In the past decade, I’ve interviewed four men President-elect Trump just nominated for top cabinet positions

In the past decade, I’ve interviewed four men President-elect Trump just nominated for top cabinet positions. Here’s what they said then on issues relevant to the US-Israel relationship, how they fit in with Trump, and what we can expect from them if they win Senate confirmation.

O

nce the 119th Congress is gaveled into session on January 3, the Senate will begin confirmation hearings for President-elect Trump’s 15 top cabinet choices.

Republicans will hold a 53-47 majority in the incoming Senate, including majority control of the committees that will probe Trump’s nominees, but that doesn’t mean his picks are shoo-ins.

The Constitution grants the Senate “advice and consent” powers over cabinet appointments. Each nominee will undergo a rigorous vetting process by a relevant Senate committee. For example, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds hearings for the nominee for secretary of state while the Armed Services Committee takes testimony from Trump’s pick for defense secretary.

Senators traditionally take this constitutional duty to heart and act like lions, not lambs. Staffers and other federal agencies conduct background checks on nominees’ financial affairs and prior job and life experience. Nominees testify under oath, so the hearings are much more than a glorified job interview. Many of Trump’s picks lack federal experience and will face pressure to convince senators they are up to the task of managing a federal bureaucracy with budgets of hundreds of billions of dollars and employing tens of thousands of people.

Some nominees will face embarrassing or challenging questions about past foibles and lack of moral and ethical fiber.

Trump has history on his side when it comes to getting nominations approved. Many recent presidents have been compelled to withdraw nominees due to fierce Senate opposition, but the full Senate has only rejected a nominee nine times. The last time was in 1989, when it rejected George H.W. Bush’s selection of former Texas senator John Tower as secretary of defense when an FBI clearance check discovered evidence of personal misconduct.

Once the hearings conclude, the Senate committees deliberate in private and vote on whether to recommend the nominee for a vote on the Senate floor. A nominee needs only a one-vote majority from the panel they appeared before and on the Senate floor to win confirmation.

That’s where the GOP majority favors their chances, but some six of the returning 53 Republican senators are not loyal to Trump and have expressed dismay over controversial picks, including firebrand Matt Gaetz for attorney general and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services.

I’m zooming in on four picks I have personally interviewed, three of whom, if confirmed, will serve in positions critical to constructive US-Israeli relations.

1

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State–Designate

Florida’s Senator Marco Rubio has made a remarkable metamorphosis from the week in 2016 when he dropped out of the presidential race and told a Mishpacha reporter that Trump was “the most vulgar person that’s ever run for president” and “a terrible example for young people.”

We discussed Rubio’s change of heart when I interviewed him for our cover feature in June 2022 (“Life of the Party: Senator Marco Rubio Warns of American Weakness in a Hostile World,” Issue 917).

Rubio credited Trump for transforming the Republican Party, attracting new working-class voters who felt alienated and underrepresented, which we now know powered Trump’s victory.

As vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Rubio is qualified to serve as secretary of state, but the fact that his nomination was first leaked to the New York Times, instead of Trump directly announcing, was a sign that this might have been a trial balloon to see how hard MAGA forces might push back against Rubio, who is also part of the old Republican guard.

Rubio was already ahead of the curve on that, addressing his agreements and disagreements with Trump in our interview.

“Where our views align, I’m obviously going to be supportive of President Trump’s position,” Rubio said. “In those instances in which our views may not be entirely aligned, I’ll explain those differences and do what I think is right.”

As secretary of state, Rubio will be subservient to Trump, but if Rubio can be honest with Trump, and Trump is willing to listen, Rubio’s steadiness will pair well with Trump’s unpredictability.

For Israel, the secretary of state can either be an “ezer” or “k’negdo.” In most administrations, the scales have tilted to the k’negdo side, with a passionate pursuit of a two-state solution, putting the onus on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinian Authority that would jeopardize its security.

Rubio has never totally disavowed a two-state solution, and neither has Trump, but Rubio has long maintained that the conditions don’t exist for that to happen. Two months ago, Rubio wrote a letter criticizing the Biden administration’s pressure on Israel, noting: “Israelis rightfully living in their historic homeland are not the impediment to peace; the Palestinians are.”

One of Trump’s goals is to drain the swamp in Washington. The State Department sits on former swampland aptly nicknamed Foggy Bottom. Rubio admitted to me, “There’s no doubt that there are people with deep-seated antagonism toward the state of Israel within the embedded American bureaucracy, including our diplomatic corps.”

The State Department would be a good place for Trump and Rubio to get to work.

2

Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense–Designate

The nomination of this man, who spent the last seven years as a political commentator and weekend co-host of the highly rated Fox and Friends, was a head-scratcher to DC insiders. But Hegseth shares Trump’s goal of remaking — some call it purging — the Pentagon of woke generals and bureaucrats.

Hegseth has enraged the woke crowd for his fierce opposition to women in combat roles and his contention that the Pentagon’s emphasis on DEI hires has weakened the military, prioritizing race and color over merit, reducing young people’s motivation to enlist.

Hegseth is a former infantry captain in the Army National Guard in Afghanistan and Iraq, where he earned two Bronze Stars in combat. He also holds a bachelor’s in politics from Princeton and a master’s in public policy from Harvard, so intellectually, he’s no slouch.

We sat across from each other at a breakfast table in August 2016 at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, a few months before he joined Fox and Friends. He had come to Israel for a story comparing and contrasting IDF service to US Army service.

He noticed one fundamental difference that’s even more applicable today. “America usually deploys elsewhere in defense of itself, whereas in Israel, there’s an existential nature of what Israeli forces face in defending their homeland,” Hegseth said.

Since then, Hegseth has been a passionate defender of Israel using maximum force on Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists. Israel will benefit from a no-nonsense advocate in the Defense Department.

The woke left despises Hegseth, an evangelical Christian, and they are pouring their scrutiny on Hegseth’s tattoos, which they contend consist of slogans from alt-right groups. We know that Trump has a cadre of far-right supporters, some of whom have expressed anti-Semitic sentiments. It will be interesting to hear how Hegseth responds to these charges at his confirmation hearings.

3

Mike Huckabee, Ambassador–Designate to Israel

This was also a bit of a shocker. Many pundits expected Trump to renominate David Friedman, but Trump is looking for a new direction, and Huckabee will provide that.

A former governor of Arkansas, whose daughter now holds that position, Huckabee has made dozens of visits to Israel, leading evangelical groups on tours of Israel’s biblical past.

I first met him in February 2011 (“A Few Minutes with Mike Huckabee,” Issue 346), when he too was a Fox News host. He visited Israel to help lay the cornerstone for the expansion of a Jewish neighborhood on the campus of Beit Orot, a Hesder yeshivah located between Mount Scopus and the Mount of Olives, land the international community would label “occupied Arab East Jerusalem.”

When I asked Huckabee if he was afraid of painting himself into a corner, he replied: “People have to take a stand. You can’t please everyone. One of the things that I learned in politics was that it’s best to be true to your own convictions and heart and have people unhappy with it rather than try to please everyone and ultimately make everyone unhappy.”

Since his nomination, Huckabee has suggested that Israeli annexation of Judea and Samaria could be in the cards for 2025 while adding that Trump will make policy, and his role will be to help implement it.

Huckabee and Israel will be on the same page on Iran. When I interviewed Huckabee again in February 2015, as controversy was swirling over whether Prime Minister Netanyahu should address a joint session of Congress to lobby them to vote against the Obama administration’s pending nuclear deal with Iran, Huckabee said Bibi should go ahead despite the opposition.

He had Iran pegged and argued strongly against a deal that would loosen sanctions and enable them to develop nuclear weapons.

“My analogy is a simple one. Growing up in South Arkansas, we had snakes. When you’re dealing with a snake, you’re dealing with an entity with which you cannot reason. You never try to say, ‘I wonder why the snake wants to bite me.’ It doesn’t really matter why the snake wants to bite you… You don’t try to make friends with it. You kill the snake, because the snake will bite you if it has the chance…. What we’re dealing with [in Iran] is the equivalent of a global snake that truly has as its nature to kill us.”

Speaking of ambassadors, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Trump’s pick for UN ambassador, is cut from the same mold as Huckabee. Stefanik’s majestic takedown of several Ivy League presidents at House hearings on anti-Semitism on college campuses earned her a cabinet post. Her willingness to battle forces of darkness will serve her well at the UN, a cesspool of corruption that’s more polluted than the East River it abuts.

4

Doug Collins, Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs–Designate

This appointment is not directly relevant to the US-Israel relationship, but we’ve published many articles over the years about Orthodox military chaplains, so Trump’s appointment of former Georgia representative Doug Collins as secretary of Veterans Affairs should bring more moral clarity to a department employing more than 400,000 people, running an annual budget of well over $300 billion. The Department provides lifelong health care to eligible military veterans at some 170 VA medical centers and outpatient clinics nationwide and also provides non-health-care benefits, including vocational rehabilitation, education assistance, and home loans.

I interviewed Collins in his congressional office in April 2016, after he had sponsored a House bill requiring the president to assess whether the US was maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge in the Middle East every two years instead of every four.

Collins, a former Air Force chaplain for US troops in Iraq, also strongly supported an amendment that would prevent the Defense Department from appointing atheist chaplains, which he called an oxymoron, and he looked at the big picture.

“It’s an attack on chaplaincy as a whole, bottom line,” he told me. “This is an attack on the founders of our country who valued religious freedom and expression, no matter where you are… because they don’t want any morality or religious base to be a part of it. When you take out the moral underpinnings of family and faith or the belief that there is no moral right and wrong, you’re attacking the institution.”

It’s a battle that’s still going on in various sectors of American society, but Collins will face much bigger battles trying to reform or privatize services at a beleaguered government agency whose healthcare system is broken, leaving people who defended the country to fend for themselves.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1037)