President Joe Biden’s
latest pick
for his Intelligence Advisory Board is unfit for the important national security role. Whether her own words about how she reacted to former President Donald Trump’s election are to be trusted, or she was being hyperbolic in her doom and gloom, she has no place in any administration.
Kim Cobb, a Brown University climate scientist, claims she had an “acute mental health crisis” after the election of Trump in 2016.
WHITE HOUSE DEFLECTS NATIONAL SECURITY CONCERNS OF BIDEN’S CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS DISCLOSURE
“When she saw Donald Trump’s victory, she felt shock and soon descended into severe depression,” Mother Jones
reported
in 2019. “I had the firm belief that Washington would act on climate change and would be acting soon,” Cobb told Mother Jones. “When Trump was elected, it came crashing down.”
The publication reported that Cobb would “sob spontaneously.” She became “obsessed about the notion that the U.S. government would take no action to address climate change and confront its consequences.”
“I didn’t recognize myself,” she said.
Mental health troubles are a real problem and should not be laughed off. Cobb hopefully received counseling to confront these problems. That does not mean she should be allowed to serve in a national security role for the U.S. government.
If it is true that Cobb suffered depression and anxiety and had a debilitating reaction to someone who had a different view on environmental policy getting elected, then she should not have access to sensitive intelligence information nor have “direct access to the president,” as the
role
allows.
There are legitimate events that can cause real trauma and trigger mental health problems. The election of a president you do not like should not be one of those occurrences, and if it is, Cobb is not competent to serve the country. There might be members in the national security community who disagree with her views on climate policy or advise the president to take a different course of action than she wants. Will she be able to keep her composure this time around when confronted with opposing viewpoints and a different set of trade-offs?
Alternatively, if Cobbs was being hyperbolic, then her insensitivity to real mental health problems should also be disqualifying. Someone who compares a political election to a traumatic event is unfit for a sensitive national security role.
The intelligence and national security advisers around Biden must set aside their own ambitions and ego to consider the good of the country. But it sounds like Cobb took Trump’s election personally because she felt her work was being disregarded. In other words, what upset Cobb the most was that Trump and his appointees did not value her research.
“My most resounding thought was, how could my country do this?” Cobb said. “I had to face the fact that there was a veritable tidal wave of people who don’t care about climate change and who put personal interest above the body of scientific information that I had contributed to.”
Intelligence officials need to be able to do what Cobb cannot — put aside personal biases to look at all the information and make informed decisions. She was unable to accept that Trump and his team had differing views on the magnitude of climate change and the trade-offs between economic growth and environmental policy.
Politicians Cobb does not like will get elected, and policies she opposes will get enacted. The country deserves someone who can understand that and not “sob spontaneously.”
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Matt Lamb is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an associate editor for the College Fix and has previously worked for Students for Life of America and Turning Point USA.
