A Republican senator clashed with NBC anchor Kristen Welker in a Sunday interview after he pushed back against the scrutiny over President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominations, compared to their treatment of President Biden’s more controversial staffing picks.
Democrats in Congress and in the media have blasted Trump’s cabinet nominees over their qualifications, including combat veteran Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense; South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as secretary of homeland security; Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., as attorney general; and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), among others.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Welker pressed Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, if Kennedy’s skepticism toward vaccines could be a “deal breaker” in confirming the Trump nominee to head the HHS.
Mullin denied this would be a dealbreaker for him before launching into a rebuke of Democrats and liberal voices in the media for not showing the same outrage over some of President Biden’s more controversial cabinet and staffing picks at the start of his term.
“No. I absolutely — appreciate Bobby Kennedy taking hard look at the vaccine. There’s some questions that have to be made. And I appreciate some of the scrutiny that’s going on there. I think Bobby can answer all those and I have sat down and had long conversations with him and I actually find the guy extremely intelligent when it comes to this stuff,” he said. “And some of the stuff does raise a lot of questions. But I do got a question for you. The Democrats are spending so much time talking about the scrutiny of President Trump’s picks and yet, did we spend this amount of time scrutinizing Biden’s picks?”
“I mean, we can talk about Rachel [Levine], the assistant secretary of HHS. I think that’s a pretty controversial pick, from whatever pronoun he or she decides to use,” Mullin continued.
Mullin also raised concerns about Sam Brinton, the “nonbinary” former top Department of Energy official under Biden, who escaped jail time after being accused of stealing luggage from airports on three separate occasions.
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President Biden has faced GOP criticism for some of his administration’s hirings. (Getty Images)
“I didn’t see this same type of scrutiny that the Democrats used on these individual picks. There’s been a lot of picks. I mean we can talk about Pete Buttigieg. Is he really qualified to head the Department of Transportation?” Mullin added.
As Mullin scolded the Democratic Party and media’s messaging around Trump’s picks, Welker attempted to cut in.
“Senator — hold on, let’s stay —” Welker began.
“I don’t see the same level of scrutiny,” Mullin continued.
“We’ve scrutinized all of those picks, robustly,” Welker shot back, before returning to her question on Kennedy.
Rachel Levine, Assistant Secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services. (Caroline Brehman-Pool/Getty Images)
Biden’s pick for assistant HHS secretary, Rachel Levine, was the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the Senate. Levine faced criticism from Republicans on various issues such as sex change surgeries for minors and was labeled by a New York Post op-ed as “America’s No.1 gender extremist.”
Biden’s Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, was appointed to the top cabinet position after serving as the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, for eight years, with some questioning at the time whether he had enough related experience for the job. Since taking office, Republicans have amplified those concerns after a series of perceived missteps from Buttigieg, including the fallout from the supply chain crisis and the devastating train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
Fox News’ Andrew Mark Miller and Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report.