There are a lot of theories floating around as to President-elect Donald Trump’s motives in putting forward a raft of highly objectionable Cabinet picks. Perhaps he’s just firing a shot across the bow of Establishment Washington by proposing nominees who are blatantly unqualified for their positions or actively hate the agencies they would lead. Or maybe he’s pursuing a “flood the zone” strategy whereby dangerous nominees glide to confirmation while sharks gather to devour weaker candidates whom Trump is willing to sacrifice.
But either of these explanations depends on the assumption that once he’s told by Senate allies that Matt Gaetz or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Tulsi Gabbard or some weirdo yet to be named cannot be confirmed, Trump will withdraw the nomination to avoid embarrassment all around. That has been the practice for a long time: In the last century, 12 Cabinet nominations have been withdrawn (several other announced nominations were never made official), one failed to clear the requisite Senate committee, and just three were rejected on the Senate floor. The last rejected nominee was Senator John Tower in 1989; his colleagues refused to confirm him as secretary of Defense after allegations arose of alcohol abuse, sexual misconduct, and possible conflicts of interest. At that time, the Senate was controlled by Democrats. The last occasion on which a Cabinet nomination was rejected by a Senate controlled by the president’s party was in 1925, when unsavory business connections (in the wake of the Teapot Dome scandal) torpedoed Calvin Coolidge’s nomination of Charles B. Warren as attorney general.
So clearly Senate Republicans are counting on Trump to deep-six problematic nominees so they don’t have to defy him with a formal rejection that exposes them to charges they are faithless RINOs who are protecting the deep state. What if he refuses to play ball? So far there is no evidence he is rethinking his choices, particularly when it comes to the biggest clown in the Cabinet clown show, Matt Gaetz, CNN reports:
The president-elect has asked allies about the likelihood of Gaetz being confirmed but has not been deterred in his efforts, despite some hesitation from those around him, multiple sources briefed on the conversations told CNN …
The president-elect has made clear that he views Gaetz as the most important member of the Cabinet he is quickly assembling, sources with knowledge of Trump’s thinking told CNN, and he considers the nomination of the former Florida congressman an urgent priority for the new GOP majority in the Senate.
Trump wants Gaetz confirmed “100 percent,” a source told CNN. “He is not going to back off. He’s all in.”
It would be entirely in character for Trump to force Judiciary Committee and Senate-floor votes on Gaetz. That would either give him the attorney general he wants to blow up federal law-enforcement agencies, or expose disloyal senators, who would then be isolated and spurned by MAGA activists everywhere. This could be Trump’s idea of a win-win proposition.
The only way around this quandary for restive Senate Republicans and their allies elsewhere would be to make Gaetz (or other trouble magnets on the Cabinet list) so absolutely toxic via anonymous means that there are large-scale GOP defections, and thus no distinctive penalties for disloyalty. If Democrats or media outlets suddenly come into possession of horrific information about various Trump Cabinet nominees, it’s likely they will have silent partners among the Senate Republicans who would do almost anything to avoid publicly denying the 47th president anyone or anything he wants. We can already see this process at work in the gradual emergence of allegations about Gaetz’s partying habits that bear no particular Republican fingerprints. Woe to anyone who gets caught playing this dangerous if patriotic game!
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.