Summary
Donald Trump’s transition team has bypassed standard FBI background checks for key cabinet nominees, relying instead on private investigators, as reported by CNN.
This breaks decades-old norms meant to vet candidates for criminal history and conflicts of interest.
Controversial appointees include Matt Gaetz (attorney general), Tulsi Gabbard (director of national intelligence), and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (health secretary), all facing scrutiny for past investigations, pro-Russian views, or personal admissions.
Critics argue Trump seeks to undermine traditional vetting, with potential security risks tied to bypassing these checks.
A crook and convicted felon fills his cabinet with folk who probably can’t pass an FBI security screening? Color me shocked.
The robber barons are back, baby
This breaks decades-old norms meant to vet candidates for criminal history and conflicts of interest.
Come the fuck on. The FBI background checks are a “norm” too? Do we have actual laws for anything?
The actual laws also don’t seem to matter, in all fairness.
Up till now, we didn’t really need them because everyone agreed it was the smart thing to do.
We’re done with smart.
America: relies on tradition because laws are for the poor
And the party of tradition won’t care
My only confidence and hope is that these guys are such monumental fuckups that they won’t be able to string together enough executive function to realize their dark vision.
Cadet Bone Spurs relied on (PAID!!!) a private doctor to give him bone spurs and completely avoided the military doctors who would have found his worthless fit for duty. How in the fuck can one avoid an FBI background check for any government position and contract work?
Gabbard is the biggest threat here, in my view.
You couldn’t dream of putting a spy in a better position than the DNI whose position is literally to oversee all intelligence agency silos.
Russia will know literally everything.
Trump is just putting a person between him and Putin this time around, Russia knew everything the first admin also. He hid meeting notes and visitor logs and nobody did shit, then the assholes voted him back in to finish selling us off because somehow that means “America First”.
How much corruption can we take before he’s even installed? For real. This is way fucken nuttier than last time. It seems so malicious.
The 4 years of Trumpsanity isn’t starting in January, it’s starting right now. For fucks sake, I’m not ready yet. I need to start stockpiling popcorn and booze. Except this time I’ll probably need less popcorn and more booze because I don’t think it’s going to be as stupid funny as last time. It’s already not funny, it’s been nosediving into “could it get any worse?” and so far the answer has been “Yes!”.
We will take whatever he gives. The US voters approved him. They want this. They chose this, and everything that comes from it.
This is why we’re supposed to have separation of powers. Any competent senate, even if the same party would insist in this before confirming. A senate full of sycophants on the other hand ….
This. There is no authority above the authoritarian. His word is law now. Whatever Our Glorious Cheeto wishes is now US doctrine.
Void help us all.
I tried. I can’t do anything.
Thats not true. There are at least 71 million people here who voted against it. Thats a lot of people.
He won the popular vote, and the electoral college. Majority rules. (Unfortunately)
Also people who didn’t vote at all, are at minimum fine with Trump and not against him.
It seems so malicious.
I guess he was being honest about all that revenge talk, eh? I mean, it is actively and onerously malicious, but just like last time, everyone’s just gonna let Trump steamroll them, because the federal government has long had hesitance to hold figures like presidents, senators, and supreme court justices to account, and this is just an extension of that.
I mean, we didn’t prosecute Bush and Cheney for war crimes. Hillary Clinton was proud of her friendship with Henry Kissinger. Kamala Harris was proud of her endorsement by Dick Cheney.
“It’s a big club and we ain’t in it,” but Trump and co. don’t feel the need to put up the facade anymore.
“It’s a big club and we ain’t in it,” but Trump and co. don’t feel the need to put up the facade anymore.
Bingo. Instead of “hiring” (paying off) politicians, they’re just doing it themselves. They’ve lost any and all care about keeping up appearances. After all, what are we going to do? Sue them?
the federal government has long had hesitance to hold figures like presidents, senators, and supreme court justices to account, and this is just an extension of that.
Because if they start holding others in similar offices to account, they might have to hold themselves as well, and that ain’t happening.
He called Putin for a reason
Things are going to be FAR worse than anyone has imagined thus far.
I just know it.
do we really even need to do a background check on gaetz to know that he’s a bad idea? i’m pretty sure they’d find even more skeletons if they background checked him, but there should already be more than enough information to know he’s a bad candidate.
This all highlights how many loopholes and deficiencies there are in a system that prides itself so much on checks and balances.
Apparently the balance was supposed to be one person with good faith checking one without. Now we see what happens when every dumbass stands on the corrupt side of the balance.
No system of rules or laws can fully account for people acting in bad faith.
I think the founding fathers counted on social shame to limit bad faith actors in government. A dishonorable person used to become a social pariah and might even get killed in a duel back in the 18th century. People wouldn’t associate with them, sign a contract with them, or lend them money. But now?
You obliquely touched on a pet theory of mine. We s a society have for decades now rallied against public shaming and bullying and that kind of thing, but I wonder if we’ve gone too far with it —antisocial behaviours are left to run unchecked, whereas 100 years ago these people would have been mercilessly mocked to their face every day. Without the fear of that public mockery and ridicule, we get this.
Trying to protect neurodivergent people unfortunately shelters bad behavior as well as benign. Yes, the antisocial guy trying to start fights and hurt animals would’ve been driven out of society, but so would the harmless kid who needs things to be arranged by the last letter of its name or something. I’ve got some idiosyncrasies that make certain aspects of “fitting in” require more effort than most, and I definitely felt the difference in attitude towards how I struggled as I got older. Another hard to control factor is that malicious people can game those same attitudes that help people who simply can’t understand why they are different.
Yes, that’s the catch. Maybe we can encourage ridicule directed only at “society-level” behaviours and make it clear that individual quirks are off-limits.
Now they publish it on TikTok and collect likes and followers.
I’ve needed FBI background checks for nearly every job I’ve ever had. If I need a background check to work in an elementary school, why don’t these people need it to handle our nation’s secrets?
don’t worry, DOGE will abolish the FBI, you’ll be able to work wherever you want!
What could go wrong?!
“High on a list, you say??? Hire him! If he’s a she, make sure she’s locker-room-talk worthy”
Excellent, this surely won’t have any far reaching consequences.
Bypassed standard FBI background checks … to vet candidates for criminal history and conflicts of interest.
Those are features, not bugs now. They know exactly who they picked.
Exactly, they don’t need the FBI to discover the things they already know about them. I would even say, those things are the reason why they were picked.
Just like Trump limited what the FBI could look at for Kavanaugh, and nobody did anything about that either. He also over-ruled intelligence telling him Flynn was a foreign agent and cleared Kushner also. And the list goes on, but it didn’t matter the first time around, and the assholes that voted him back in are cool with it.
When you can’t drain the swamp, stuff the swamp with more swamp until unlimited swamp.
he’d just overrule anyway like he did jared and a couple dozen others before.
