The Intercept’s D.C. bureau chief Ryan Grim on Tuesday weighed in on President-elect Joe Biden’s recently-announced administration picks, saying a common feature is “loyalty to Biden over decades.”
Grim in an interview on Hill.TV noted that many of those who have been tapped for top positions in Biden’s incoming administration previously were longtime aides or allies to the former vice president or served in the Obama administration.
“The best we can hope for is that the establishment learned between Obama’s second term” and now, Grim said. “It’s not as if they went back and found new people to bring in, it’s the same people, and so the question [is], ‘Well, did they recognize the mistakes they made and will they do it differently?’ That’s an awfully thin reed to hang any optimism on, but that’s where we are.”
Biden has selected a number of people for top roles in his administration who previously served under former President Obama, including Biden’s incoming White House chief of staff Ron Klain, secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken and international climate envoy pick John Kerry, among others.
Grim also highlighted Biden’s reported pick for Treasury secretary, former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. While in the past Yellen has supported pro-austerity economic policies, he noted, “fortunately for the country, she has recently walked that back and said evidence has shown that we don’t need to rein things in right now, and that the concerns about inflation and the deficit that she had at the time were not borne out.”
Watch the video above.
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