The person who is most frequently the target of this speculation is Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). Already, those who claim to know how to count votes believe that Gaetz is doomed in a Senate confirmation vote, with some members of Congress even stating outright that it’s an open secret that he won’t be confirmed. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has already vowed to stop Gaetz (providing yet one more reason we are relieved that Thune was chosen over him), and some anti-Gaetz commentators, such as Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, have started pouring cold water on the idea of recess appointing him. They may not be alone. Former Senate Majority Leader “Cocaine” Mitch McConnell is alleged to have already warned Trump’s team, in blanket terms, that “there will be no recess appointments.” Fortunately, multiple Republican Senators have since disowned McConnell’s possible flirtation with high-handed tone deafness.
Of course, we don’t mean to focus exclusively on Gaetz. Official Washington has also been horrified by the appointments of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense (he’s apparently “not qualified”), Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence (who they have trotted out the old “Russian asset” chestnut against), and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr as Secretary of Health and Human Services (who they accuse of being a quack for asking questions about supposedly settled science, and who Mike Pence has mysteriously decided to oppose for being “pro-choice”). Gaetz, meanwhile, they accuse of being a pedophile (despite the fact that even Biden’s DOJ didn’t think the witnesses against him were credible), and of sympathy with all sorts of disreputable ideas (because that’s not tired at all).
We, at least, find this all not merely ridiculous, but disingenuous. And to show why, let’s assume that these people do turn out to be unqualified or otherwise unfit for the roles they are nominated for. Everyone saying this is old enough to remember the first Trump administration, and to recall that President-elect Trump has no scruples about firing senior officials who fail to meet his standards when they didn’t work out. One of the key pieces of his second-term agenda is, in fact, making it easier to fire public servants who no longer are fulfilling their mission while still collecting government checks and pushing an agenda no one voted for. In the unlikely event that all these nominees turned out to be failures, there is no chance that Donald “you’re fired” Trump would keep them around one second longer than he had to. We are sure that some people criticizing Trump’s choices are doing so out of a desire to see him succeed, but if that’s true, then publicly opposing him is the wrong way to go about it, if only because of the company it invites.
Which is, of course, the point: Washington is not actually afraid that any of these people will do badly at their jobs. Over 90 percent of Washington, DC voted for Kamala Harris. They do not want President-elect Trump to succeed anymore than they did the first time. If they really thought these nominees were likely to perform poorly, and discredit him, then they would probably happily sit on the sidelines and let Trump’s administration make mistakes. The fact that they are squealing like stuck pigs about these choices, therefore, shows that they are afraid, precisely because they think that these people will do their jobs too well. That is to say, they will perform very well for the American people, but very badly for Washington. All the disingenuous concern trolling of the permanent bureaucratic class cannot disguise this essential fear. They’re upset because Trump’s nominees are over the target.
Mike Pence’s attempt to attack RFK Jr’s position on abortion is perhaps the most pathetic and obvious example of this. Let’s be clear: Pence, who has made a career of pretending that “principle” requires him to take unpopular positions on social issues in order to look right-wing while shilling for the corporate, pro-war uniparty, is not against RFK because of abortion. Abortion is just the establishment’s preferred way of laundering what it’s actually upset about, which is that after RFK Jr’s nomination was announced, the stocks of pharmaceutical companies tanked. One of Pence’s biggest donors when he served in Congress was Eli Lilly, one of those very companies. Pence is against RFK Jr because he’s afraid that with RFK Jr at HHS, the pharmaceutical gravy train for “principled” corporate shills might run dry. Because if the “science” were as settled as all that, on all that RFK Jr complains about, there would be no reason to fear his asking questions at the highest level. But this isn’t about principle, or science; it’s about money.
Apply this same filter to the rest of the complaints about Trump’s nominees, and all of Washington’s complaints suddenly make sense. Hegseth is “unqualified,” IE not a “TV general” with a cushy appointment on the board of a defense contractor. In other words, they don’t own him and can’t demand that he lobby for war on demand.
Tulsi Gabbard is a “Russian asset” because she disagrees with the foreign policy establishment and the “intelligence community’s” militant support for Ukraine, a country renowned for money laundering and corruption. Again, if the argument for their position is really so supported by the intelligence, they should welcome the chance to persuade a skeptic and make her an advocate for their position. That they are so terrified of Tulsi is precisely because they can’t control her and force her to arrive at their position, its merits be damned, for the sake of money.
And Matt Gaetz, who apparently won President Trump’s confidence to become Attorney General by saying he’d walk into the Department of Justice and start “cutting f*cking heads,” will be the kind of figure who stops the Washingtonian lawfare and intimidation game in its tracks. He’s been targeted by gangster government tactics; he won’t be persuaded to let them continue under any circumstances. Which means yet one more font of ill-gotten money and power will be turned off.
And to that we say, thank God. Confirm them all. Cut the head of the Washington snake off, and liberate the American people from its coils. Ignore the worrywarts and nattering nabobs of negativism. Let the Senate ask whatever questions it likes, and probe Trump’s nominees in whatever way it pleases, but make no mistake, there is no universe in which John Thune would have his job as Senate Majority Leader without Donald Trump. And we, at least, don’t think he has the courage to cross the American icon who leads his own party. Which is why we think that, come January 20, President Trump will have exactly the cabinet he wants, and exactly the cabinet that is best positioned to deliver for the American people.
