The first sign of trouble emerged before Donald Trump returned to the White House. Five days before Inauguration Day 2025, Pam Bondi appeared before a Senate committee for her confirmation hearing, and Sen. Dick Durbin broached a subject that she’d had eight weeks to prepare for: The Illinois Democrat asked who won the 2020 presidential election.
Bondi refused to answer directly, saying only that Joe Biden was the incumbent president.
Soon after, during the same hearing, Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii also asked the prospective nominee who won the 2020 election. She again refused to say, replying, “Joe Biden is the president of the United States.”
The issue was especially relevant to Bondi’s nomination, since she’d personally championed baseless conspiracy theories after Trump’s defeat, lied to the public about having uncovered “evidence of cheating” and “fake ballots,” and even participated in the infamous Four Seasons Total Landscaping fiasco.
But the Florida Republican’s refusal to answer the basic question was also a sign of things to come. In the weeks and months that followed, Democrats continued to ask Trump nominees who won the 2020 race, and those nominees continued to pretend not to understand how to answer the question.
We saw fresh evidence of the phenomenon earlier this week, when Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts asked Kevin Warsh, the nominee to serve as the next chair of the Federal Reserve, whether Warsh was willing to acknowledge the reality of Trump’s 2020 defeat. He was only willing to say that the Senate had “certified” the results of the election, which was a rather pitiful dodge.
MS NOW’s Hayes Brown explained, “If Warsh is unwilling to address a factual matter like the results of the 2020 election, it does nothing to ease the concerns Warren and others have about his resolve to maintain independence in the face of far more complex issues.”
The scope of the broader phenomenon also complicates matters. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, during his own confirmation hearing, also refused to answer the 2020 question. And during his judicial nomination, former Trump lawyer Emil Bove did the same thing.
In fact, quite a few of the president’s judicial nominees, who presumably would be eager to demonstrate their sound judgment and independence from the White House, have flubbed this obvious line of inquiry.
Nominees’ struggle to avoid answering the simplest of questions has led to exasperating confirmation hearings, but it’s worth appreciating why this keeps happening.
For Democrats, it’s a straightforward litmus test: A nominee who refuses to accept the outcome a free and fair presidential election is a nominee who shouldn’t be confirmed to a position of power and authority.
But for the nominees themselves, a different kind of problem hangs overhead: If they tell the truth and concede that Trump lost in 2020, the response would get back to the White House and the president could pull their nominations in response to the perceived betrayal. If, however, they overtly deny reality while under oath, they would present themselves to senators as anti-election conspiracy theorists, which might put their confirmations in jeopardy, given that a handful of GOP senators have expressed discomfort with supporting election deniers.
The result is a series of frustrating and ongoing confirmation hearing exchanges, which will very likely continue for the remainder of Trump’s presidency.
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