The early cabinet nominee confirmation hearings have set the right tone and substance for the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States. It’s increasingly clear that Trump has chosen strong candidates who are committed to turning America around, which is encouraging as the American people deserve results from a popularly elected president with a clear reform mandate. The strong, direct governing approach of Trump is being vindicated right before our very eyes in his cabinet selections. How refreshing to witness these nominees standing their ground on principles and pushing back with truth, confidence, and finesse to politicians who surely have more skeletons in their closets than the nominees under their review.
The critics thought they could sack Pete Hegseth and prevent him from becoming the Secretary of Defense through a standard basic smear campaign of stories and innuendo about love affairs in which he was alleged to have been involved after returning from his overseas military service. Hegseth answered the critics, admitting to having done what so many others have done after returning from combat after years of service in dangerous and long military engagements. He also unhesitatingly used the occasion to witness his personal transformation and the remaking of his character through the savior Jesus Christ. “Saved by the grace of God by Jesus and [my wife] Jenny," said Hegseth, “redemption is real. God forged me in ways I know I’m prepared for.”
Hegseth’s humility and authenticity was a showstopper, revealing an honesty and his freedom and power from a clear conscience and conviction to do what is right. In just a few minutes of testimony, Hegseth turned criticism into his advantage, emerging as an unassailable leader to serve as Secretary of Defense. And all the more so when compared to recent predecessor multi-starred Generals Lloyd Austin, who presided over an inexplicably botched and costly Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021, and when compared to Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley, who told his Chinese counterpart that he would provide advance warning if his then boss, Donald Trump, began to take action against China.
Pam Bondi ran circles around Senate critics who tried to pressure and bait her to take different positions than President Trump on election irregularities in 2020, the pardoning of J6 prisoners, investigations of special counsel Jack Smith, Liz Cheney, and others and the political weaponization of the Justice Department. After being interrupted, bullied, and baited by both California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, Bondi kept her cool, and told the entire Senate Judiciary Committee conducting the nomination hearings that with her appointment “the partisanship, the weaponization will be gone” [and] “America must have one tier of justice for all.”
Lest anyone forget, the powers behind the Biden administration over the last four years put weaponization of federal government agencies on steroids, with the Justice Department becoming a hotbed of lies and schemes, undertaken to support various political narratives that damaged political opponents and exacerbated division within the U.S. August 8, 2022, will go down in infamy as the day the FBI took the unprecedented action of raiding Donald Trump’s private Mar-a- Lago residence allegedly in search of classified documents that Trump was purportedly unauthorized to possess. Then between March and August of 2023, Trump became the first president in American history charged with state and federal felony crimes—not one, but four separate indictments in four different jurisdictions.
All of this, being an assault on the U.S. Constitution by way of political weaponization of the judiciary, requires an immediate response from the new Trump 47 administration. When high crimes and misdemeanors go unpunished, enemies foreign and domestic will be emboldened and empowered to commit more and worse crimes.
The first order of business for the Trump administration to keep his word and make the greatest symbolic move to restore equal justice under the law would be to pardon all the J6 defendants. The second order of business would be an action that would do the most to bring back health to both public and private sector institutions in America, and that would be to ban Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies and restore merit as the principal driver of decision-making. Eliminating DEI in the military would do more than any other single policy change to restore the morale of the U.S. armed forces, the key variable in fighting and winning wars and the key variable to reverse the last four years of recruiting shortfalls.
In summary, to root out corruption throughout our government, we must be prepared to do whatever it takes, and that means both standing behind President Trump and his remaining cabinet nominees to make tough decisions and holding them accountable to deliver what they promised. There is simply no substitute for bold and swift action to correct this late-stage dysfunction of injustice and corruption that threatens to deliver America to her enemies.
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Scott S. Powell is senior fellow at Discovery Institute and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger-China. His timeless book, Rediscovering America, has been #1 Amazon New Release in the history genre for eight weeks. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637581599. Reach him at scottp@discovery.org
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