They Broke it. They Bought It.
A cataract of grotesqueries.
“Are you shitting me? No.” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) reacting to the appointment of Matt Gaetz as AG.
Well, we tried to warn them.
I have a confession: Yesterday, when I wrote about Trump’s emerging cabinet — “Zealots, and toadies, and cretins. Oh My” — I had no idea of the avalanche of grotesqueries headed our way. (And I don’t think of myself as being particular naive about the dangers, indignities, and horrors of Trump 2.0.)
Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security was bad enough; SecDef Peter Hegseth was inane; but then we got Putin/Assad fangirl Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence.1 No wonder Trump is so anxious for the Senate to surrender its constitutional role of Advice and Consent and let him make “recess appointments” instead.
By mid-afternoon, the zone as flooded with hacks, freaks, and are-you-fuqqing-kidding-me trolls. But as it turned out these were merely prologue to Donald Trump’s epic FU to both the Department of Justice and the Senate GOP.
Beyond the farthest reaches of parody, Trump named Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General of the United States.
Within hours, we learned that Gaetz quit his seat in Congress just ahead of a deeply damaging ethics report that most likely lays out in excruciating detail his excellent adventures with ED pills, energy drinks, hula hoops, Venmo, videotapes, and underage sex.
And we are just a week into this mess of tragedy and farce.
Happy Thursday.
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You broke it. You bought it.
It is worth noting once again that the GOP brought this on itself. Senate Republicans had a chance to rid the polity of Trump but thought: Let’s humor him. What could possibly go wrong?
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA): Grassley was reportedly, “so exasperated by Gaetz questions that he stopped talking to reporters & stood there stonefaced for 30 seconds.
Rep. John Duarte (R-CA): “Matt Gaetz is under an ethics investigation and would be a compromised AG. There are better choices.”
Rep. Max Miller (R-OH): “Zero percent chance he gets through the Senate. It’s a reckless pick, but I’m happy that he’s out of the House, or will be soon.”
Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA): When asked about Matt Gaetz, Ernst reportedly dodged the question, pivoting to praising another candidate who was rumored to be on the short list for Attorney General, “I’m a huge Matt Whitaker fan.”
In other words: They’ve watched Trump for nearly a decade now, and they are still shocked, shocked to discover who and what he is. During the campaign Trump told us over and over what he intended to do. We saw who he listened to; and he saw what he could get away with. There was no subtlety and no ambiguity about how he would govern and the sorts of people he would surround himself with.
So, this is what Republicans wanted. This is what they gave to the country. And this is what they got.
**
Axios: Republicans “Stunned And Disgusted” As Trump Taps Matt Gaetz For AG.
“What we’re hearing: Trump’s announcement was met with audible gasps by House Republicans during a conference meeting on Wednesday afternoon, multiple sources in the room told Axios. […] The bottom line: Even Gaetz’s allies concede he will have a tough time clinching the job.”
Politico: ‘Reckless Pick’: Lawmakers Express Doubts That Gaetz Can Get Confirmed As Attorney General.
Swing-vote GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she doesn’t “think it’s a serious nomination for the attorney general.” Another, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), told reporters she was “shocked” by Gaetz’s selection.
Senate Republicans Alarmed by Trump Nominating Matt Gaetz for Attorney General - The New York Times
Senate Republicans reacted with alarm and dismay to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s decision to nominate Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, for attorney general, and several said they were skeptical that he would be able to secure enough votes for confirmation.
“He’s got his work really cut out for him,” Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, said, chuckling as she spoke.
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, raised his eyebrows when reporters informed him of Mr. Trump’s choice.
“I’m still trying to absorb all this,” he said. Mr. Cornyn later told reporters: “I don’t really know him, other than his public persona.”
Nota Bene: It’s pretty clear that there was no advice before the demanded consent. Trump did not even give the Senate GOP a heads-up, much less ask for their input.
Zone flooded
Context may be helpful here.
Although it’s easy to forget since it was more than 24 hours ago, yesterday began with an embarrassing defeat for the MAGAverse, when the Senate GOP refused to name an abject Trump loyalist as majority leader.
Trump has signaled that he wants the Congress —like his cabinet — to be a confederacy of lickspittles, so the decision to bypass lickspittle Rick Scott was a possibly fleeting show of independence. It was also embarrassing and triggering: ‘MAGA Is Pissed’: Trump Faithfuls Out for Blood After Rick Scott Loses Senate Majority Vote.”
“If [new GOP leader John Thune] does not support President Trump in these next 30 to 45 days to fill President Trump’s cabinet, we will remove him,” blustered Trump minion Charlie Kirk.
We don’t know for sure whether what followed was a direct reaction to that vote, but the media is not talking about MAGA’s faceplant in the senate this morning is it?
Instead: we are talking about Trump’s humiliation of the Senate GOP by demanding the most absurd imaginable show of loyalty.
Ron Brownstein explains. Trump, he wrote, “has shown he understands a cardinal rule of strong man dominance: constantly force your allies to defend the indefensible [and] to make ever greater concessions they once would have considered beyond the pale. Each surrender paves the way for the next. Gaetz just an opening bid.”
Ezra Klein makes a similar point: “Demanding Senate Republicans back Gaetz as Attorney General and Hegseth as Defense Secretary is the 2024 version of forcing Sean Spicer to say it was the largest inauguration crowd ever. These aren't just appointments. They're loyalty tests. The absurdity is the point.”
Nota bene: Yesterday was a preview of what January 20 — Trump’s first day — will be like. The zone will be flooded with orders, pardons, outrages, and edicts. Brace yourself.
A distraction?
How mind-bendingly awful is the Gaetz pick? So bad that it has spawned an entire cottage-industry of conspiracies, four-dimensional-chess theories, and hot-takes.
Some of them might actually be right.
Let’s start by stipulating that Trump would really love to have Gaetz as his AG. It would fulfill his most lurid fantasies of revenge.
But it is also true that Gaetz is a useful distraction from Trump’s senate defeat and from the deplorable incompetence of his other appointments. In comparison, they seem… less hair-on-fire awful.
And, if Senate Republicans do, in fact, draw the line by rejecting Gaetz, it will make it much harder for them to defy Trump on other nominations without inciting a Trump-lead MAGA backlash. They can reject Gaetz, but that will make it much more difficult to also reject Tulsi Gabbard, or Peter Hegseth, or Trump’s next deplorable AG choice.
I regret to tell you that Ann Coulter may be right here:
“Our girlfriend Tulsi”
Let’s not be distracted about this: Trump’s appointment of Tulsi Gabbard to be Director of National Intelligence was equally shocking — and potentially even more dangerous. Here’s a flashback to 2022:
**
Make sure you read Tom Nichols in The Atlantic:
To make Tulsi Gabbard the DNI, however, is not merely handing a bouquet to a political gadfly. Her appointment would be a threat to the security of the United States.
Gabbard ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, attempting to position herself as something like a peace candidate. But she’s no peacemaker: She’s been an apologist for both the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Her politics, which are otherwise incoherent, tend to be sympathetic to these two strongmen, painting America as the problem and the dictators as misunderstood....
A person with Gabbard’s views should not be allowed anywhere near the crown jewels of American intelligence.
Just three days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Gabbard posted a video on X calling on Moscow, Washington and Kyiv to “put geopolitics aside” and for Ukraine remain neutral. She later said the war could have been avoided if President Joe Biden and other leaders had guaranteed Kyiv would not become part of NATO.
She also caused an uproar by suggesting Ukraine housed U.S.-funded bioweapons labs. Gabbard later claimed her comments had been misunderstood, and she was expressing concern about the presence of biolabs handling dangerous pathogens in a warzone.
Not the Onion
My favorite story of the day, via the NYT: “The Onion Buys Alex Jones’s Infowars Out of Bankruptcy.”
The Onion, a satirical publication that skewers newsmakers and current events, said on Thursday that it had won a bankruptcy auction to acquire Infowars, a website founded and operated by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
The Onion said that the bid was sanctioned by the families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who in 2022 won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Mr. Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems.
Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit dedicated to ending gun violence that was founded in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting, will advertise on a relaunched version of the site under The Onion.
The publication plans to reintroduce Infowars in January as a parody of itself, mocking “weird internet personalities” like Mr. Jones who traffic in misinformation and health supplements, Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said in an interview.
Eli still thinks he is a lapdog
Finally
**
If you are in the mood for a quick game of “What If?” — Imagine if President-elect Kamala Harris had put George Soros in charge of government reform; and named Ilhan Omar as Director of National Intelligence.
Let's play fantasy politics. Here's mine: several normie Republican or Republican-caucusing members, making note of the constitutional crisis Trump's re-election caused, decide to switch parties, throwing control of the Senate to Democrats.
While I'm at it, Governor Mike DeWine, in a similar fit of remorse, nominates Sherrod Brown to complete Vance's uncompleted term.
I know, I know, I know. Slinking off now.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA): Grassley was reportedly, “so exasperated by Gaetz questions that he stopped talking to reporters & stood there stonefaced for 30 seconds.
In Grassley's defense, it could have just been a stroke.