MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace had one “serious question” for her “Deadline: White House” panelists on Tuesday: Are Donald Trump and his administration “trying to populate the cabinet with men accused of sexual misconduct?”
The question, directed at NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hillyard, was spurred by Wallace’s deep-dive recap of the several cabinet picks who have a sordid history of allegations, settlements, NDAs and, in the case of former Attorney General pick Matt Gaetz (“now of Cameo fame,” Wallace quipped), a scuttled House Ethics Committee investigation. Also among them: sexual assault allegations against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth, and a lawsuit citing Linda McMahon as a defendant that cites WWE events held under her and Vince McMahon’s purview that fostered the sexual abuse of teenagers in attendance by high-ranking employees.
“When you’re looking at the individuals who are being tapped for these roles here, you’re seeing individuals that fit that profile,” Hillyard said of the pattern of misconduct allegations among the president-elect’s picks. “And I think that it is the ultimate American question in 2024: Just how much are Americans willing to ignore to justify the means to which people believe that these individuals are conveyor belts for the policies and the types of governance that they want.”
“And if people view RFK and the stories and the allegations that have been levied against him, and they acknowledge that that was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s past and that that is who the man is, but if at the same time they also believe that he’s going to go in there and fundamentally change the FDA and the CDC — which one is more important to you?” he continued. “I think Americans by and large, by selecting Donald Trump and by extension people like RFK Jr. or a Pete Hegseth or Matt Gaetz, I think that they made that decision clear this month.”
Watch the full “Deadline: White House” segment below:
That’s when Wallace chimed in to play devil’s advocate, as she called it — “We can debate who is the devil’s advocate here.”
“Why abandon the first-time brand of ‘the best people’ and hire, by any objective analysis, some of the worst people?” Wallace asked of Trump’s decisions since beating Kamala Harris for the presidency earlier this month.
“It’s a good question. I think when you look at the justification of what Pete Hegseth can bring to the table, you have somebody here who fits, again, a profile for Donald Trump who plays that role of somebody who is good on TV, who can effectuate that idea of what masculinity and what strength in a military general should look like,” Hillyard explained. “Just go around though, I think you see him turning to people like Mehmet Oz, people who have a pedigree in their TV history here, as a means that I think overcomes perhaps what may be their résumé deficits.”
The journalist also nodded to Trump’s efforts to abandon the protocol FBI background checks on his cabinet officials, arguing that “to a great extent, I think it’s clearly less of a priority than the other bonafides and the other presentation and the other qualities that Donald Trump believes these individuals bring to his administration.”
