Is the Senate “Fighting Back”?
It is too soon to tell.
On this morning’s episode of 1A, the question was raised if the Gaetz withdrawal means that the Senate (and, really, Senate Republicans) are “fighting back.” I have seen some hints of this media narrative forming. We have gone from stories about possible recess appointments and loyalty tests to “fighting back.” It feels (and when I use that word, I am being deliberate) like typical horserace coverage. Who’s up? Who’s down? One news story means this dramatic thing, while that story means yet another dramatic thing!
Here’s the deal: Gaetz was, to quote John Bolton, “the worst nominee for a cabinet position in American history.” While maybe some historians of the executive branch can provide a counter-example I think that Gaetz would be hard to beat for his mixture of lack of qualifications and having a character and biography as diametrically opposed to the office’s role as one can get.
The WSJ headline asserts Botched Gaetz Nomination Shows Limits of Trump’s Hold Over GOP. That may well be. But it is Bizzaro-World-level amazing to state that it is a power move to have blocked an AG nominee who barely practiced law, certainly used illegal drugs, and paid for sex (including with a 17-year-old). The fact that this is the outer boundaries being established is hardly evidence of Trump’s limitations, now is it? It’s something, to be sure, and I am grateful that at least that boundary exists. But let’s not pretend like normal has come to town.
As such, Gaetz not making it through is not evidence of the Senate asserting itself. I noted the other day that I figured that he was a bridge too far (although, I will admit that I always thought there was a non-zero chance he would make it through, which was itself a terrible sign of the times).*
I cannot stress enough that the president-elect of the United States nominated a man to be AG of the US who was credibly accused of illegal drug use and sex with a minor. It isn’t as if this was a post-nomination revelation. And, moreover, the appointment seems to have been part of a scheme to block the release of a House Ethics Committee report about the behavior in question.
So, there is some substantial dysfunction in play regardless of the outcome.
Now, it may well be that Senate Republicans eventually do fight back, but I have my doubts.
Let’s just consider the following list. The test is not whether Trump can get Gaetz through. The test is how many of these he can get through.
- Pete Hegseth for SecDef: Unqualified, possible White Nationalist, serious sexual assault allegations.
- RJK, Jr. for HHS: Unqualified, conspiracy theorist (which is putting it mildly), anti-vaccine.
- Tulsi Gabbard for DNI: Unqualified, possible security risk.
- Kristi Noem for DHS: Unqualified, bragged about cruelty to animals, including putting done a puppy in her bio.
- Linda McMahon for DOE: Unqualified, facing a lawsuit that she turned a blind eye to child sexual abuse.
And that is off the top of my head. I would note that we are not talking about the bar for criminal convictions or civil liability. I am noting the bar of passing the scrutiny of public opinion and the Senate. It used to be that since there were multiple people who could fill a given slot, presidents nominated qualified and/or people with no skeletons. And there was a time that one skeleton, often minor, was enough to derail an otherwise qualified nominee (or would have been enough to forestall a nomination in the first place).
Now, it is a cavalcade of people who lack expertise in the given policy arena and no experience in running large, complex organizations that also have problematic biographies.
Most of these people have two characteristics that Trump likes: they are loyal to him and they have been on TV.
So far the only skeleton that is bad enough to cause a withdrawal is a second allegation of sex with a minor. Indeed, Gaetz didn’t have his skeleton in the closet; rather, they were lawn ornaments, and he still got nominated.
To repeat a Hannah Arendt quote from The Origins of Totalitarianism: “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”
The list above is made up of persons who have enough embarrassing problems that would have kept them from being nominated under any circumstance in a normal administration. That doesn’t even include the list of nominees who are simply unqualified by any standard other than the thinnest of pretenses.
- Matthew Whitaker for UN Ambassador: he has no background to justify this appointment.
- Mehmet Oz for CMS Director: yes, he is an MD, but he is mostly an entertainment figure who has no experience with administration, let alone with Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, etc.
- Pam Bondi for AG to replace Gaetz: She is at least far more qualified than Gaetz, but was an election denier with clear loyalty to Trump that is stronger than her loyalty to the law.
I expect this list to grow.
The question of how much the Senate is fighting back is how many of the truly awful list make it through and then how many of the simply unqualified make it. Losing Gaetz is not enough to even ask the question of whether they are fighting back or not. And even if he loses more, what does he replace them with? As noted, Bondi is better than Gaetz, but she is still not what we should want in an AG.
I fully expect a cabinet full of the unqualified whose main feature is loyalty to Trump.
And look, Rubio for State is a legitimate and normal pick. Sean Duffy for Transportation is unimpressive, but nothing to get all upset about. Else Stefanik for UN Ambassador is a normal political pay-off kind of pick (although I think she is a hack with limited experience). I personally don’t like, for example, Mike Huckabee for Ambassador to Israel, but it is not off the wall (although, again, someone with TV experience, which is not the kind of through-line I think of when I think of good government). Several others are standard issue.
*To quote a post from earlier in the week: “So here’s a marker: how many of these people make it through? None of the four I listed are qualified save in the sense that there are no constitutional requirements for the offices in question. While I think that Gaetz will prove a bridge too far, I am not convinced that Trump can’t whip up 50 votes plus VP Vance to get him through.”
Trump is accelerating toward the fail points of autocracies – incompetence, corruption and paranoia. He dearly wants to be Putin because he can’t see beyond himself and despite what Putin has done to Russia, he himself is exceedingly rich, so in Trump’s book Putin’s a winner.
Trump will give no consideration to the fact that the Putin autocracy has been exposed as incompetent and corrupt and unable to extricate itself from either the incompetence or the corruption because of the very nature of the regime.
What Putin did not have to deal with were governors of California, New York, Washington, Massachusetts and Illinois. I put no stock in Congress, they’re either invertebrates, or hoping to get in on the looting of the country. But governors are not so easily disregarded.
Trump will never do anything to benefit the country unless he can cash in, either financially or in ego-feed. As of inauguration day the American president is no longer leader of the free world, but an enemy of the free world. We are to be a very powerful banana republic.
@Michael Reynolds: I don’t think Putin’s regime will be exposed as incompetent to its supporters until the Russian Army is withdrawn from all of Ukraine and Crimea. And maybe not even then. There are, perhaps other scenarios that might do it.
Before that, he’s “winning”. Just like Charlie Sheen. Denial dies hard.
@Michael Reynolds: Putin has been in power for over a quarter century. If he dies today, I don’t think his dying statement will be what a failure he has been. A failure for the Russian people in a grand historic way, yes? A failure for Putin and his cronies? Not so much.
Maybe he ends up facing prison or an assassin’s bullet, but if you had given Little Vlad that choice in 1998, i.e., ruling basically as Czar for almost 30 years and then an ignominious end to all, I think he would have taken the deal.
Putin has the power to make people accidentally fall out of the windows of tall buildings or accidentally ingest poisons. Not that Trump wouldn’t want the same mojo too…
Insofar as there can be one, Gaetz was a freebie for those 5 Republicans, maybe Hegseth will be one too. They can accept Trump being a convicted sex criminal, and even his various white collar felonies. But guys like Gaetz and perhaps Hegseth are replaceable parts. There always more arsonists in line for these positions.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Achilles never grew up, either.
Stalin unleashed terror on his own citizens, decimated his officer corps just before the biggest war ever*, and trusted the nazi dictator who’d made it very clear he wanted to take over large swaths of the USSR.
There’s a lot more evil the man did. It all adds up to the millions of deaths under his watch and by his own hand.
And yet, when he finally improved the world by dropping dead, the outpouring of grief by the majority of the population was very real and very sincere.
It’s not right. It’s not deserved. And it’s what I expect to see when Mad Vlad has the decency to die.
The depressing thing is that this list is just a bare topline of problems. RFK *also* has assault allegations (former babysitter, and he was so toasted he doesn’t remember the assault), along with multiple animal…problems (dead bear carcass in park, severed whale head in/on car, eating a dog). Bondi dropped an investigation once Trump donated $25K to one of her campaigns.
And on, and on with this crew.
We are an international joke.
@Jay L Gischer: @Steven L. Taylor:
I have no doubt Trump will think Putin’s doing just fine. Russia isn’t. Even after Trump sells out Ukraine, the best near-term case for Russia is holding what they’ve got, possibly with an active resistance.
Russia has the same problem it did during the cold war – it can’t keep up. Russia cannot be even a second-tier power without China’s backing, and I wonder how long Russians will be happy to be the tail on the Chinese dog. And how long China is going to have hundreds of millions of people pressed up against all the natural and strategic resources of eastern Siberia (ex-China) and Vladivostok. But that’s all down the road.
I note Putin is afraid of calling for a general mobilization. He could mobilize a million men and finish the war, but he finds stalemate safer than wider conscription. So, he’s not entirely without concern for this home front. He’s afraid of sending young Muscovites into the meat grinder.
Two things in addition to the powers of governors and states: Putin is much smarter and more stable than Trump, and Russians have a long, deep history of servility. And it’s much easier to control an essentially extraction economy than it is the American economy. We have too many companies, too many sectors, too many consumers for a handful of oligarchs to dominate a 27 trillion dollar economy.
@Kathy and Michael: I used to wonder that Russians or Cubans or (in the ’80s) Chileans didn’t just kick out their rulers who were clearly (to me) impeding and impoverishing their citizens. It has only recently become clearer to me as I look around my own country how authoritarianism takes hold while one large segment of the population insists it’s the best possible outcome while another large segment feels helpless or too intimidated to throw it off.
@Jen:
Assuming that this isn’t a recess appointment, I hope at least one senator has the temerity to ask her about this ‘gift.’ You know, one for the record.
With Trump, the cesspool has always been open for business.
@Michael Reynolds:
I agree with this. And he is navigating that situation – so far with fair success. He allows the Muscovites to think of themselves as superior beings – smarter than everyone else, and also morally superior. They aren’t going to let go of that idea easily, which is the point I was making.
They didn’t let go if it when Napoleon marched into Moscow, after all. It’s going to take a lot, and it will be ugly when it happens. A lot of innocent people will get hurt on the way.
@al Ameda: The story at the time was that she was uninvolved in the Trump U case and it was ridiculous to believe that her office could be bought off for a $25k campaign contribution. It’s a pretty easy story to repeat and for the Senate, with furrowed brow, to accept.
But who doesn’t love theater?
@al Ameda:
@just nutha:
If it had been nothing, the felon’s “charitable foundation” wouldn’t have had to lie about a mistake in the donation, or that Bondi requested it.
BTW, I read Bondi had links to scientology in the past. If those links are still there, they may disturb some senators a lot more than mere Republican corruption.
Man, how far have we descended into normalized abnormality!! Characterizing Republican Senators doing their job to advise and consent on the nominees of the POTUS-elect from their own party is “fighting back?” Neither “fight” or “back” make sense in this scenario.
@Kathy: Didn’t say it was nothing, merely that she’ll be able to repeat her former answer just fine and that the Senate will furrow their collective brow then nod approvingly.
@Michael Reynolds:
Funny, really: the leaders Trump sees as “strong”, are in fact, utter failures as national leaders.
Putin, Netanyahu, Kim, etc.
Even Xi, arguably the most competent (because most cautious and calculating of the bunch) has screwed up badly on reforming the Chinese economy.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Depends on your metric.
Putin for the interest of the Moscow/St Petersburg siloviki/oligarchy ascendancy has been utterly wonderful.
And for externalising the Russian elite resentment at loss of imperium by poking the US in the eye periodically.
For Russia more generally, not so much.
Even if you go for the Russian autocratic tradition of “interest of the state” is superior to “interest of the people”, his rule is a failure, imuho.
Even from a “tsarist tradition” pov, Putin is hardly a success.
But of course, delusion is one hell of a drug.
@Joe:
Historically, it’s generally been more the exception than the rule that a determined dominant elite that controls the military and police will prevail.
Successful revolts are rather unusual, and usually only when the regime has been fatally undermined by a combination of elite division, military defeat, and/or massive economic collapse.
Back to the original subject: Gabbard is going to be the real test case, imo.
Less obviously domestically controversial than Gaetz, but equally perilous, in a different way.
As a lot of Republican Senators will be well aware.
@JohnSF: I am thinking quite specifically. Putin has been in power and been made wealthy. A win for him.l as opposed to say, being a regular person.
I am not saying he has governed well or that Russia is better off. Quite the contrary.
@JohnSF: Agreed. She is a major test.
@JohnSF:
When I think about the history of Russia, I’m reminded of Zathras. Specifically this quote “You take, Zathras die. You leave, Zathras die. Either way, it is bad for Zathras.”
Think of the last four forms of government it had: autocracy, communism, incompetently led democracy, and now authoritarian dictatorship. Either way, it is bad for the Russian people.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Yes, re-reading your comment, I get that.
But I wonder if Putin had ambitions to be a “Great Russian Leader”?
I suspect he did.
Some of his actions don’t make much sense outside that context, imo.
And his statements, and anecdotage about him seem to indicate he wanted to be a “great Tsar”, as well as just an enabler of the oligarchy.
That is where he has failed.
And I sometimes suspect that, sometimes, in the wee small hours, he realises that.
And reacts by trying to double-down on belligerent attempts to crush defiance: with Ukraine being the most obvious focus of his frustrated rage.
@Kathy:
Yes, but which Zathras?
Is it Zathras, or Zathras, or Zathras? 😉
@JohnSF: Nobody listens to Zathras.
You could have mentioned the delightfully ironic fact that Education Secretary nominee McMahon once lied that she had a degree in education.
Today’s nominees for HUD and Agriculture also appear to be totally unqualified, but the cherry on top was Bessent for Treasury! A gay man with a husband, who worked for George Soros until 2015! Trump is trolling his own cult now.