New Senate GOP Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., stopped short of saying all of President-elect Donald Trump's nominees will get confirmed to his Cabinet.
"I haven't been advertising or disclosing my positions on individual nominees at this point just yet, but my job is to make sure they get a fair process, and so I intend to do that, and I think that's underway," Thune told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.
Thune, notably who has not been all-in on Trump priorities over the years, did not say he was all-in on all of the nominees for the Trump administration Cabinet, something a Trump voter might expect from a Senate majority leader.
"It's a process, and what I've promised them is a fair process," Thune said. "And so these nominees are going to go through a committee where they're going to have to answer questions.
"There will be some hard questions posed.
"We're going to do everything we can to ensure that he has the people he wants in place. I think you give great deference and latitude to a president when it comes to people he wants to put into key positions. And national security ones are especially important.
"But the Senate has a role: advise and consent. And we intend, we have a lot of our senators who take that role very seriously. And so we will make sure that these nominees have a process, a fair process, in which they have an opportunity to make their cases not only to the members of the committee and ultimately to the full Senate but also to the American people."
Still, Thune expressed "hope" they will all be confirmed in a timely fashion.
"My hope and expectation is that the president will get the people that he wants in place to implement his agenda," he continued.
"That's why we have the checks and balances in our system that we have. But my expectation is, and as the leader of the Senate, that we're going to get the president his people as quickly as possible in the key positions where he wants them."
Among the more controversial nominees are Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, for director of national intelligence, and Kash Patel for FBI director.
"I've met with them; there are some of them I think that I've been really, really impressed by, and I think there are – as they go through the process, there will be opportunities throughout that where members, senators will have opportunities to make sure they're getting their questions answered," Thune said. "And we'll see."
Patel is among those Thune has met with thus far.
"I sat down with, met with him," Thune said, noting the FBI is desperately in need of reform, Patel promises to bring. "I think he understands that that's the mission. And if he's successful through the nomination process, I hope that he will take very seriously that responsibility and focus on what he can do to make the FBI operate in a way that is protecting the American people and also being accountable to the same."
"I felt like he fully understood, I think, what is expected and I think what the president wants out of the agency," Thune added. "And, yeah, I feel confident that he gets what his job is going to be if he gets over there. And I think that as he goes through the process, more members will have an opportunity to ask the questions of him. But I think, at least based on my conversations with him, I felt very good about that."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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