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00:00Let's go to Washington because 24 hours after Donald Trump picked the vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the next U.S. Health Secretary, a backlash is beginning.
00:11Absolutely the wrong guy. That's coming from the head of America's Public Health Association who has said he would personally oppose the nomination,
00:18claiming Mr. Kennedy Jr.'s spreading of conspiracy theories already causing great damage to the nation's health.
00:25Mr. Trump's aides stand by him, saying the U.S. needs to embrace out-of-the-box thinking.
00:30Well, he's just one of a number of candidates for the Trump government that is ruffling feathers right now. Loyalty is key, it seems.
00:37Other names picking up headlines, the chisel-jawed anti-woke army vet and Fox News host Peter Hegseth for defence secretary chosen over four-star generals, career politicians.
00:48Then there's the firebrand congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general, reportedly provoking gasps as the news filtered through a senior Republican meeting.
00:57He's faced an ethics investigation for sex trafficking, which he denied.
01:01And Tulsi Gabbard, too, national intelligence chief, used to be a Democrat, supporter of Bernie Sanders, turned against Hillary Clinton, went instead for Trump a few years ago.
01:10Seen as a sympathiser of Vladimir Putin to her critics, some have called her Russia Today's favourite politician.
01:17Well, let's cross to D.C. Let's get a view from the Republican strategist Dan Hazelwood.
01:22Great to talk to you, Dan, this evening. A lot to pick through.
01:26Shall we start with your take on the picks this week and the feathers that they're ruffling?
01:35Well, you know, I would caution everybody to remember that the one thing you should not do is overreact.
01:42This is the lesson we've had for the Trump era. People should start to underreact.
01:47Let the processes unfold. If you look at first, let's look at the broad spectrum.
01:52I know we're going to talk about some specific nominees for offices, but if you look at the broad spectrum, many of these are typical appointments in a Republican administration.
02:01A Republican Western governor from North Dakota for Department of Interior.
02:06Senator Marco Rubio for Secretary of State. The pick for National Security Advisor.
02:13The pick for Central Intelligence Agency. These are all pretty normal picks by any standard new administration in Washington.
02:22Obviously, we're focusing on some of the more controversial in the press.
02:28But let's see the process unfold. We've had a lot of people talk about, you know, the Republicans and how they're going to approve stuff.
02:36This all has to get almost every one of these jobs have to be approved by the Republican U.S. Senate.
02:41National Security Advisor does not. But Matt Goetz is already looking at some serious challenges going forward of getting approved by the Republican U.S. Senate.
02:50So we're going to have the traditional systems of Washington being Washington, D.C.
02:56I was listening to one of your old colleagues, a Republican strategist, Mike Murphy, who has since made clear he's an anti-Trump strategist now.
03:03But he said this. He said he believes what Donald Trump has been doing is, quote, flooding the zone.
03:08The idea that you put in lots of candidates who perhaps are loyalty first, qualifications second, was his line.
03:16And if you try to get them through Congress, the idea is the most perhaps audacious, outrageous go by the wayside.
03:23But you still get in a number of Trump loyalists by flooding the zone. What do you make of that?
03:29It's certainly possible. Mike Murphy is a friend and I love the idea that he's saying that Donald Trump is being clever and working the system.
03:38That's not Mike's usual commentary on President-elect Trump.
03:42But if you look at what Trump announced first and what his priorities are, you can see border and immigration policies are going to be where he really targets to expand his political capital, to change fundamentally the direction of policies in the United States.
03:58So that's where I would look for him to have the biggest fight.
04:02And then somebody else made the comment, if you look at the appointments of, say, Tulsi Gabbard or of RFK Jr., these are very much of sort of the American version of the European multi-parliamentary coalitions trying to offer seats to their coalition partners.
04:19He perceives as these people try to be helpful for him. There's a lot of desire for upending the bureaucracies in Washington, both from Donald Trump, from the Republican Party in general, and also to a degree for the American people.
04:32So this is sort of the change he promised, maybe not in the specific line items, but this is what people should be expecting.
04:39But we've got a long way to go to the process. None of these people take office if they're confirmed until January 20th. We've got a long way to go.
04:48So everybody should just sort of sit back and really evaluate what's coming.
04:53Let me get your take on Matt Gaetz, because you briefly mentioned him.
04:57So this is somebody who is subject of an investigation over allegations of sexual misconduct, bribery, illicit drug use.
05:06He denies all the allegations. There is a situation now where, according to a number of reports, including the New York Times, there were gasps.
05:14Visceral moment when senior Republicans heard the news that he was going to be essentially the wisest lawmaker of the land as attorney general.
05:23Did you gasp?
05:27I was taking it back. You know, the bingo card of who's going to get stuff. I didn't even imagine Matt Gaetz of being attorney general.
05:34Just as a technical point, that's not the lawmaker. He's the it's traditionally referred to as the senior law enforcement officer.
05:42Yeah, it's a completely out of the box and unexpected pick.
05:48And it's already running into the traditional Washington system where even though the Republicans are going to have the majority come January in the U.S. Senate, a number of Republican senators have started to ask questions.
05:59Want more information? And this is the usual process.
06:03And so, you know, for all the all that the world has changed, certain things in our constitutional system appears to in particularly the Matt Gaetz respect appear to be going down the same old pathway.
06:17He may just be too controversial to get confirmed.
06:20Yeah, you're quite right. So he's nominated to be the most senior law officer in the U.S.
06:26He's worked as a lawyer, I think, for less than two years. He could, as you say, now be the highest legal mind in the land.
06:32And he also met with the January the 6th convicts in prison.
06:36So I think just give you a sense of where he's coming from for you.
06:40Interesting, you think if he doesn't get through.
06:43I just wonder whether the other analysis of Donald Trump's thinking here, very hard to predict the unpredictable, is that he's testing.
06:51This is this is one for his base. It's very popular.
06:53And if Republicans in the Senate don't put him through, he can hold his hands up and say, I tried.
06:59It's not me. It's them. Again, what I would actually say is if that if Trump is actually thinking that and playing that game of chess, that would be a sign that he has a specific plan for his administration.
07:14People may not like it, but that it's a much more thought through process of what he's going to try and achieve.
07:20And, you know, it's very clear he does want a Justice Department that is not a threat to him personally because he did not have a good relationship in his mind with the Justice Department when he was in office before or particularly when the Democrats were in charge.
07:34But where you see him putting in people with expert knowledge, still controversial on immigration matters, that does seem to be where the weight is going.
07:44And the next round of what will probably be seen is his economic team, which we haven't seen that build out yet.
07:50So that's going to be a whole nother round of very interesting choices, possibly next week.
07:54Can I ask your thoughts on Elon Musk and Donald Trump?
07:58There seems to be a, you know, they're enamoured right now.
08:01We hear of, you know, all of the jobs that Elon Musk is doing, this advisory board, the Doge unit, sorting out the Department of Government Efficiency.
08:10Also in on these calls with Javier Mille in a conversation with him on the call with Zelensky, reportedly on a call as well with the Iranian ambassador to the UN.
08:19I heard one analyst talk about we're seeing two Tomcats in the same pillowcase here at some point.
08:26You know, one is going to win out. They can't both stay together that long.
08:29Do you share that view or you think this could last out?
08:32Well, I think that's true in the sense of but we've got a very clear constitutional system.
08:37Trump will win out.
08:38I mean, he is going to be the president of the United States and he's going to decide what will happen.
08:42And presumably, you know, Elon Musk has a lot of interests besides the government right now.
08:48And while that's taking up a lot of his time, and you saw Trump, the rally I think you're showing right now, or maybe it was a different one.
08:55He was actually tweaking how much Elon Musk is hanging around.
08:58So, you know, Trump's going to be playing this.
09:00And I think they both know where they end up.
09:03And, you know, there's also clear areas where Musk is going to diverge from Donald Trump.
09:10Musk is a more radical First Amendment supporter than anybody that we've seen in Washington at this level.
09:18He is, you know, now that does not that's not the usual Trump model.
09:23That's the Musk model.
09:25And then you're going to see Musk actually is also a massive proponent of solar power and electrical cars.
09:32Obviously, these are not those two topics are ones that were punch lines for Trump on the campaign trail.
09:38So there's absolutely going to be a divergence.
09:41You can count on it.
09:42The question is that they both wander off in the areas that they are more concerned with.
09:47Or how long do they work together?
09:49That's going to be one of the interesting things that unfold.
09:52Dan, we have about 30 seconds, but I'm really keen to hear your thoughts briefly.
09:56Just the moment where the Democrats have to look at themselves deeply right now.
10:00And one of the issues that a number of Democrats came up with as a possible where they really went wrong is their whole podcast strategy.
10:07Kind of underplaying it, not realising the strength of the likes of what some call in the new mainstream media,
10:12the likes of Joe Rogan getting 50 million plus viewers and how Donald Trump tapped into that, you know, the young male strategy.
10:21Do you think in brief Kamala Harris should have actually absolutely done that interview with Joe Rogan?
10:27She should have done it because it would have been a sign of strength and it would have shown if she was agile enough to be in a long format communication.
10:36The larger issue, the Democrats didn't lose because of technology.
10:40I've been around in this business a long time.
10:42Ronald Reagan didn't win on technology.
10:45Obama didn't win on technology.
10:47That's always the excuse.
10:49This was fundamentally about message.
10:51When you ask the American people who was more extreme.
10:54Yeah.
10:55She came off as more extreme than Donald Trump.
10:58And so people said, well, if they're both extreme, I'm going to take the person who's going to care about what I care about, which is the economy and immigration.
11:05So it's always the message that matters.
11:08And I would say that's where the.
11:13Correction has to come down.
11:14A pleasure to talk to you, Dan Hazelwood, a Republican Party strategist in Washington, D.C.
11:18Stay with us here on France 24.
11:20We're going to be back in just a moment.