Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writers John McCormack and Michael Warren discuss the Dr. Ronny Jackson withdrawing himself from consideration to run the VA, EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt's grilling in the House of Representatives, President Trump's appearance on Fox & Friends, and the latest regarding Alfie Evans.

Pompeo cleared a tumultuous confirmation process, with every Democrat on the Senate’s Foreign Relations Panel opposing his nomination. He was recommended favorably by the committee earlier this week only after Kentucky senator Rand Paul, one of Pompeo’s earliest detractors, flipped his vote at the very last minute.

It was odd to hear for me and everyone else in the room. The words that emanated from Treasury Secretary Mnuchin at the 2017 IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings would have made you think you might have been listening to James Baker or Timothy Geithner, not the chief financier of a three-month old government headed by an avowed protectionist. “President Trump’s agenda is to make sure we have free and fair trade,” adding that “the United States is probably the most open trading market there is.”

To some of who have completely lost legal argument in sentimental rhetoric, Wednesday’s oral arguments at the Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii were about Trumpness versus goodness and niceness. “At stake is the meaning of America,” tweeted Harvard’s Prof. Laurence.

Kanye West is a gifted showman, a provocateur of the first order, and an irrepressible jackass. And yet the elites of our age can learn something from him. The Chicago-raised rap artist made news on April 25 when he tweeted a curt defense of his support for an unpopular president and insisted on the value of “independent thought.”