Ricketts encourages Senate to confirm Trump’s national security nominees

Sen. Pete Ricketts has high praise for President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees for national security positions.

Ricketts, who is a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said Trump’s Secretary of State pick will help restore strong leadership abroad.

“President Trump could not have picked a better Secretary of State than Senator Marco Rubio,” Ricketts said. “I know Marco understands the Chinese Communist Party is America’s greatest foreign threat.”

Ricketts also praised Trump’s nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Elise Stefanik, U.S. Ambassador to Israel nominee Mike Huckabee, and U.S. Ambassador to NATO nominee Matthew Whitaker.

He said the nominees will stand firm against antisemitism and recognize international threats.

“We got dictators like Putin, Xi and Khamenei and Kim Jong Un and these people only understand force, and so a strong foreign policy is what will deter them, and these are the people that are being nominated by the administration," he said.

When asked about Matt Gaetz, Trump's pick for Attorney General, Ricketts said he was looking forward to talking with the nominee about policy issues and how he would run the Department of Justice.

Gaetz, a member of the House of Representatives from Florida, has been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee since 2021 for allegations involving sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.

Some Republican members of the Senate, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, have said they would like to see the Ethics Committee's report released, but Ricketts said he is indifferent.

"I'm going to leave that to the House members, because they've got their own rules on how that goes," he said. "I think that we as senators can do the interview process and the hearing process and determine whether or not nominees are qualified for the position based upon those conversations."

Ricketts said he looks forward to working with future Senate Majority Leader John Thune and encouraged fellow Republican Congressmen to move forward with cabinet and judicial nominations across the board.

“We're only guaranteed two years here, so we've got to move quickly on President Trump's cabinet nominees, any judges he wants to do, and, of course, his agenda with regard to taxes." Ricketts said.

The 119th Congress officially takes office Jan. 3, 2025.