#was the withdrawal of matt gaetz' nomination

[minetteskvareninova]

When something relatively minor, but still overall positive (or negative, but it's happening to terrible people) happens in current politics

[latestnews-now]

Matt Gaetz has withdrawn as Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, ending a controversial nomination process that rocked Washington. Discover the details behind his decision, the Senate’s reaction, and what it means for Trump’s administration. Don’t miss out – subscribe for more breaking news!

[dduane]

Almost certainly meaning that the whole report about him was about to leak.

Someone therefore hurriedly made him a deal for some to-be-delivered-later sinecure, and he folded his tent citing the old "Many Important People talked to me and convinced me that I didn't I want to be an undua distraction" excuse. :/

[ayeforscotland]

Matt Gaetz withdraws from Attorney General nomination.

Source.

[pintadorartist]

The Senate Must Block Trump’s Cabinet Nominees

Here is an image of the President-Elect, Donald Trump's cabinet picks for his administration:

These picks are not only bad since most of these picks lack experience in these fields, but some actually have written parts of the Project 2025 guidebook, like Russel T. Vought for example.

And although the Republicans took the Senate, they still need Democrat cooperation to confirm these nominations.

Another factor to consider is that not all of the Republicans are on board with these nominations, an example being Matt Gaetz, who ended up withdrawing his bid for Attorney General after facing backlash from fellow Repubs amid allegations of sexual misconduct

So, I ask that you all Call, Email, and Fax your senators to tell them to reject these nominations.

For more info on the appointees, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4985802-trump-cabinet-nominees-second-term/

Here's where you'll find your Senator:

You can also call (202) 224-3121, where a switchboard operator will connect you directly with the Senate office you request.

If you're nervous about talking with someone call after your senator's office is closed or test RESIST at 50409 to turn your text into an email or fax

Fax tool here:

Scripts;

If your Senator is a Democrat, use this script for calls, email, and fax:

"Hello [Senator name], my name is [Your name], and I urge you to reject Trump's cabinet picks. Instead of competent experts, Trump has picked his most loyal allies as Cabinet members to enforce his authoritarian agenda and disrupt the most essential services for everyday Americans. He's appointed self-serving people like anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services and former Fox News host and white nationalist Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense.

The Senate must reject these Cabinet nominees to protect working Americans from the dysfunction our federal agencies will face under the direction of these appointees. We're worth fighting for, and we deserve better. I urge you and the Senate to reject RFK Jr., Hegseth, and any other extremist Trump nominees who will seek to enact Trump's radical Project 2025 agenda."

If your Senator is a Republican, use this script instead:

"Hello [Senator name], my name is [Your name], and I urge you to reject Trump's cabinet picks. Instead of competent experts with experience, Trump has picked unqualified Cabinet members who will disrupt the most essential services for everyday Americans. He's appointed people who lack qualifications, like anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services and former Fox News host and white nationalist Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense.

The Senate must reject these Cabinet nominees to protect working Americans from the dysfunction our federal agencies will face under the direction of these appointees. We're worth fighting for, and we deserve better. I urge you and the Senate to reject RFK Jr., Hegseth, and any other unqualified Trump nominees who lack the expertise and qualifications for these roles"

Here are also some petitions to sign as well:

[klapollo]

hey don't cry. matt gaetz withdrawing from attorney general nomination ok?

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Keith Edwards at No Lies Detected:

Since Election Day, I’ve felt an eerie quiet fall over America.  Liberals are showing little of the defiant energy that marked their preparation for Trump’s presidency after his shock 2016 win. Americans are reporting exhaustion and coping by hopping onto planes or into unreality. Stories of Americans deciding to flee abroad have become common, an ironic turn for the greatest hub of migration in human history. Some billionaires are even telling themselves that maybe Trump won’t be so bad. Checking out surely is easier.  In the closing days of World War II, people on the ruined streets of eastern Europe hailed passing Soviet tanks as their deliverers from decades of war, dictatorship, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. As it became clear that they had merely traded one totalitarian dictator for another, people coped not only by retreating inward, but even by giving themselves over to the regime mind, body, and soul. During the Soviet occupation of Poland, anti-communist writer and poet Czesław Miłosz likened the phenomenon to a patient taking a pill in his book The Captive Mind:

[Despite [the intellectual’s] resistance and despair, the crisis approaches. It can come in the middle of the night, at his breakfast table, or on the street. It comes with a metallic click as of engaged gears. But there is no other way. That much is clear. There is no other salvation on the face of the earth. This revelation lasts a second; but from that second on, the patient begins to recover. For the first time in a long while, he eats with relish, his movements take on vigor, his color returns. He sits down and writes a "positive" article, marveling at the ease with which he writes it. In the last analysis, there was no reason for raising such a fuss. Everything is in order. He is past the "crisis." ]

Miłosz fancifully called it the “pill of Murti-Bing” after a character from a then-current science fiction novel. But as we can see today, liberal public figures are taking the pill, they are “writing the positive article.” Taunting conservatives as they deluded themselves about Trump – from my own friends and family to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal – was a common experience after his first victory; looking on as liberals lie to themselves after his second is a new and bewildering one. This is exactly the wrong time to check out.  Not only does it amount to “obeying in advance,” it emboldens would-be autocrats to proceed with their plans. As if aware of their guilty consciences, history’s dictators have always been profoundly afraid of the people they seek to oppress, especially before they solidified their grip on power. Even the most cunning of them won’t make a play for absolute power without a hand so strong and the opposition’s so weak that victory is assured: It took Vladimir Putin twenty years fully to establish personal rule in Russia, and only then when fear of a global pandemic kept people confined inside.

Fortunately for us, our country is not the Russia of the 2010s, which had only a short experience of democracy and even shorter experience of democratic institutions. Unfortunately for us, Donald Trump was seemingly designed in a lab to overwhelm our capacity for outrage and benumb us to his ever more brazen violations of our norms and laws. As Tom Nichols has written, Trump is counting on this. His firehose strategy of obnoxious cabinet nominations is a small taste of his planned war of attrition on the American psyche. 

Trump will not be invincible in his second term. The good guys scored a major victory in forcing accused sex-pest Matt Gaetz to withdraw before his nomination even came before the Senate for a vote. This has the double effect of taking this (hatefully coiffed) piece off the board, but it exposes the next most vulnerable picks – say, the increasingly tragicomic Pete Hegseth or the cartoonishly villainous Kash Patel – to media, public, and ultimately Senate scrutiny. It seems likely others will share Gaetz’s fate.

Keith Edwards has a perfect article in his Substack that liberals should not check out of the political process, because fighting Donald Trump and Trumpism is importing.

[reality-detective]

BREAKING: Gaetz Withdraws from Attorney General Consideration — Trump Responds (UPDATED) | The Gateway Pundit | by Cassandra MacDonald

Matt Gaetz will be replaced by someone you never saw coming 🤔

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * * *

Lessons from our success!

November 22, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

Matt Gaetz’s withdrawal from consideration for Attorney General is instructive on many levels. Most of the lessons learned should fortify us for the battles to come.

Lessons include:

Public pressure works. Although the proximate cause of Gaetz’s withdrawal was a lack of support among GOP Senators, that lack of congressional support was the first derivative of public outrage over Gaetz’s reprehensible conduct. We must repeat that public pressure with respect to Pete Hegseth, Robert Kennedy, and Tulsi Gabbard, among others. Everyone who called their Senators or otherwise raised the alarm about Gaetz deserves a pat on the back.

Just because Trump wants something doesn’t mean he can get it. Those who oppose Trump sometimes accept the myth that he can accomplish everything and anything he wants. Not so. On Wednesday, Trump expressed public support for Gaetz’s nomination as Attorney General. On Thursday, he told Gaetz, “You don’t have the votes.” If we resist, we can win. Timothy Snyder advises us, “Do not obey in advance.” To that admonition we should add, “Do not concede before the battle is over.”

Trump was bluffing about recess appointments. Like most bullies, Trump relies on bluffing to get most of what he wants. When challenged, he retreats. Trump threatened to use recess appointments (and the Adjournment Clause) to force nominations through the Senate. However, he allowed Gaetz to drop out as soon as it was clear that Gaetz did not have the votes for confirmation. See The Bulwark, ‘You Don’t Have the Votes’: How Trump Barred the Gaetz

If Trump were serious about forcing the Senate into an involuntary adjournment, he would not care whether Gaetz had the votes. The fact that Trump cared whether Gaetz had the votes for confirmation shows that Trump was bluffing about forcing recess appointments.

Every defeat suffered by Trump weakens the illusion that he is invincible. Part of Trump's bluffing strategy depends on the fiction that he is invincible. But every time Trump loses a battle, the illusion of his invincibility becomes weaker. That should give us hope in the battles over Hegseth, Kennedy, and Gabbard.

Trump has other corrupt and corruptible candidates to replace every nominee we defeat. That’s okay. Trump immediately replaced Gaetz with Pam Bondi, former Attorney General of Florida. Bondi supported Trump's claims that the 2020 election was rigged and dropped an investigation against Trump University’s fraudulent practices after Trump donated $25,000 to her campaign. See NYTimes, New Records Shed Light on Donald Trump’s $25,000 Gift to Florida Official. Per the Times,

[In September], a check for $25,000 from the Donald J. Trump Foundation landed in the Tampa office of a political action committee that had been formed to support Ms. Bondi’s 2014 re-election. In mid-October, her office announced that it would not be acting on the Trump University complaints.

There is no bottom to the supply of corrupt and corruptible Trump loyalists who can (and will) replace every corrupt and corruptible nominee or appointee who takes office in the Trump administration. That’s okay. The point is to resist, disrupt, and expose the corruption. We need to keep it up, every day!

As I replied to a friend who alerted me to Matt Gaetz’s announcement on Twitter that he was withdrawing, “One down. Fourteen to go.”

Will Matt Gaetz rejoin the House of Representatives? Maybe.

Matt Gaetz resigned from the 118th Congress, which ends on January 3, 2025 at 11:59 a.m.

Gaetz was elected to the new Congress (the 119th), which begins on January 3, 2025, at Noon.

In his letter of resignation, Gaetz said that he “does not intend” to take his seat in the 119th Congress. Saying that you “do not intend” to do something is not the same as a “resignation.”

What if Gaetz changes his mind and shows up on January 3, 2025, to be sworn into the 119th Congress? Gaetz could easily say, “I didn’t intend to be sworn into the 119th Congress because I thought I would be the Attorney General. That didn’t happen, so I changed my mind.”

If that happens, the answer to “What comes next isn’t clear.” See HuffPo, So, Matt Gaetz Won’t Be AG. Can He Go Back To Congress?

I don’t know what will happen. I am simply noting that Gaetz has a plausible path back to Congress—which would presumably resurrect the House Ethics investigation. Query whether that investigation would need to begin from scratch. The 118th Congress is not the 119th Congress.

New questions about Pete Hegseth emerge

On Thursday, news organizations obtained a copy of a police report investigating a reported sexual assault by Hegseth in 2017 at a conservative conference. See AP, Police report reveals assault allegations against Hegseth, Trump's pick for defense secretary. The police report is linked in the AP article. It contains graphic descriptions of the reported assault.

The conclusion of the report states, “I recommend this report be forwarded to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office for review.” That recommendation does not exonerate Hegseth, as he claimed in statements to the press on Thursday. See ABC News, Hegseth says he's 'completely cleared' in sex assault case. The police report doesn't say that.

Hegseth later entered into a non-disclosure agreement with the woman who reported the assault. Hegseth paid the woman an undisclosed amount of money to enter into the non-disclosure agreement. Hegseth’s attorney claims that the the woman “was the aggressor” and that she fabricated the story of rape in order to “save face” with her husband, who was staying at the hotel with his wife when the sexual assault took place.

More evidence will be gathered, including the investigation from local prosecutor to whom the case was referred for review. And since Hegseth has made public statements about the alleged assault despite the non-disclosure agreement, it may be that the woman he allegedly assaulted is free to speak to Senate investigators and the media.

The incident took place while Hegseth was in the middle of a divorce from his second wife and fathering a child with his then-girlfriend, who is now his third wife. If Hegseth was an active duty military officer at the time, it is likely he would have been discharged—possibly dishonorably.

Equally troubling are Hegseth’s public statements that express strong sympathy for white nationalist views and animosity toward fellow Americans who do not share those views. See Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic, Pete Hegseth Might Be Trump’s Most Dangerous Nominee.

Chait writes,

In his [Hegseth’s] three most recent books, Hegseth puts forward a wide range of familiarly misguided ideas: vaccines are “poisonous”; climate change is a hoax (they used to warn about global cooling, you know); George Floyd died of a drug overdose and was not murdered; the Holocaust was perpetrated by “German socialists.” [¶¶]

The Marxist conspiracy has also, according to Hegseth, begun creeping into the U.S. military, the institution he is now poised to run. His most recent book calls for a straightforward political purge of military brass who had the gall to obey Democratic administrations: “Fire any general who has carried water for Obama and Biden’s extraconstitutional and agenda-driven transformation of our military.” [¶¶]

In the most chilling passage of his three books, Hegseth declares his fellow citizens to be enemies:

The clearest through line of all three books is the application of Hegseth’s wartime mentality to his struggle against domestic opponents. American Crusade calls for the “categorical defeat of the Left,” with the goal of “utter annihilation,” without which “America cannot, and will not, survive.” Are the Crusades just a metaphor? Sort of, but not really: “Our American Crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.” (Emphasis—gulp—his.)

Hegseth bears tattoos that are associated with the white supremacist movement. He is unfit to serve in the military, much less serve as Secretary of Defense. Call your Senators to let them know how you feel about a man accused of rape (allegations he papered over with a non-disclosure agreement) and who views his fellow Americans as the enemy.

You can reach your Senators by entering your home state in the dialog box at U.S. Senate: Contacting U.S. Senators.

+

Women, in particular, are in disbelief that their fellow Americans did not rise to defend their status as full citizens under the Constitution. And after the reprehensible effort by the House to stigmatize trans people, everyone who is not straight, white, and in a same-sex marriage is understandably looking over their shoulder to see if the morality police are following them.

Yesterday, Heather Cox Richardson addressed an op-ed in the WSJ by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. See November 20, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson. The Musk-Ramaswamy op-ed distressed many readers. (See the Comments to Today’s Edition Newsletter date 10/21/24.)

Professor Richardson criticizes the Musk-Ramaswamy op-ed and planned “Department of Government Efficiency” in her usual professional, historical, and classy way—which is why she is a national treasure.

Me, not so much. I will say it directly: Musk and Ramaswamy are like a couple of twelve-year-old boys who know nothing about the world but are confident that they can make the world bend to their will because they are twelve-year-old boys who don’t know any better.

They have been put in charge of a fake “department” that can make recommendations that are dependent entirely on members of Congress—who will think twice about cutting two trillion dollars from programs that directly impact their constituents. To underscore this point, Musk has been on a diet of humble pie for over a week—repeatedly failing to persuade Trump and US Senators that Musk’s favorite candidates for the cabinet should be appointed. If Musk were a baseball player, his batting average would be perfect—0.000.

I am not saying that Trump will fail in his effort to cause chaos and inflict pain. He will do so intentionally and negligently in abundance. But the Dynamic Duds of Musk and his sidekick Vivek will be engaged in the equivalent of a kindergarten production of “Wheels on the Bus” while the adults are across town at the opera house watching Wagner’s Ring cycle.

Musk and Ramaswamy are designated psychological terrorists. Their purpose in the new administration is to issue baseless but ominous pronouncements that will garner press coverage and create the illusion that Trump is doing something. They will hold live hearings. Indeed, they will livestream them on Twitter so that Musk can fabricate viewer numbers that do not match reality. Musk and Ramaswamy will slap one another on the back as they congratulate themselves for the masterful production of “Wheels on the Bus.”

Their job is to upset us. Don’t let them. They are jesters in the classic sense of the word. Their job is to mollify the petulant and bored king. Do not let them fool and distract us. The real action is in the Oval Office and the Capitol. Let’s focus our resistance on those venues—which are ultimately accountable to the American people, as the Matt Gaetz withdrawal demonstrated today.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Matt Gaetz withdraws AG Application

"I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz in seeking approval to be Attorney General. He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the Administration, for which he has much respect. Matt has a wonderful future, and I look forward to watching all of the great things he will do!"-POTUS Trump

"I had excellent meetings with Senators yesterday. I appreciate their thoughtful feedback - and the incredible support of so many. While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition. There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I'll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump's DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1. I remain fully committed to see that Donald J. Trump is the most successful President in history. I will forever be honored that President Trump nominated me to lead the Department of Justice and I'm certain he will Save America."

Did Matt Gaetz Make the Right Decision?

[projectreclaim]

Matt, you are an American Hero! Retake your seat in Congress! We needs you! Matt Gaetz, 10:24AM, 11/21/2024:

I had excellent meetings with Senators yesterday. I appreciate their thoughtful feedback - and the incredible support of so many. While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition. There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I'll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump's DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1.

I remain fully committed to see that Donald J. Trump is the most successful President in history. I will forever be honored that President Trump nominated me to lead the Department of Justice and I'm certain he will Save America.

[darkmaga-returns]

It’s a big story, so …

The best account I’ve seen is at Red State:

Matt Gaetz Withdrawal: Why It Happened, and What Comes Next

There’s no point in going into why it happened. The author does an excellent job of explaining why a recess appointment was never a realistic option—he goes over all the technicalities, which are more complicated than most people realized. Follow the link if you’re into parliamentary procedure.

More importantly he suggests what comes next—hopefully:

With all that said, Trump will likely come out a winner in the end. Gaetz stepping aside has no doubt bought some goodwill with some wishy-washy GOP senators, and that will be needed to get some of these other nominees through. If you want Robert F. Kenndy Jr. to become head of Health and Human Services, that's more possible now.

Further, Trump needs a clean fight over his nominees. There's simply no time to waste on a drawn-out, scandal-ridden nomination process. I'm not arguing that is fair, but fairness really has nothing to do with this situation. Politics is the art of the possible, and with Democrats likely to retake the House in two years, the time to strike is now. That means getting people in place as quickly as possible who have the know-how to truly reform these various agencies.

It's going to take a surgeon to fix the DOJ because the deep state will not go quietly or easily, and there are some very good options out there that may be better in the long run. Missouri AG Andrew Baily (R-MO), who has led many major conservative legal battles over the last few years, was already in consideration for the job and would be excellent. Others have mentioned Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who has the experience and the motivation to tear things down. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) checks every box, too, if he's willing to consider taking the job.

All of this is going to work out, and I don't see Trump going soft on his promise to fundamentally change the DOJ. Whoever is nominated next will be on board with that pursuit, and I'm confident heads will still roll. This is just a minor detour, and it's better it happened now than after Trump takes office.

[memenewsdotcom]

Matt Gaetz withdraws from Attorney General nomination

[comeonamericawakeup]

GUILTY.

GUILTY.

GUILTY.

Of all allegations. 

He does not want the report released. The report is very damaging. I think the Republicans would have confirmed him. They will confirm all of trumps nominees because they’ve lost all moral compass and have no convictions or a spine.

First, he quit his congressional seat to avoid release of the report.

Now he is withdrawing his nomination to avoid release of the report.

When they voted yesterday to move forward with completion of the report, it signaled that at least one republican voted yes in that regard.

The report should be finished by the next meeting on December 5. There was a good probability that on that date, again, one Republican would vote to then release the report.

He does not want the content of the report to be made public.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Darrell Lucus at Loud, Liberal, Christian:

On the surface, Matt Gaetz was the biggest loser of the week in politics. When Donald Trump tapped him as his nominee for attorney general, it was clear that Trump intended Gaetz to be his hired gun in his campaign of retribution against those who had the temerity to do their jobs and attempt to hold him to account over the years. But Gaetz was forced to withdraw his bid when it became apparent his nomination faced a humiliating defeat in the Senate. In the wake of a House Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz alleging that the now-former congressman from the Florida Panhandle had engaged in staggering misconduct—possibly criminal—NBC News reported that at least five Republicans had already decided to vote against Gaetz on the Senate floor. The New York Times put the number of hard nays at four.

While it was beyond dispute that Gaetz had lost more than the three Republican votes he could afford to lose if he wanted to be confirmed, both outlets reported that a number of Republicans had already quietly decided to reject Gaetz’ nomination. NBC reported that anywhere from 20 to 30 Republicans—close to half of the Senate GOP caucus—had serious misgivings about voting for Gaetz, while North Dakota’s Kevin Cramer told the Old Grey Lady that enough of his colleagues were “a ‘hell no’” on Gaetz to put his nomination on life support.

Apparently Gaetz was banking on Trump’s sans-culottes bludgeoning Republican Senators into line much like they bullied his House colleagues into opposing Trump’s second impeachment. That’s the only way to explain why he resigned his safer-than-safe House seat shortly after breezing to a fifth term. Now he has no intention of running in the special election for his own vacancy, and the near-certainty that the full Ethics report will be leaked could potentially kibosh his rumored run for governor in 2026 before it starts. By any standard, Gaetz is now the definition of a dead loser. But believe it or not, one of Trump’s nominees may have lost a lot more than Gaetz. Namely, Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence, newly minted Republican Tulsi Gabbard. How’s that, you ask? Well, with attention no longer focused on Gaetz, Gabbard could potentially be in for a rough ride when her nomination comes before the Senate. And said ride could get even rougher given the increasing likelihood that Fox News contributor Pete Hegseth’s bid to become secretary of defense will implode before January.

Conventional wisdom in the immediate wake of Trump’s impending return to the White House held that the Democrats as well as the few Republicans who still have spines couldn’t go DEFCON 1 on all of Trump’s nominations. As Chris Cilizza put it, “If all you do is yell, you lose your voice.” But that assumed Gaetz would last long enough to get a hearing. As we now know, his nomination didn’t even last for a week.

All of this probably ought to have Gabbard quaking in her boots. After all, with Gaetz no longer tying up most of the available oxygen, Gabbard is likely to face a lot of time in the barrel. When Trump announced her as his pick for intelligence chief, officials across the spectrum were alarmed that Trump would even consider picking someone who is at best—AT BEST—a useful idiot for Russia. While no evidence has emerged that she has collaborated with Russian intelligence, her willingness to parrot Kremlin propaganda is reason enough to raise concerns about her fitness for the post. For instance, while most of us see Ukraine as fighting for its freedom against Russian aggression, Gabbard would have us believe that the United States and NATO caused the war by pushing for Ukraine to join NATO and ignoring Russia’s “legitimate security concerns.” She has also claimed the Biden administration operated secret biological research labs in Ukraine that were capable of releasing dangerous pathogens.

[...]

The chances of Gabbard getting a full-on grilling zoomed exponentially with the prospect that at least one other Trump nominee might not last until January. In case you missed it, Trump’s transition team got word that Hegseth was investigated for sexual misconduct in Monterey, California in 2017. The allegation was concerning enough that White House Chief of Staff-in-waiting Susie Wiles and Trump’s lawyers summoned Hegseth for a meeting. According to Vanity Fair, Hegseth maintained the affair was consensual. But Hegseth’s version became far less credible when it emerged he’d paid his accuser hush money—after denying he’d done so. It’s hard for me to see any scenario in which Hegseth survives at this point, and it’s at best 50-50 whether he’ll even be in the picture by the time the new Republican-controlled Senate convenes. It’s hard to believe that Hegseth, who retired as a major in the Minnesota Army National Guard, doesn’t know that security clearances get denied for far less than this.

Reading a report by The Washington Post on Trump’s approach to filling his second administration, it’s surprising that more land mines haven’t gone off besides Gaetz and Hegseth. Trump hasn’t relied on the FBI to vet potential appointees, even those whose jobs involve matters of national security. Instead, he has relied on his campaign lawyers to vet appointees when he conducts any vetting at all. That probably explains why Hegseth’s sexual misconduct case broadsided the transition team. And it may also explain why Trump had no qualms about picking Gabbard despite the well-documented concerns about her willingness to give succor to conspiracy theories. Gabbard has undergone one of the most opportunistic political morphs I’ve ever seen. When she left the Democratic Party, her idea of being “independent minded” meant endorsing MAGA Republicans and chest-beating election deniers. While in Congress she blasted Trump for being “Saudi Arabia’s bitch” not once, but twice, by 2024 she sounded like a dark-skinned version of Laura Ingraham or Marjorie Taylor Greene. That opportunism may have seemingly gotten her well rewarded with the prospect of being the first person of color to be the nation’s intelligence chief. But now that she has lost one piece of insulation and is likely to lose another, it may well come back to bite her. And it will be well deserved.

Darrell Lucus has a good column on how the Assad apologist Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation could be in serious danger in the wake of the Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth’s debacles.

[bloghrexach]

“With Matt Gaetz withdrawing his nomination for AG, the spotlight is now pointed at Trump's next most unqualified cabinet pick - Pete Hegseth.

Steve Schmidt looks at Hegseth's past issues with women and alcohol to explain why Hegseth shouldn't be confirmed.”