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Donald Trump Jr suggests that his father has “backup plans” if his cabinet picks aren’t confirmed by the Senate.
Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth and Robert F Kennedy Jr are receiving the most pushback in President-elect Donald Trump’s list of controversial cabinet picks. But his eldest son told Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that even if the Senate doesn’t confirm some of his nominees, Trump has a plan B.
“Has your father talked about backup plans? What if some of these people are not confirmed? There’s been a lot of backlash over some of them,” Bartiromo asked.
“Listen, there’s always ideas,” said Don Jr, who is helping with transition efforts. “We have lists of people. We’re not just randomly picking a name out of a hat. We’re showing him lists of 10 to 12 people for every position. So we do have backup plans.”
“We are obviously going with the strongest candidates first,” he continued. “Some of them are going to be controversial. They are controversial because they’ll actually get things done.”
“The swamp doesn’t want that so we’re gonna go all in and make sure that those people have the best chance at getting confirmed as possible because they are the people who are most effective,” he added.
Most of the backlash — including from some Senate Republicans — has been centered around Gaetz, who resigned from the House on Wednesday after Trump announced he was the nominee for attorney general.
Gaetz’s resignation came two days before the House ethics committee was reportedly set to vote on whether to release its report on the Gaetz probe; the panel was investigating a variety of allegations, including sex trafficking and illicit drug use. The committee postponed its meeting, Committee Chair Michael Guest told Politico on Friday.
“When you see that kind of backlash, generally speaking, it’s because it’s a threat to the uni-party in Washington, DC. They don’t want to see change…They don’t want to be disrupted,” Don Jr said.
Many of the picks are “not traditional names,” Bartiromo said. She asked whether he thought Gaetz was going to face pushback in the Senate.
Don Jr didn’t offer a direct answer, instead he replied: “I think a lot of them are going to face pushback for the same reasons. They are going to be actual disruptors.”
Trump has also picked Tulsi Gabbard to serve as Director of National Intelligence, Marco Rubio to serve as Secretary of State, Kristi Noem to serve as head of the Department of Homeland Security and Elise Stefanik as United Nations ambassador.
Read More: Don Jr hints Trump has ‘backup plans’ if controversial picks don’t get confirmed