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This is an adapted excerpt from the Jan. 13 episode of "The Rachel Maddow Show."
It would be hard to run a presidential transition that could be worse than the last one. That transition included the outgoing president, Donald Trump, encouraging his followers to march on the Capitol to try to keep him in power.
This is the presidential transition when the president-elect officially became a 34-times convicted felon 10 days before he was sworn in.
The last inauguration had to have thousands of National Guard troops on hand to protect the proceedings from the threat of more violence from Trump’s followers. The outgoing president also didn’t even bother to show up for his successor’s swearing-in.
To be blunt, the last transition was the worst presidential transition in the history of the country — by a mile. Given how disastrously Trump performed during the last transition, you may have assumed this one would be better. But it looks like it’s going to be close.
During this transition, the president-elect has continued to sell his self-branded watches, sneakers and Bibles — including the new Inauguration Day edition. He’s also selling boots, commemorative coins and guitars.
Over the last few weeks, Trump has made unprovoked threats to seize territory from three countries — which is inexplicable to most Americans but very exciting to the dictators of both Russia and China, who have been seizing territory from other countries (or planning to), and now — whether or not Trump follows through on these weird threats — have Trump’s words to throw back at us.
This is the presidential transition when the president-elect officially became a 34-times convicted felon 10 days before he was sworn in, and then named another convicted felon, one of his relatives, to be ambassador to France. He also picked his son’s ex-girlfriend to be ambassador to Greece and reportedly lobbied for his other son’s wife to be made a U.S. senator … until that collapsed.
He picked his son-in-law’s friend to be his special envoy for hostage affairs. The same son-in-law then announced that his firm received another $1.5 billion from government-controlled funds in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, on top of the billions he already got from Saudi Arabia.
This is the transition when the president-elect appears to have just randomly picked people off the TV for almost every imaginable senior government job. He chose a syndicated daytime TV doctor to run Medicare. He’s picked Fox News contributors or hosts or their relatives for roles like secretary of transportation, national security adviser, FDA commissioner, counterterrorism director, ambassador to Israel, surgeon general, ambassador to the Dominican Republic, border czar, Ukraine envoy and defense secretary.
This is a shambolic, ridiculously bad transition. It is not going well. And now, with less than one week until Trump’s inauguration, we’re entering the part of this very poorly run transition where the confirmation hearings start falling apart.
On Tuesday, the Senate was supposed to hold a hearing for Trump’s nominee to run Veterans Affairs, Doug Collins. Most people couldn’t pick Collins out of a line-up, but as a nominee to run the VA, he is a bit of a walking scandal. The only thing he’s really known for when it comes to the VA is his desire to get rid of it and privatize veterans’ health care.
But on Monday, Senate leaders announced they had to delay Collins’ confirmation hearing because the FBI hasn’t finished the paperwork and background checks necessary to start his hearings.
Tuesday was also supposed to be the confirmation hearing for Trump’s interior secretary nominee, Doug Burgum. You might remember him as the obscure Republican presidential candidate who seemingly paid his way into the debates. There was a provision in the Republican primary debate rules where you had to get a certain number of people to donate to your campaign in order for you to get onto the stage. Burgum did not have a sufficient number of donors so he paid people to donate to him, offering some of those who donated $1 to his campaign a $20 gift card. That’s how he got into the Republican presidential debates, and now Trump wants him to run the Interior Department. But we’ll have to wait to hear from Burgum since his hearing was also postponed due to paperwork delays.
With less than one week until Trump’s inauguration, we’re entering the part of this very poorly run transition where the confirmation hearings start falling apart.
As was the hearing for Trump’s pick to be director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Amid reports of yet more trouble getting the paperwork together, Gabbard’s confirmation hearing has still not been scheduled. And this might be one to watch to see if it ever gets scheduled at all. The Trump team has already had to pull two of their nominations, for attorney general and the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and we should watch for this one, too, given what’s emerged in public reporting on Gabbard, including how poorly she’s allegedly done in her meetings with senators. There’s also the conspicuous silence from Capitol Hill in terms of whether there’s sufficient support for her even to make it through committee.
This is their level of performance even before they have responsibility for governing. We will watch what they do and not just what they say, from now, and for the first hundred days, and for the duration.
But what they are saying and what they are doing thus far is utterly shambolic. And none of us should be afraid to say so.
Allison Detzel contributed.