In STAT News, Lev Facher notes Carter’s lack of any conventional qualifications for the role but describes how in recent years, her commentary has been “staunchly pro-Trump”—emphasizing the border and what she sees as the Biden administration’s failures around undocumented immigration and drug trafficking. She has also interviewed Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” on her podcast—dubbing him “our new Border God!”

Carter has frequently used her website to amplify fearmongering and conspiracy-laden stories about fentanyl—including of migrants arriving at the border addicted to fentanylschool children eating gummy bears “laced with apparent fentanyl;” the Chinese Communist Party paying fentanyl producers; and one story titled, “Blood Money: New book shows how Bidens received $5M from Chinese criminal gang leader responsible for fentanyl pipeline to US.”

On cannabis, meanwhile, Carter has made mixed statements, asMarijuana Moment reports.

She’s said that “I don’t have any problem if it’s legalized and it’s monitored,” although, “I may have my own issues of how I feel about that.” She meanwhile described medical cannabis as “a fantastic way of handling … the illness and the side effects of the medication” for “people with cancer and other illnesses.”

Yet she has also reported on illicit cannabis growing operations, linking them to organized trafficking groups and the Chinese government, and calling for a crackdown.

  • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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    4 days ago

    “She has been a journalist and blogger who has done stories early in her career about Mexican drug trafficking cartels,” Sterling told Filter of Carter, “but she has zero experience or qualification for coordinating at the highest levels complex federal agencies; zero experience managing agencies of any kind and zero subject-matter expertise regarding drugs or law enforcement. It is a measure of how unimportant real qualifications are for the Trump administration.”

    • ccunning@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      It is a measure of how unimportant real qualifications are for the Trump administration.

      Sycophancy is the only requirement

    • Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      At this point, I think it’s fair to argue that having no real qualifications for a position may be the primary qualification.