Trump’s Cabinet picks face tests of loyalty during upcoming confirmation hearings
(CNN) — Senate confirmation hearings set to begin this week are likely to reveal a defining trait uniting Donald Trump’s incoming Cabinet, regardless of their diverse political backgrounds and uneven qualifications: an unflinching allegiance to the president-elect.
For weeks, Trump’s handpicked nominees have undergone rigorous preparations for their high-stakes Capitol Hill appearances — including intensive studying sessions, contentious mock hearings and heavy-handed coaching from Republican senators. Over long hours behind closed doors, Trump’s allies and advisers have forced candidates to confront their vulnerabilities, perfect their pitches and practice sidestepping traps laid by Democrats.
The intense rehearsals are not all too different from Trump’s first term, when his team prepared its nominees during practices by interrupting their answers with protests, shouting matches between stand-in committee members, personal attacks and other outbursts intended to derail their concentration.
What distinguishes this round of confirmations, however, is the heightened expectation that Trump’s picks will present not just their own expertise but a clear and unwavering loyalty to the president-elect’s agenda — a public display of fealty that was not always assured during his first term.
“This time, people view the nominees as an extension of Donald Trump and his agenda,” said Sean Spicer, who helped ready Trump’s nominees while serving as his first press secretary. “They’re not there to defend their own views; they’re there to defend Trump’s policies.”
“The movement was in a very different place,” Spicer said of the days after Trump’s first election in 2016.
Indeed, hearings for Trump’s Cabinet eight years ago were defined in part by the pained efforts by some of his nominees to distance their views from the campaign declarations of the man they intended to serve.
Several of them, for example, told senators they viewed climate change as a legitimate man-made threat, while Trump as a candidate in 2016 called it a “Chinese hoax.” Others appeared unpersuaded by Trump’s plans to build a wall at the US-Mexico border to halt illegal immigration.
The leading diplomatic voices in that first administration, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, as nominees expressed concerns about Trump’s dismissive posture toward Russia’s provocations while promising to uphold the alliances Trump often sought to undermine. Meanwhile, the nominee to lead the Pentagon, James Mattis, vowed to sustain the Iran nuclear agreement that Trump decried as a bad deal all throughout the campaign.
The remarkable disconnect set the tone for a tenuous relationship at times between Trump and his Cabinet, which included people he was barely acquainted with before he elevated them to top posts. The dynamic often left him distrusting of the people around him and at times sent him spiraling over a perceived lack of loyalty. Trump has since gone on to describe some of his early personnel selections as “the biggest mistake I made.”
“I picked some great people, you know, but you don’t think about that. I picked some people that I shouldn’t have picked,” he told podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan during the 2024 campaign, disparaging some of his choices as “bad people or disloyal people.”
A new Trump era with new Cabinet picks
The evolution of the GOP and its approach to Trump’s plans is illustrated by his latest pick for secretary of state, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Eight years ago, coming off his unsuccessful primary race against Trump, Rubio used his position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to push Tillerson toward the Florida Republican’s own hawkish views and away from the incoming president’s isolationist rhetoric. During one contentious exchange, Rubio pressed Tillerson to call Russian President Vladamir Putin a war criminal. Tillerson declined to do so, and Rubio initially wouldn’t commit to supporting Trump’s secretary of state, though he eventually did.
Now on the cusp of his own Senate confirmation hearing to serve as Trump’s top diplomat, Rubio has aligned himself closely with Trump’s worldview.
“The job of the secretary of state is to execute on the foreign policy set by the elected president of the United States,” Rubio said shortly after Trump tapped him for the role. “I hope to have the opportunity to do it if my current colleagues in the US Senate confirm me.”
As it is, Republicans believe Trump is on track to have his Cabinet approved at a much faster clip than in 2017, when delays in turning over ethics agreements, FBI background checks and other concerns dragged the proceedings beyond the initial weeks of Trump’s new administration.
There is still the potential for holdups. Many Trump Cabinet picks — who include some of the country’s wealthiest people — haven’t disclosed their finances or their plans for untangling their fortunes from their new assignments in government. Other snags could materialize along the way.
Hearings will kick off on Tuesday, beginning with former Georgia Rep. Douglas Collins, the pick for secretary of Veterans Affairs, who will appear before the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s choice for secretary of Defense.
“The American people are going to like what they see from these brilliant people over the next few weeks,” Trump’s incoming press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told CNN of Trump’s picks.
Still, challenges remain for some of Trump’s more controversial and unconventional choices to lead his government, including Hegseth; former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services; and former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to serve as director of national intelligence. And already one of Trump’s choices — former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general — was forced to pull out of the running after it became clear some Republicans were unwilling to overlook troubling accusations of sexual and personal misconduct that Gaetz has denied.
For now, Trump is standing by his remaining picks, and several Republican senators have been taking a hands-on approach to helping them navigate the process — especially contentious selections who may have less experience in a high-profile confirmation hearing setting.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, has participated in practice hearings that he said last for more than two hours and “don’t pull any punches.”
“We have a chair, we have the ranking member. We have name tags out there. We have the mics,” Mullin said.
The sessions have included practices with Hegseth, who enters the hearing amid mounting turmoil from his past, including allegations of sexual assault, workplace drinking and mismanaging a veterans charity. The Army veteran has denied wrongdoing.
“He’s not the only one. We are doing it with all the nominees. Just so they understand the way it works so they aren’t surprised,” Mullin said.
Several Trump allies and veterans of confirmation battles cautioned that the president-elect’s support for people like Hegseth could change abruptly if they don’t deliver a convincing performance during their confirmation hearings.
“The bigger challenge for any of the (nominees) is just making sure the president still has confidence in them when they’ve completed their discussions,” said South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds.
Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, who has counseled Trump through tough nomination fights in the past, said he believes the incoming president and his Senate allies are sticking by Hegseth in part because of what they learned from past confirmation fireworks. Many Republicans remain hardened by the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who faced accusations of sexual assault soon after his appointment that he vehemently denied.
In 2017, Trump’s nominee for secretary of labor, businessman Andrew Puzder, withdrew after a report resurfaced past allegations of domestic abuse, which were later withdrawn, that an ex-wife made on Oprah. (Puzder had denied the abuse.)
Reed didn’t dismiss the allegations against Hegseth, but suggested politics may be at play. “These charges should be taken seriously, but on the other hand, at this point, I approach it with a higher standard of evidence because this is the Democratic playbook,” he said.
GOP senators help prep Trump’s picks
Pressed on how nominees can begin to prepare for the tension that is a hallmark of the modern day confirmation hearing, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a veteran of Senate Judiciary Committee, said: “Go back and watch videos of the Kavanagh hearing.”
Republicans are also working behind the scenes to help shore up GOP support for the picks who may face some headwinds in a floor vote. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who serves on the Judiciary Committee, told CNN he has been encouraging GOP senators on the fence to meet with FBI director pick Kash Patel. Tillis has urged Patel to get out in front of some of his past contentious statements early in his public confirmation hearing and explain himself succinctly.
“He clearly needs to address some of the things that have been amplified from some of his writings and in his book, but I actually think he’s been unfairly treated and the hearing is going to give him an opportunity to address those concerns,” Tillis said.
Senators have stressed to the Cabinet selections the gravity of their hearings, cautioning that these events can make or break their chances. Tillis has also warned Trump’s transition team not to shelter potential Cabinet officials behind closed doors and leave them unprepared for difficult questions. Surprises on the day of the hearing can be just as problematic for a candidate, he has told them.
“We gotta get these folks ready to get on the field,” Tillis said.
Others have pushed the nominees to remember a simple rule: Humility can go a long way in a high-drama confirmation process, especially in a televised hearing.
“I think where you get into trouble is when you say, ‘I don’t want to talk about this, I don’t want to talk about that.’ It’s better to just say, ‘Here’s the deal,”” Sen. Josh Hawley said.
The Missouri Republican said he had one such interaction in a private meeting with Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic. During the encounter, Hawley pushed Kennedy on a separate area of concern for some Republicans: his past support for increasing abortion access.
“I asked him a bunch of pointed questions on life policy. He was very candid with them and I appreciated his candor. I just think that gets you points,” Hawley said.
Knowing when you don’t know the answer is another key part of preparation, senators warn.
Sen. Deb Fischer, who serves on the Armed Services Committee, told CNN that when she met with Hegseth the first time she had a good meeting, but there were some areas that were priorities for her that Hegseth wasn’t “up on.” He left the meeting but then days later called back to schedule another so he could be more prepared to discuss her priorities.
“He came back so we could talk more in depth. I give him a lot of credit for doing that,” the Nebraska Republican said.
What remains to be seen is whether any lingering concerns from Senate Republicans materialize in the form of tough questions when the nominees are under oath. While most Republicans supported Trump’s picks eight years ago, there were some tense moments during confirmation hearings. In addition to Rubio’s grilling of Tillerson, then-Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada turned the screws on Trump’s pick to lead the Treasury Department, Steve Mnuchin, over foreclosures in his state at the hands of Mnuchin’s bank.
Trump’s allies have pressured Senate Republicans to fall in line, with some threatening primary challenges to those who stand in the way of the incoming president. Vice President-elect JD Vance sought to remind the GOP who leads the party, arguing on social media that Trump’s “coattails turned a 49-51 senate to a 53-47 senate.”
“He deserves a cabinet that is loyal to the agenda he was elected to implement,” Vance said.
CNN’s Manu Raju, Aaron Pellish and Kate Sullivan contributed to this report.
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