A New Morning
Trump makes more cabinet appointments, reportedly skipping FBI background checks
Amazon Black Friday Week is here with up to 40% off toys to stuff their stocking, noise canceling tech to silent their night, and fashion like slippers to missile their toes. Shop Amazon's Black Friday deals now. Let's go live to the White House. Karen Travers is joining us as the Trump cabinet, really filling out just over two weeks since election day. Karen, who are some of the latest names? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, now that we're just shy of three weeks from election day, I think a big headline here is the fact that he has announced picks for each of the 15 agencies that make up the cabinet. That's really significant. It's much faster than the pace that he had eight years ago as president-elect. It's faster than Joe Biden's pace as president-elect four years ago. And I think it shows that, you know, they're ready to go. They had a sense of who he wanted for these positions, a short list ready to go, and he wants to hit the ground running on day one on January 20th. After the weekend, just to catch you up from Friday, over the weekend, he announced his longtime ally, Brooke Wallens, would be nominated for agriculture secretary. She had been the head of the Domestic Policy Council during his first administration. A big one, too, was Friday night when he announced that he was selecting billionaire Wall Street veteran Scott Bessent, an economic advisor and fundraiser for Trump as his treasury secretary pick. Bessent had also spent years working for George Soros, the Democratic mega donor, and Bessent himself had been a donor to Democratic candidates in the past. But he has been a supporter of Trump recently. He supports his proposed use of tariffs as an economic policy and extending the tax cuts from the first term of Trump. This was a bitter fight to get to this position. There were a lot of people publicly campaigning to be the treasury secretary or enlisting allies to get that position. But ultimately, it went to Scott Bessent. It's been widely reported, Karen, that Trump is skipping FBI background checks for his cabinet nominees. How big a deal is that? This is a big deal, and I think this is going to gain a lot of headlines over the coming days and weeks if they continue to not sign this memo of understanding with the Justice Department. So here's what this means. The Trump team has not signed this memo with the Justice Department, which would then start the process of background checks by the FBI. They are traditionally done ahead of Senate confirmation hearings. Senators say that they're required, that this is what they want to see before they move forward considering these nominees. But the Trump team hasn't done it because they say, well, we can rely on outside groups, political allies, or private investigators to do the work for us. That is not cutting it from many senators, again, including some Republicans. And so what this means is it could delay the process right now. You could end up seeing Republicans when they take control of the Senate in early January wanting to start hearings, but if the FBI background checks have not started or not completed, some senators are saying, well, we've got to put the brakes on here right now and not move forward with the hearings, which means not getting confirmation, both as soon as Trump takes office. Okay. Karen, thank you. Karen Travers joining us live from the White House this morning.
Donald Trump has made cabinet picks at rapid speed, but reports say he's skipping FBI background checks. ABC's Karen Travers has more.