Former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz's nomination has sparked outrage on the left and an intraparty split among Republicans, who seem otherwise primed to grant the incoming president his wishes.
Governor Andy Beshear, a former Kentucky attorney general, offered an uncharacteristically pointed assessment of the pick on Friday.
"The attorney general nominee is wholly unqualified and is extreme," he told reporters. "This is not what I think the voters were voting on. They were they were voting because they thought that the focus would go back to their job and to reducing prices. It's a nomination that I hope does not move forward."
We don't need extremists in these really important jobs.Gov. Andy Beshear, on President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet picks
Meanwhile, Republican commentator and founder of Kentucky's largest PR and public affairs firm Scott Jennings told CNN that Gaetz has a less clear path than other nominees to clinching confirmation.
"Gaetz starts out at a deficit in the Senate that would be probably difficult to overcome," he said. "It doesn't mean maybe a confirmation hearing couldn't change some minds, but it just strikes me that this is an uphill climb to get confirmed — which then puts you into this recess appointment idea, which I also think, candidly, is going to be difficult for (the president-elect) to do."
Gaetz faces a number of questions about his personal conduct, including previous allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, and has drawn the ire of House members for his press to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Other Trump picks have raised red flags — including his plan to place three members of his legal team into high-ranking Justice Department positions, appointing vaccine doubter Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, and tapping former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as National Intelligence Director, despite her having taken public public positions in line with Russian propaganda.
Commenting further on Trump's Cabinet choices, Gov. Beshear said, "We don't need extremists in these really important jobs. I get that there are going to be certain folks that have a certain ideology, but you want folks that are qualified, competent, and are ultimately going to be able to do those jobs in a way to where the majority of the American people would be better off."
