(Headline USA) Although he may have spurned her as his vice-presidential running mate, Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden said that, if elected, he would name Susan Rice as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.
The move would allow the former Obama national security adviser to carve out a new role, deeply instrumental to enacting Biden’s globalist agenda on a domestic front, even as her highly divisive persona would likely be prohibitive to conventional advisory roles that required Senate confirmation.
Rice was one of Biden’s co-conspirators in the 2017 ObamaGate hoax to frame Trump allies including her successor, Michael Flynn.
While leading the National Security Council during the Obama administration, she also helped engineer the disastrous Benghazi cover-up and the controversial Iran nuclear deal.
The Iran deal wound up funneling billions to Iran for use in its terrorist operations in other Middle Eastern countries, while it did nothing to curb the rogue Islamic regime’s clandestine development of a nuclear arsenal.
President Donald Trump withdrew from the Obama armistice and re-imposed tough sanctions following intelligence from Israel that showed Iran was in violation of the agreement.
Rice’s new role in a prospective Biden administration would be even more expansive—giving her broad sway over his administration’s approach to immigration, health care and racial inequality, and elevating the prominence of the position in the West Wing.
The move marks a surprising shift for Rice, who also served as Obama’s U.N. ambassador prior to taking the role as national security adviser.
She worked closely with then-Vice President Biden in those roles and was on his short list to become his running mate during the 2020 campaign.
In choosing Rice to oversee the White House council, advisers said Biden was signaling the importance of domestic policy in his early agenda. Though the council was created with the intention of being on par with the White House National Security Council, it traditionally has had a lower public profile, including for its directors.
Rice would be more of a force, both inside and outside the White House, and her appointment would create a new power center in the West Wing.
She’s discussed replicating some elements of the National Security Council in her prospective new role, including a principals committee of Cabinet secretaries and others that could bring more structure to domestic policymaking, but also pull more power into the West Wing.
She also would play an active role in the Biden administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Rice had been discussing other roles with the Biden team and was initially seen as a contender for secretary of state.
But her bombastic and partisan comments about Republicans, paired with her less-than-stellar track record made her prospects for a Cabinet position fade after the GOP outperformed expectations in the Nov. 3 election, forcing the Biden campaign to scale back some of its ambitious promises to the progressive base.
Given the close makeup of the Senate—with Republicans likely to maintain a narrow majority pending the outcome of two Georgia runoff races—her ability to be confirmed by the divided chamber remained a substantial question.
Rice’s role overseeing the council does not require Senate confirmation.
Outrage and Suspicion over Obama Cronyism
Biden also said he would nominating Denis McDonough, who was Obama’s White House chief of staff, as secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, even though he never served in the armed forces—a fact noted by a leading veterans organization.
“We are surprised by this pick. No way to deny that,” said Joe Chenelly, national executive director of AMVETS, or American Veterans.
“We were expecting a veteran, maybe a post-9/11 veteran. Maybe a woman veteran. Or maybe a veteran who knows the VA exceptionally well,” Chenelly continued. “We are looking forward to hearing from President-Elect Biden on his thinking behind this nomination.”
He planned on Friday to announce the selections of Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Katherine Tai as U.S. trade representative and Tom Vilsack as agriculture secretary. Vilsack filled that same role during Obama’s two terms.
“The roles they will take on are where the rubber meets the road—where competent and crisis-tested governance can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives, enhancing the dignity, equity, security, and prosperity of the day-to-day lives of Americans,” Biden said in a statement.
Biden is balancing numerous priorities as he fills out his Cabinet, including making good on his pledge to have a diverse group of top advisers. That’s created some tensions over top jobs, including agriculture secretary.
Allies of Fudge made no secret of their desire for her to lead the department, given its oversight of food stamps and other programs meant to address food insecurity — one of her longtime priorities. Instead, Biden went with Vilsack, a longtime friend and advocate for Democrats paying more attention to rural America.
A transition official said Vilsack and Fudge spoke Wednesday to lay the groundwork for cooperation between their two agencies on those and other initiatives.
But liberals in academia and the media continued to ignore the deep-seated reservations about Biden’s own fitness to lead, even during a less critical juncture than the caustic political climate that currently exists.
Some sought to paint an overly rosy picture of a throwback to the halcyon Obama era, which members of the Left have claimed, despite ample evidence to the contrary, were “scandal-free.”
Shirley Anne Warshaw, a professor at Gettysburg College who has studied the presidency and Cabinets, said following Obama as he builds out his team gives Biden an advantage.
“This is a much better bench than Obama had because these people have the experience of serving in the Obama administration,” Warshaw claimed. “In that way, Joe Biden is the luckiest man in the world.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
