Some of Donald Trump’s most controversial Cabinet picks will appear before the Senate next week. Lecturers on Washington Week with the Atlantic We gathered to discuss the tough questions Democrats promise.
Meanwhile, with Senate confirmations looming, Trump has resorted to criticizing US allies including Canada, Panama and Greenland. Tom Nichols explained last night that these comments may partly be an element of the president-elect’s strategy. “We are talking about things that will never happen: we will not go to war with Denmark over Greenland; we will go to war against it.” “We will not seize the Panama Canal,” he said. “This strange obsession with foreign policy has obscured a lot of other discussions.”
Prior to his inauguration, Trump also made several promises about how the government would operate once he took office for his second term. But as panelists discussed, whether he will be able to deliver results, and how his supporters and political opponents might react if he cannot deliver the results he pledged, remains to be seen.
Join the editor-in-chief AtlanticJeffrey Goldberg, to discuss this and more: Laura Baron Lopez, White House correspondent for PBS News Hour; Karl Hulse, chief Washington correspondent New York Times; Tom Nichols, writer at Atlantic; And Vivian Salama, national politics correspondent at The Wall Street Journal.
Watch the full episode here.