>> Joe Biden has chosen former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm as his Energy Secretary.
People familiar with the talk say that she was actively promoting herself for this position.
And now, it seems like she's going to secure it. By the way,
she was also promoting herself for the position in the case that Clinton would have won in 2016.
But of course, it didn't work out that way. Her record on pollution and climate change
is I think what would appeal to Joe Biden. She is outspoken in favor of like the climate. The Paris
Climate accord, I remember when Trump pulled out of that she was pretty furious about it.
She did serve two terms as Michigan's governor and is experienced in dealing
with the auto industry which could potentially be valuable expertise when it comes to moving
vehicles from gas reliant to maybe renewable, energy electric vehicles.
Also the Department of Energy is important, because it deals with applying standards.
Conducting research on innovations like electric heat pumps.
Overseeing building and residential energy, efficiency programs. And as political reports,
most of the energy department's budget is devoted to maintaining the
country's nuclear weapons arsenal. But it also operates the 17 national labs that have helped
develop advanced technology used in renewables, nuclear energy and fossil fuel production.
Now in November, she wrote an oped in the detroit news where she argued this.
The private sector needs greater support and political will. I mean,
take this for what it is. The private sector needs greater support and political will
from our policymakers to help us fully realize the potential of a zero carbon future.
I like zero carbon future, that's promising. The economics are clear. The time for low carbon
recovery is now. And John, I know that you feel particularly
passionate about climate change. You talk about it on your show on a regular basis.
And so I wanted to get your initial thoughts on Granholm as the pick here.
Yeah, I am passionate about that, but I've been beaten down by the cabinet.
I've resigned myself to what we know about Biden and who he's going to pick.
This is not one of the worst picks. This isn't even the pick that frustrates me the most today.
It's not a person I would have thought of for this position.
I don't know if six months ago, this was someone that people were expecting would
potentially be up for it. But yeah, it could go either way. She has said some good things.
I will say, I don't know. I'm gonna be completely honest like you were saying in the break,
it's been a pretty dispiriting series of appointments, not all of them.
There have been one or two that have been good and that there's one today that's pretty good,
but I don't have higher expectation for. I'm kidding. Yeah, no, I don't have very high
expectations. And so I guess we'll see. I guess we'll see. Yeah, I'm on the same boat as you.
I mean, honestly, of course, we have this story prepared ready to go for the show today.
But even though it was like near the top of the rundown, I later moved it to the bottom. Because
I'm also burnt out, right? This cabinet picks for the most part have been disappointing in that
you have a lot of people who have been working as lobbyists recently
or people who are just flat out like centrist, they're not progressive.
The only one that I know about maybe I miss some news today, but Xavier Becerra from California
as the head of HHS, I like that pic. But as Bernie Sanders said even today during an interview on
CNN, he's been asked point blank like do you think that Biden is appointing enough progressives?
And he's like no, I don't think he is and I agree with him. I don't think he is.
Jennifer Granholm is perfectly lovely, but she is certainly a centrist Democrat and she
does toe the party line. And so we'll see how she performs as energy.
Yes, as energy secretary, but let's move on to one other pic that I think is interesting here.
Joe Biden also picked Gina McCarthy to head the Office of Domestic
Climate Policy. McCarthy who currently serves as the head of the National Resources Defense Council
will lead Biden's newly reformed or I should say, newly formed Office of Domestic Climate Policy.
McCarthy served as the administrator of the EPA from 2013 to 2017 under President Barack Obama.
There's a lot of people coming back from the Obama administration. I mean, that has been a
trend that I've noticed in a lot of these cabinet picks and let me give you some more details on
what she's done. Now, Trump and McCarthy are certainly not friends. That's unsurprising.
Trump revoked a key regulation that underpinned America's pledge
in the landmark 2015 international agreement. The regulation, the Clean Power Plan was written
by McCarthy when she served as EPA Administrator along with others in the Obama administration. It
established the first ever federal regulations to limit carbon dioxide from power plants.
And look, I mean, we have to wait and see. But one of my concerns has been that all we're gonna get
in Biden's term is just a reversal of all the damage that Trump has done and that's
Clearly not enough. We need bold leadership here. We need to go above and beyond.
Time is of the essence and let's not forget that Joe Biden also said that he's a proponent of
franking. I mean, he said that openly and clearly on the debate stage. So I know what to expect
from a Biden administration when it comes to climate change. It doesn't mean that
I'm not gonna be disappointed if all they do is reverse Trump's disastrous policies.
Yeah, which which is looking like there's a good chance of that. I mean,,
in theory, Biden's climate plan is better than Obama's was back in the day. So in theory,
they should do more than just get us back to the Obama standard, but that remains to be seen.
This is the pick of the three that I think is most promising not perfect, but most promising that RDC
has. They've been behind a lot of great lawsuits against the Trump for a number of different
environmental deregulation changes that they made over the past few years. That's been good.
Sunrise movement seems fairly positive towards this. So that is something,
but that said. Looking at the the cabinet at large like we knew what
was on the line in the primary, we knew why it mattered that Bernie wins and what the
cost of him losing would be and this is what losing looks and feels like.
We'll try to push for the best people we possibly can and maybe when we turn to the
last of the three picks today as frustrating as it might be. It might even be a representation of
the success in And doing a bit of pushing but yeah, it's gonna be a tough few years.
Yeah, definitely and I do wanna go to one other cabinet pick who has been making news
recently and that is Pete Buttigieg has been chosen for transportation secretary.
Does he have expertise in transportation or the
the expertise that's necessary to serve in this position? No, but don't worry, he did say.
I also had a personal love of transportation since childhood.
That was a statement that was referenced by Josh Letterman from NBC News.
God, that is that. What does that even mean? What does that mean? It doesn't mean anything.
I've liked moving from time to time in my life.
Life sometimes, I'm in one spot and I'm like you know what? I'm gonna go to a different spot and
I've enjoyed the transition. We should all change position from time to time.
I used to support Medicare for all and I've moved very far from there. Transportation can be fun.
Yeah, no, it doesn't make any sense. And look, they knew that they were gonna be critics of
this pick when they decided what position they were gonna give Buttigieg. A week ago,
it was an ambassador to China. They laid it on transportation.
I have to hope that there was a strategy and that it wasn't literally what it looks like which is
putting a bunch of federal departments on a dartboard, and then winging something at it.
That's what it looks like actually happened. And so give the guy a heads up
or maybe you don't need to since he's supposed to be so quick thinking on his feet that you're
gonna have to make the case for why this pic makes sense. And that's not good enough that
I've always had a love of transportation and I've been to an airport once, South Ben's got buses.
That's not a good enough argument, but they apparently believe that they don't have to do
better than this. Well, yeah and look, a lot of these cabinet picks seem to be favor for a favor
type situations, right? And I think most Democrats who ran in the primary and then later decided to
end their candidacy and back Biden did so knowing that if they did that, they'd get a favor later.
Maybe a position in this cabinet and it seems like that's what happened with Pete Buttigieg who,
by the way, like had no chance of winning the Democratic primary. But nonetheless,
he was willing to do what the Biden campaign wanted at a critical moment.
And yeah, which made super Tuesday pretty unbearable.
But I do wanna just quickly know that the way that this is being written about is frustrating.
So I'm gonna go to the New York Times when they wrote about this story, this is what they chose
for their lead. That's the first paragraph in the article, right?
President elect Joseph R Biden Jr. will nominate Pete Buttigieg to Secretary of Transportation.
Mr. Biden's transition team announced, Tuesday selecting a former mayor of South Bend,
Indiana and former opponent who would bring a younger voice to the cabinet and add to its
diversity as its first openly gay member. Okay, you guys are journalists. And so the lead is that
Joe Biden has chosen someone who has no expertise for a position that he has no expertise in.
That's the lead. That's the issue but okay, Brett made an okay point. That I want to share with you
guys. I'm not throwing you under the bus, but I really did think this was a good point. It made
the the land a little softer for me, right? I hate Eric Garcetti, the current mayor of Los Angeles.
He's an incompetent buffoon. He's a complete and utter disaster. He has no
right to be in any position of power considering how much he's mismanaged
Los Angeles. He's a disaster. He was being considered for this post. And as much as I
question Pete Buttigieg for this role, I am relieved that it won't be Eric Garcetti.
Yeah. That's it. That's all I've got. Yeah and so that's what I was alluding to earlier
with maybe it was pressure that Eric Garcetti has been floated and the reaction was bad, and
any pick is one less job for Rahm Emanuel. So that's good. I know
some people are probably thinking, well wait, why would they put Rahm Emanuel on this one?
Why would they put Buttigieg? It's like they don't need a reason to do any of these things.
This is just candy and it's Halloween, and they're handing out candy. That's basically what's going
on here. I would say I've made the exact same criticism that why would they pick a person
with no expertise, but I'm gonna go even broader than that.
Let's say we're not expecting expertise. I don't necessarily
know exactly what sort of expertise would be best for secretary of transportation.
We could come up with something if we were to work on it, but how about
experience managing thousands of people? There are people who've done that, at least.
Transportation is 55,000 employees. Yeah. South Bend is just 100,000 people,
honestly. He was a mayor of a small town. How he got into that position? It is interesting.
He was a young mayor and there's not tonnes of him. That's interesting.
The fact that he was able to get people to pay attention to him in a crowded field
with seemingly no experience other than being a consultant and a small town Mayor is interesting.
Although I don't think necessarily it's not great, but this is just of all the criticisms. The most
important, I think for me is just that this is a fundamentally unserious way of looking
at governance. If your argument is he's been on buses or he's a smart lad, he'll learn on the job.
That is not good enough. This isn't like you're trying to have your son take over
your car dealership or something, thing like that. This is the Department of Transportation
and we just ended years of criticizing Donald Trump for
choosing people that weren't qualified for their positions just because he happens to
know them or they appeared on Fox News, or they donated money to him, or they're his daughter.
And so now we're finally changing and Biden's gonna
give this kid a job, because he did him a favor or something. It's not serious.
Maybe he'll do a good job, but it's ain't starting off in a serious way.