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PPresident-elect Donald Trump notched his first major failure on Friday when Matt Gaetz, the embattled nominee for attorney general, withdrew his nomination.
Gaetz’s nomination would certainly be a stopgap for Trump. No amount of arm-twisting can get a former congressman, who is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee, over the line with the Senate.
The fumble suggests that Trump misread the mandate. In an election clearly about price cuts and frustrated with the Democrats, he decided to run an ultra-MAGA. House Republicans felt the need to run interference for Trump and Gaetz; Senate Republicans are playing coy even though they know the nomination is doomed.
Also, as more ballots are counted from the general election, the less Trump can say he has an overwhelming mandate. Yes, he won every swing state. But it looks like he narrowly won the general election. A decisive victory? confident. Win a landslide? Not exactly.
And this was even before Trump officially became president. Imagine the whiplash everyone in Washington would experience if he actually entered the White House.
But Trump doesn’t seem to have learned anything from this ordeal. Within hours of Gaetz withdrawing his nomination, the president-elect had nominated Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, to lead the Justice Department.
Trump’s choice of Bondi makes perfect sense. In 2016, when many Republicans threw their support behind Trump or said they were “supporting but not endorsing the nominee,” Bondi gave a stirring speech at the 2016 Republican National Committee calling for Hillary Clinton to be jailed. He heads the legal branch of the America First Policy Institute and served as legal counsel during Trump’s first impeachment trial. He even campaigned for Trump in Gastonia, North Carolina in the final weekend of the 2024 election campaign.
Bondi won his first election in 2010 as part of the Tea Party wave with Senator Marco Rubio, a sign that Florida has changed from being a swing state to the Magaritaville it is today. Now Rubio is poised to become Trump’s secretary of state.
Both candidates will be easily confirmed. Bondi is a standard conservative lawyer beloved by MAGA who seems to have no personal skeleton in her closet, and Rubio will get a lot of Democrats to support his confirmation because he doesn’t consider his fellow senator.
That doesn’t mean all of Trump’s nominees will be easily confirmed. The nomination of Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who is an enthusiastic Trump supporter, to be Director of National Intelligence has drawn criticism from many, including Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations. Gabbard has proven a controversial choice, not least because of the meeting he once held with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Republicans will also face criticism if they vote to confirm Robert F Kennedy Jr, an environmental lawyer who is a vaccine conspiracy theorist, as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
But what hurt the most was the confirmation process for Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News pundit whom Trump tapped to be Secretary of Defense.
Aside from the fact that Hegseth lacks conventional experience to lead the department, this week, the news came out about the 22-page police report where the woman is accused of preventing him from leaving the room, taking the phone and then sexually assaulting him. Hegseth has denied the allegations, and said that the meeting between the man and the woman – with whom he then entered into a settlement agreement – was entirely consensual. The fact that he paid money to the woman has raised eyebrows, however. Her lawyer said the payment was made because Hegseth feared the woman would file a lawsuit, which would have resulted in her being fired from Fox.
Under normal circumstances, such a revelation would have immediately invalidated a cabinet nomination, let alone one as important as Secretary of Defense. The same types of senators who are reluctant to confirm Gaetz – such as Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and others – may wince in voting for someone like Hegseth. This coterie may feel more emboldened to block him after he succeeds in making Gaetz ice.
And even if Trump grumbles about a potential recess appointment, the Republican Senate conference may be inclined against him suspending the Senate in reality – so that Presidential candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or President Josh Shapiro ask for the same authority in the Republican-controlled Senate one day. in the distant future.
But of course, Trump has found ways to break ties in the past. Proof positive? On Friday, sentencing for the guilty verdicts in New York was postponed indefinitely.
