Sen. Bill Hagerty said the American public does not care about the background of the nominees chosen by President-elect Donald Trump, they only care about what they do in the position.
Asked on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday whether he agreed with his Republican colleague, Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, who said she wanted to see FBI background checks on some of the nominees, like Department of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, Mr. Hagerty, Tennessee Republican, said Americans don’t care.
“I don’t think the American public cares who does the background checks. What the American public cares about is to see the mandate that they voted in delivered upon,” said. “We need to get to work again. Making our military stronger is absolutely critical. And I think we’re — we’re looking at a chance to do this.”
Background checks by the FBI are typical for those Cabinet positions that need to be confirmed by the Senate.
Asked if background checks should be done away with, Mr. Hagerty said, “certainly not.”
“I’ve been through it myself,” he said. “I’ve been through it myself.”
“I’ve been through confirmation as — as well. They need to do these checks expeditiously,” he said. “The FBI — I think the American public’s had great concerns about how weaponized it’s become. They need to get on with this. We’ll get this done.”
He bashed the Biden administration Cabinet, and said “no one has been held to account by the Biden administration.”
“If you think about the failures on his watch, the failures of FEMA, if you think about what’s happened at our southern border, the invasion that’s happened there, the murder of Laken Riley, the Secret Service failures, we have to get competent people into office,” he said.
Mr. Trump has been quickly revealing his picks for his Cabinet and administration, and while some have been applauded, some have also turned heads and raised questions of their qualifications.
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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