Latest news with #NeverTrump
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Republican NJ governor candidates focus on budget waste, immigration, Trump
New Jersey voters in both parties have begun to vote to select their nominees for governor in the June 10 primary election. This spring, the USA TODAY Network New Jersey Editorial Board convened conversations with nearly all of the major candidates. We talked broadly about their campaigns, their agendas if nominated and elected and about the impact of the administration of President Donald Trump. Here are thoughts and impressions about candidates in the Republican field, presented alphabetically: State Sen Jon Bramnick, first elected to the Assembly in 2003 and its longtime Republican leader, was elected to the upper chamber in 2021. Bramnick, 72, is a Plainfield attorney and was the first Republican to enter the race for governor. An avowed Never-Trumper, Bramnick said that, when appropriate, he would continue some of the state's ongoing legal challenges that seek to block parts of the administration's policy agenda. He also said he would call on the New Jersey congressional delegation to protect Medicaid coverage for the state's most vulnerable residents. Bramnick's campaign is designed to appeal to moderates in both parties who are concerned about New Jersey's tax burden and want to see the Garden State's economy grow. 'My feeling is we need balance. I don't believe in this one-party system. Now, you've had the Democrats control the Legislature for 20 years. And now you've had a Democratic governor for seven years. It doesn't work. What you want is balance because most people in New Jersey are in the middle.' Bramnick is focused, too, on fixing New Jersey's housing crisis and suggested to the USA TODAY Network New Jersey Editorial Board that he would work with developers across the state to locate large tracts of land on which to construct affordable single-family and multi-family units to meet market demand. Bramnick also outlined positions on reconfiguring the state budget to better fund NJ Transit, said he would work to reconfigure the state's complex school funding formula and suggested that he would regularly take questions from the public and from members of the Legislature if elected. Jack Ciattarelli, a former state Assemblyman who lives in Somerville, nearly ousted Gov. Phil Murphy in the 2021 election. It was immediately clear that Ciattarelli, a sometime contributor to the opinion pages of the USA TODAY Network New Jersey, would seek his party's nomination again this year. Ciattarelli, who once dismissed President Donald Trump as a "charlatan," earned the president's endorsement earlier this month. While Ciattarelli has positioned himself as a right-of-center moderate in earlier campaigns, this year, he has embraced the MAGA mood that holds grip over large swaths of the Republican primary electorate. "The president's trying to hit the reset button," Ciattarelli said, pointing to Trump's efforts to stem the federal deficit and rebalance global trade. In conversations with the USA TODAY Network New Jersey Editorial Board, Ciattarelli said New Jersey faced "an affordability crisis, a public safety crisis, a public education crisis" and also expressed deep concern about overdevelopment and housing affordability. To address affordability, Ciattarelli outlined specific proposals to tackle the school funding formula and said the state, on his watch, would fund special education across the state. He also called for a unified state department to oversee all of the state's transportation infrastructure, including NJ Transit, the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike. Ciattarelli said he would also conduct a broad review of state spending with an eye toward trimming the budget as broadly as possible. On energy, Ciattarelli put the blame for forthcoming utility rate hikes squarely on Gov. Phil Murphy and the Democratic Legislature and said he would work quickly to stand up natural gas generation. He also said he would explore expanding the state's existing nuclear footprint. Bill Spadea, the longtime NJ 101.5 radio personality who lives in Princeton, is a stalwart supporter of President Donald Trump. Spadea and his campaign did not respond to invitations to sit with the USA TODAY Network New Jersey Editorial Board. Spadea has said his campaign is aimed at stemming New Jersey's affordability crisis, addressing what he calls an epidemic of illegal immigration and slowing down housing development that he says imperils New Jersey's suburban communities. Immigration, he has said, is his top priority. 'We're going to rescind the 2018 executive order and get rid of the sanctuary state. We're going to rescind the 2019 Immigrant Trust Directive,' he said. 'We're going to issue a series of executive orders … to stop phase four of this high-density housing nonsense that is crushing our suburban communities." Former Englewood Cliffs Mayor Mario Kranjac and Justin Barbera, a Burlington County contractor, are also on the June 10 primary ballot but did not meet various qualifications to participate in debates this spring. This article originally appeared on NJ governor 2025: Republican candidates focus on waste, immigration
The Hill
24-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
How many more useless deaths before we admit Trump was always right on Ukraine?
Two serious and literally life or death questions: Since when did trying to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people — including countless children — become something to be criticized? Conversely, when did sending hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers into the teeth of the Russian war machine with absolutely no plausible plan to win become the untouchable go-to policy of certain neoconservatives, many on the left and a fair number of editorial writers? I thought of these questions while reading two recent columns. The first is by Rich Lowry from the New York Post, titled 'Trump is getting the Ukraine-Russia war all wrong — and he's making it even harder on himself.' The other is by former diplomat Bridget Brink in the Detroit Free Press, titled 'I was U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. I resigned because of Trump's foreign policy.' There is much Lowry has written over the years that I believe to be spot on. That said, I have disagreed with much he has written about Ukraine since the start of the war — his latest column included. Some believe Lowry to be a megaphone for the neocon class, which always seems to be advocating for the U.S. military to engage in 'forever wars.' Lowry was also the former editor of National Review, a magazine that in March 2016 ran an editorial titled 'Never Trump' and that seemed to become the epicenter of the 'Never Trump' movement for certain neocons and entrenched, elitist Republicans. The constant theme for those criticizing Trump's consistent stance against the Ukraine war and a much-needed ceasefire is that Putin is evil and must be defeated at all costs. Fine. If using the people of Ukraine as cheap disposable pawns to fight a proxy war against Russia and Putin has been the end game from the start, simply admit it. Don't pretend you are trying to save the people of Ukraine or that nation's infrastructure. In the lead up to the Iraq War more than 20 years ago, there were a steady stream of neocons, pundits and 'experts' advocating for that invasion to overthrow the 'evil' Saddam Hussein, who were coldly and impassionedly viewing the process as some sort of board game or sporting event, with human pawns to be played with at will. 'Experts' eagerly pushed for war who had no skin in the game. Meaning they were not in the military, they would not be walking point in the coming combat, nor would any of their relatives or friends. How wise or 'courageous' is it to call for a war from luxurious offices thousands of miles from the pending horror? And what was the end result of that 'justified' war? Approximately 4,500 American soldiers killed; 32,000 wounded; between 100,000 and 400,000 Iraqi deaths, depending upon the study; and a Middle East that is still destabilized, spawning endless pockets of terrorism. Next, we have the column from Bridget Brink, a former professional diplomat who, to some, seems to be virtue signaling her disgust of Trump to the far-left echo chamber of Trump haters. That is most certainly her right. In her column, she describes what Putin and Russia have done in Ukraine as 'pure evil.' She further states that: 'Peace at any price is not peace at all — it is appeasement.' Okay. And just what is her plan for Ukraine to 'win' the war against the 'evil' Putin and Russia? As Trump has asked from day one, how many more lives must be sacrificed before enough is enough? The Pentagon and CIA have estimated that well over 1 million people have been killed or wounded in the war, with much of Ukraine's infrastructure turned into rubble. Since day one, President Trump has been calling for an end to this war. He has done so for two incredibly important reasons. First, to stop the senseless slaughter of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers as well as Ukrainian civilians. Next, to warn of the many tripwires littering the battlefield, which could be stepped on and trigger World War III — leading to the deaths of millions. Last week on Truth Social, the president posted in all caps, 'I WILL BE SPEAKING, BY TELEPHONE, TO PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN OF RUSSIA ON MONDAY, AT 10:00 A.M. THE SUBJECTS OF THE CALL WILL BE, STOPPING THE 'BLOODBATH' THAT IS KILLING, ON AVERAGE, MORE THAN 5000 RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS A WEEK…I WILL THEN BE SPEAKING TO PRESIDENT ZELENSKYY OF UKRAINE AND THEN, WITH…VARIOUS MEMBERS OF NATO. HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE A PRODUCTIVE DAY, A CEASEFIRE WILL TAKE PLACE, AND THIS VERY VIOLENT WAR, A WAR THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED, WILL END. GOD BLESS US ALL!!!' Speaking of a ceasefire, last December I wrote a piece for this site titled, 'Were 750,000 additional lives wasted in Ukraine for less than nothing?' That number was extrapolated from a ceasefire reportedly offered to Putin now over 36 months ago, which was also reportedly 'scuttled' and 'sabotaged' by forces within the administrations of President Joe Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Now, three years later, to Trump's point, 'more than 5,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers' are being killed per week. For what? How many dead or wounded before those advocating that Ukraine fight to the last Ukrainian admit that an immediate ceasefire is the right and humane solution — and has always been? Haters are going to hate, but if Trump had been listened to three years ago, 1 million people would not have been killed or wounded. What is the worth of those lost and maimed lives? Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The View has been told to tone done its anti-Trump rhetoric, report claims
Disney boss Bob Iger and ABC News chief Almin Karamehmedovic have asked the hosts of The View to tone down the political rhetoric on the show, according to a new report by The Daily Beast. Considering the panelists of the long-running daytime talk show have been outspoken critics of Donald Trump for years now, and that criticism has only ramped up since the president returned to the White House. The request would in effect mean cooling the anti-Trump tenor of the show and potentially sparking backlash among its liberal audience. It would appear, at least for the moment, that the calls for a less politically charged show have yet to take hold. Thursday's program, for instance, kicked off with a segment focused on Trump's off-the-rails Oval Office meeting with the South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, which featured the president going on a rant about the baseless 'white genocide' conspiracy theory. According to the Beast, Karamehmedovic called a meeting with the show's five hosts – Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Sunny Hostin, and Alyssa Farah Griffin – and executive producer Brian Teta, suggesting 'the panel needed to broaden its conversations beyond its predominant focus on politics.' During the meeting, he pointed out a number of recent episodes with celebrity guests that drew higher ratings, urging the show to lean into that type of coverage more. 'The move was not framed as an edict, one source said, but the suggestion alone rankled the hosts,' the Beast noted. 'The group pushed back forcefully, with hosts like Navarro noting the show's audience routinely seeks out its perspective on politics, especially when the administration's radical attempts to upend the government can potentially affect their daily lives.' In the end, the hosts found the request 'silly' and said they were just going to do what they've been doing moving forward. Essentially, they felt it would 'look kind of bad' to their audience if they 'all of a sudden' stopped talking about politics. One source familiar with the matter stressed to The Independent that there was really nothing out of character with this particular meeting, noting that the network 'constantly has conversations with talent based on viewer feedback, and this instance was no different.' 'This is not about talking about Trump. It's about balance in the show on topics,' the source added. 'This conversation is really about making sure there's just balance in the show.' Still, even though the meeting wasn't framed as an edict, and the panel has continued to focus intently on political topics while covering Trump in their typically critical fashion, it remained a sticking point for at least one of the co-hosts. Navarro, a GOP strategist and CNN commentator who has carved out a niche for herself as a vocal Never Trump Republican, directly spoke to Iger during Disney's recent upfront advertiser presentation. 'Navarro thanked Iger for allowing the hosts to continue doing their jobs in a politically turbulent environment', the sources said. Iger confirmed he supported the show—but he also reaffirmed that the show needed to tone down its political rhetoric,' the Beast reported, adding: 'The conversation made clear the suggestion to tone down the politics went all the way to the top.' Navarro and representatives for Disney did not respond to requests for comment. ABC News declined to comment. While the executives' efforts to pare down the political segments on The View could be nothing more than the standard corporate push to broaden a program's appeal, these discussions will obviously be viewed through the lens of Trump's war against legacy media outlets – including ABC News and Disney. Following Trump's electoral victory last November, Disney agreed to settle his lawsuit against ABC News over anchor George Stephanopoulos' interview with Nancy Mace, which featured Stephanoupolous mischaracterizing a verdict that found Trump liable for sexual abuse. Trump received $15 million for his presidential library, a million dollars for legal fees, and a note from ABC expressing 'regret' over the claims. While legal analysts were split on the merits of Trump's defamation claims against ABC, First Amendment experts warned that Disney's capitulation would have a 'chilling effect' on the media going forward. 'Many in free press circles are holding their breath,' one expert told The Independent at the time. 'There is concern that we are embarking on some scary times.' The president is also in talks with Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, to settle his $20 billion lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris that legal experts have called frivolous and the network itself has deemed 'completely without merit.' Tensions within the network over the potential settlement, which Paramount's top shareholder Shari Redstone is pushing as the company seeks the Trump administration's approval for a merger with Skydance, have resulted in the resignations of CBS News chief Wendy McMahon and 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens. McMahon and Owens made it clear they would not apologize for the interview as part of any settlement with the president. Meanwhile, it's been reported that Paramount is willing to pay the president as much as $50 million to make the lawsuit go away.
New York Times
17-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
A Pentagon Nomination Fight Reveals the New Rules of Trump's Washington
There's little in Elbridge A. Colby's past to suggest that President Trump's most loyal and fierce allies would embrace him. Mr. Colby, 45, has deep roots in the foreign policy establishment that Mr. Trump is trying to destroy. He is the grandson of the former C.I.A. director William Colby; a product of Groton, Harvard and Yale Law School; someone who has spent much of his career working across party lines on some of the most complex national security issues: nuclear weapons strategy, China's military buildup, the commercialization of space. Yet when Mr. Trump nominated Mr. Colby to a top Pentagon job, the opposition came not from the president's base but from the dwindling band of traditional Republican foreign policy hard-liners who are often at odds with the president's more nationalistic, inward-looking views. And it was the Trump faithful, seeing Mr. Colby's confirmation as a chance to establish dominance over their ideological foes in the party, who sprang to his defense. 'This is the next deep state plot against Trump,' Charlie Kirk, a right-wing provocateur and Trump enforcer, wrote in a post on social media. 'Any Republican opposing @ElbridgeColby is opposing the Trump agenda,' opined Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son. 'Why the opposition to Bridge?' asked the billionaire Elon Musk, referring to Mr. Colby by his nickname. Senators are likely to vote on Mr. Colby's nomination in the next couple weeks, if not sooner. Beyond the insular world of Washington think tanks, where he spent much of his career, Mr. Colby is not well known. The job he is poised to take, under secretary of defense for policy, is critical but not the sort of position that typically stirs the passions of political activists. The back-and-forth over Mr. Colby's nomination, though, has become a proxy for something bigger: a battle over how America should wield its power and influence globally. And as is often the case with those in Mr. Trump's orbit, it also involves Mr. Colby's willingness to echo some of his baseless assertions — most notably his insistence that he won the 2020 election. Fallout Over Jan. 6 Mr. Colby's gray suits, shaggy blond hair and courtly manner are reminiscent of an earlier era in Washington. So too are many of his foreign policy views, which owe a debt to the Cold War-era realists who emphasized U.S. military might and economic dominance over ideals in the conduct of the country's affairs internationally. In the early 2000s, Mr. Colby spoke out forcefully against the invasion of Iraq and the nation-building efforts that followed, alienating his fellow Republicans. He was equally skeptical of Democrats' support for foreign aid and civil society programs aimed at spreading democracy abroad. Mr. Colby was not initially a Trump supporter. But his status as one of the relatively few Republican national security experts who did not sign 'Never Trump' letters in 2016 made him a viable candidate for a Pentagon job. In 2017, he oversaw the writing of the administration's first National Defense Strategy, which cast the era defined by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as a 'period of strategic atrophy' that produced mounting debts and a weaker military. Over the same stretch, it warned, America's most powerful adversaries — Russia and China — were growing stronger. After a year, Mr. Colby left the Pentagon for the Center for a New American Security, where he had worked earlier in his career. He argued for pulling troops from the Middle East and Europe so the U.S. military could focus on preparing for a potentially catastrophic fight with China over Taiwan. 'The war could happen at any time,' he warned repeatedly. 'Nobody knows.' Like most foreign policy think tanks, CNAS strives to be bipartisan — a place where analysts put national interests ahead of partisan politics. Still, Mr. Colby, who declined to be interviewed for this article citing his pending confirmation vote, complained to friends that as a Trump supporter, he felt increasingly out of place. His biggest fallout with his old colleagues came over the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. Days earlier, Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, became the first senator to say he would object to Congress's certification of the 2020 election results. Mr. Colby met the senator in 2019 when he testified on the National Defense Strategy, and the two quickly became friends and ideological allies. They texted regularly. Mr. Colby posted a message on social media in support of Mr. Hawley's decision, writing that he was speaking up 'for those who feel disenfranchised.' In doing so, Mr. Colby clearly aligned himself with those who were falsely arguing that the 2020 election had been stolen from Mr. Trump. Several of Mr. Colby's foreign policy colleagues warned him that he and Mr. Hawley were playing with fire. When riots broke out at the Capitol, Mr. Colby quickly condemned the violence. But to many of his old friends, it was too little too late. James M. Acton, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, had attended Mr. Colby's wedding in Brazil. In 2019, Mr. Colby had thanked him in the acknowledgments of his book, 'The Strategy of Denial,' which focused on deterring a war with China. Now Mr. Acton was falling out with his old friend. He argued that Mr. Colby's antidemocratic actions in the days before the Jan. 6 riots had damaged his 'credibility as an analyst' and should be 'disqualifying from participation in the national security discourse.' In the years that followed, Mr. Colby published fewer of the deeply researched think tank papers that had defined his career in favor of harder-edged social media posts. His think tank friends still defended his earlier work on nuclear weapons and the defense of Taiwan as rigorous and rooted in facts. 'I'd put his stuff up against anyone,' said Richard Fontaine, a former foreign policy adviser to Senator John McCain and the chief executive officer of CNAS. But something changed in their relationship after Jan. 6, Mr. Fontaine said. Other former colleagues described a similar shift. They muted Mr. Colby on social media or simply drifted away. Into the Woods A few days after Mr. Trump's 2024 victory, Mr. Colby flew to Maine for an appearance on Tucker Carlson's streaming show. Clad in a gray suit and tie, Mr. Colby looked as if he were about to testify before Congress. Mr. Carlson wore a blue-checked shirt. A chandelier made of antlers hung from the ceiling. Since his firing by Fox News almost 20 months earlier, Mr. Carlson had traveled to Moscow, where he conducted a mostly friendly interview with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. He also hosted a Holocaust revisionist and revealed in an online documentary that he had been mauled by supernatural demons who left claw marks on his back. Mr. Colby needed to demonstrate his pro-Trump, populist bona fides, which was why he was sitting across from Mr. Carlson as the conservative host described him as a possible candidate for defense secretary and one of the 'few' national security professionals who 'shares the president's priorities.' Mr. Colby made his case for a new foreign policy approach that prioritized preparing for a potential war with China and shifted U.S. military resources from Europe and the Middle East. 'We stand on the possible precipice of World War III, and we need a fundamental change before we ram right into the iceberg,' he warned. Together, he and Mr. Carlson criticized much of the U.S. foreign policy elite as moralistic, war-obsessed and weak. Its approach, they maintained, had produced failed wars, trillion-dollar deficits and enormous trade imbalances. 'The Washington blob establishment can get us into wars and crises,' Mr. Colby said, 'but they can't fix the problem.' 'These are the dumbest people,' Mr. Carlson said. Mr. Colby often described Mr. Trump to colleagues as a 'battering ram,' blasting away old, stale ideas. But, unlike many in Mr. Trump's movement, Mr. Colby wasn't reflexively anti-elite or opposed to research or expertise. His aim wasn't just to destroy. He wanted to build something better that could draw bipartisan support and endure beyond Mr. Trump. 'We need a better establishment,' Mr. Colby said. 'Delicate' Diplomacy Mr. Colby's Senate confirmation hearing was a first test of whether it might be possible to fashion even the barest foreign policy consensus out of the chaos wrought by Mr. Trump. Early this month, as Mr. Colby waited for the hearing to start, his uncle mentioned that the last time the family gathered for such an event was in the early 1970s, when lawmakers grilled Mr. Colby's grandfather about Operation Phoenix, a Vietnam War program that caused the deaths of more than 20,000 people. Some of the killings were 'illegal,' he had testified. More than 50 years later, Vice President JD Vance introduced Mr. Colby — a sign of the importance the administration was placing on the nomination — as an independent thinker willing to break with party dogma. 'To my Democratic friends,' the vice president said, 'I think you'll find he's a person who could actually work across the aisle.' Days earlier, Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance had publicly dressed down President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in the Oval Office, a scene Democrats described as 'shameful.' Before that, Mr. Trump had falsely declared that Ukraine had started the war with Russia. Democrats on the Senate committee asked Mr. Colby six times whether Mr. Putin had invaded Ukraine. Mr. Colby declined to answer, citing Mr. Trump's 'delicate' diplomacy. 'Shouldn't diplomacy be based on the truth?' asked Senator Angus King, independent of Maine. Republicans pressed Mr. Colby to disavow statements that he had made 15 years ago, suggesting that the United States could tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. And they challenged his assertion that the United States could scale back its military presence anywhere in the world without emboldening autocratic adversaries. 'Just look at Joe Biden and Afghanistan,' said Senator Dan Sullivan, Republican of Alaska. 'Holy cow, that was a disaster. Every bad guy in the world was like, 'Hey, I'm making my move.'' Mr. Colby stuck to his core message that the dire threat posed by China's aggressive military buildup demanded that the Pentagon make hard choices about where to put its forces; that America would have to rely on its allies in Europe and the Middle East to do more. The three-hour hearing was ending when one of the Republican senators interrupted to say that Mr. Zelensky had expressed regret for his confrontation with Mr. Trump and was offering to 'work fast' to end his country's war with Russia. The episode highlighted the ways in which Mr. Trump's approach to the war was shattering any hope that Democrats and Republicans might be able to cooperate on foreign policy. To Democrats, the bullying of Mr. Zelensky was Trumpism at its worst. The president had humiliated an ally into compliance and in the process rewarded Mr. Putin, America's real enemy. Mr. Colby saw it differently. He hailed Mr. Zelensky's statement as proof that the president's unconventional approach was working. 'You don't know what he's going to do,' Mr. Colby said of Mr. Trump, 'but you can get a deal with him.' The Republican senators on the panel nodded in agreement. The Democrats had all left.
The Independent
28-01-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Whistleblower raises alarm that Kash Patel ‘broke protocol' over hostage rescue
Kash Patel, the Trump loyalist tapped to lead the Federal Bureau of Intelligence, reportedly broke national security protocol in 2020 by publicly speaking about a hostage rescue in Yemen without authorization – the latest concern among Democrats already questioning his judgement during high-stakes moments. Patel, who served as a senior advisor to the acting director of national intelligence Ric Grennell, allegedly 'inserted himself inappropriately' in the hostage recovery mission that took place in October 2020 and disclosed information about it to the Wall Street Journal 'several hours' before the hostages were confirmed in U.S. custody. That's according to an unnamed whistleblower who disclosed the 'highly credible information' to Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, CBS News reports. Senator Dick Durbin, the ranking member of the committee, relayed the information to Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Acting Treasury Secretary David Lebryk in a letter on Tuesday. Expressing concern, Durbin asked for information related to the hostage recovery mission including all communications between Patel and the team that assisted in the rescue of Sandra Loli and Mikael Gidada as well as the recovery of Bilal Fateen's remains from Iranian-backed militants in Yemen. The whistleblower claims the Wall Street Journal published Patel's comments hours before the hostages were confirmed to be in custody and families were notified – breaking protocol that is intended to ensure hostage exchange operations go smoothly. 'This is the second known instance of Mr. Patel breaking hostage recovery protocol to inappropriately insert himself in a sensitive or high-profile recovery mission,' Durbin said in the letter. 'An official who puts missions and the lives of Americans in jeopardy for public notoriety and personal gain is unfit to lead the country's primary federal law enforcement and investigation agency.' Alex Gray, the former chief of staff for the National Security Council during Trump's first term, told CBS News the allegations are 'absurd' and touted that Patel 'put the interests of the American people, and particularly the interest of Americans hostages and unlaw detainees and their families first.' '[Patel] is a professional who devoted his career to keeping America safe, and to bringing our hostages home. These anonymous smears are the last gasp of the NeverTrump bitter-enders,' Gray wrote on X. A transition official also pushed back on the report in a statement to Fox News. 'Mr. Patel was a public defender, decorated prosecutor, and accomplished national security official that kept Americans safe,' the official said. 'He has a track record of success in every branch of government, from the court room to congressional hearing room to the situation room. There is no veracity to this anonymous source's complaints about protocol.' Patel has also been accused of nearly mishandling a sensitive operation in Nigeria in 2020 by mistakenly assuring Defense Department officials that State Department officials received permission from the Nigerian government for the U.S. to use its airspace to rescue an American hostage. However, Nigeria had not. It was nearly too late, as U.S. Air Forces were bringing Navy SEALs to carry out the operation. At the last minute, the State Department received clearance and the mission went forward without issues. Patel is one of Trump's most controversial cabinet picks. He has unwaveringly supported and followed Trump for years, going as far as to write a children's book that shared doubts over the legitimacy of the Steele dossier and portrayed Trump as a 'king'. Like Trump, Patel has elevated conspiracy theories related to 'the deep state' and claimed the government is weaponized against the president and his allies. Like Trump, Patel has promised to use power to go after enemies such as the media and even published a list of people he believes should be investigated such as former President Joe Biden and former attorney generals Merrick Garland and Bill Barr. He has proliferated conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election and claimed former president Barack Obama runs a 'shadow network' in charge of the intelligence community. Senator Adam Schiff, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Patel is 'the last person' who should serve as FBI director. 'In addition to being dishonest, untrustworthy, lacking in character… his only real qualification is he was the guy in the first Trump administration that you went to when no one else would do the dirty work the president wanted done,' Schiff said. Patel will go before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions about his nomination on Thursday.
