good idea to transport a bear carcass to Central Park.

—According to reporting I’ve seen, you are no stranger to sexual misconduct. Most recently, your family nanny came forward with an allegation of sexual assault. During your second marriage, you kept a diary detailing all of your extramarital affairs; after she discovered this diary, your then-wife took her own life. You haven’t denied any of this. Why should the women of this country entrust federal oversight of their healthcare, including abortion access, to a man who has spent his entire life mistreating women?

—Tell us about your relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. How many times did you fly on his private jet, where did you go, and what did you do when you got there?

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Action item: if you find these questions useful, please print this out and mail it to your senator.

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Photo credit: Gage Skidmore. U.S. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard speaking with attendees at The People's Convention at Huntington Place in Detroit, Michigan. June 15, 2024.