Trump's Cabinet of Skeevy Bros

Plus: Where does Al Franken go to get his apology?

Mood today.

With the fall of France in 1940, Britain found itself with no allies in Europe, facing a triumphant Germany and its fascist Italian lackey. Cartoonist David Low illustrated Britain's defiant mood with this iconic cartoon, depicting a British soldier raising his fist to the oncoming Luftwaffe, and vowing to fight on: "Very Well, Alone.”

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Happy Wednesday.

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The Reign of Chodes

Where does Al Franken go to get his apology, I wonder? But I digress.

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Despite the attempted coverup by MAGA and Mike Johnson, we’re going to see all of the evidence from the House Ethics Committee: Hacker Is Said to Have Gained Access to File With Damaging Testimony About Gaetz.

But no matter how salacious the details are, they will simply confirm what we already knew —- what everybody in both parties knew — that Matt Gaetz is a skeevy chode.

• Via CNN: Women testified to House panel that they were paid for sexual favors by Gaetz, lawyer says.

• Via ABC: Gaetz sent over $10K in Venmo payments to 2 women who testified in House probe, records suggest.

• Via Politico’s Playbook: A lawyer representing two women who have testified says that they “attended more than five and as many as 10 ‘sex parties’ with Gaetz between the summer of 2017 and the end of 2018, during his first term in the House. At those parties, they testified, there were ‘group sex situations’ and illegal drugs were present.”

  “One of Leppard’s clients told investigators she witnessed Gaetz “having sex with her friend,” who was underage at the time, against what she recalled as some sort of game table, according to Leppard.”

None of this will have the slightest impact on Trump’s fervid determination to make Gaetz the nation’s top law enforcement officer. And while there is no subtlety here, there is also no mystery: The rapey, pussy-grabbing president chose Gaetz because he wants an Attorney General in his own image.

And Gaetz will fit right into an administration where dickishness — especially toward women — is apparently a qualification.

As Matt Labash notes, there are lots of other reasons that Trump’s nominations are absurd and dangerous — “ from the anti-vaxxer brain-worm guy who thinks the Jews might’ve been in on COVID, to the Putin-puppet who is now trading in her religious cult for a secular one, to the hydrocephalic-looking human skid-mark who has been accused of everything from having sex’n’drug orgies to conducting “voter outreach” with a 17-year-old girl (he denies it, a purported eyewitness’s attorney doesn’t) – a man who has pulled off the once-impossible feat of being too scummy even for the House of Representatives, but not too scummy to helm Trump’s Revenge Machine as Attorney General.”

But, at least for today, let’s focus on Trump’s giant middle finger to women.

The NYT puts it somewhat more diplomatically: Trump Defies the #MeToo Movement With Cabinet Picks Facing Accusations. Peter Baker provides the necessary context:

When he takes the oath of office in January, Donald J. Trump will make history as the first court-adjudicated sexual abuser to assume the presidency. But if he gets the team of his choice, he will not be the only one in the room whose conduct has been called into question.

Mr. Trump, who was found liable in a civil trial last year of sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, has selected a defense secretary, an attorney general, a secretary of health and human services and an efficiency czar, all of whom have been accused of variations of sexual misconduct and, like the president-elect, deny them.

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Let’s start with RFK, Jr.

Suffice it to say that you would not trust him to walk your dogs or babysit your kids. Earlier this year Vanity Fair reported:

In the fall of 1998, the Kennedys hired a 23-year-old woman, Eliza Cooney, as their part-time babysitter….

A few months later, Cooney says, she was rifling through the kitchen pantry for lunch after a yoga class, still in her sports bra and leggings, when Kennedy came up behind her, blocked her inside the room, and began groping her, putting his hands on her hips and sliding them up along her rib cage and breasts. “My back was to the door of the pantry, and he came up behind me,” she says, describing the alleged sexual assault. “I was frozen. Shocked.”

He was interrupted by a worker who entered the kitchen. To announce his presence, the man, according to Cooney, said something like, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” or “Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want your wife to know about.”

After the story appeared, Kennedy texted an apology to the woman he allegedly sexually assaulted.

Eliza Cooney told Vanity Fair earlier this month that Kennedy forcibly groped her when she was in her 20s and worked for the Kennedy family as a babysitter.

“I have no memory of this incident but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings,” Kennedy said in the text message to Cooney

Then there is the sex diary and his wife’s suicide: RFK Jr.’s secret sex diary: His hidden document of affairs found by late wife who committed suicide — and his secret code for women he bedded.

None of this is, apparently, disqualifying for either Trump or the craven GOP writ large.

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Nor is the sexual CV of Peter Hegseth, Trump’s pick to oversee the Pentagon: Pete Hegseth paid woman after sex assault allegation but denies wrongdoing, lawyer says | AP News

Hegseth was accused of sexual assault in 2017 after a speaking appearance at a Republican women’s event in Monterey, California, according to a statement released by the city. No charges were filed.

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And then there is Trump’s co-president, Elon, who also paid hush money to an ex-flight attendant.

According to Business Insider, SpaceX paid the unnamed woman a severance agreement that was settled out of court and, as part of the deal, she was not allowed to sue the company or talk about the alleged incident.

The magazine quotes an anonymous friend of the flight attendant, who… said Mr Musk had exposed himself to the former employee - a cabin crew member on contract for SpaceX's corporate jet fleet - in 2016 while receiving a massage from her aboard his private jet.

He is said to have exposed his genitals to her, touched her leg without consent, and offered to buy her a gift if she would "do more" - referring to the performance of sex acts.

There’s more. Of course. This is from earlier this year: Elon Musk Is Suddenly Drowning in Misconduct Allegations

Eight SpaceX employees who were fired in 2022 sued Elon Musk on Wednesday alleging that they were ousted for raising allegations about sexual harassment and gender discrimination at the company.

The lawsuit, filed in California, alleges that Musk “knowingly and purposefully created an unwelcome hostile work environment based upon his conduct of interjecting into the workplace vile sexual photographs, memes, and commentary that demeaned women and/or the LGBTQ+ community.”

The sexual-harassment and retaliation suit focuses on an incident in 2022 in which Musk posted jokes about the sexual-misconduct allegation levied against him by a SpaceX flight attendant. After Musk made these jokes, the defendants in the lawsuit wrote an open letter calling out his crude statements and the company culture — for which they allege they were fired.

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Linda McMahon, the former WWE exec, is Trump’s pick to be Secretary of Education (a department he has pledged to abolish): Via Wikipedia:

Sexual abuse lawsuit

Main article: “Ring boy scandal”

In October 2024, McMahon was named as a defendant in a lawsuit, accusing her, her husband, and WWE of negligence with regards to the "ring boys" scandal, in which multiple WWE personnel, including ring announcer Mel Phillips and wrestlers Pat Patterson and Terry Garvin, either resigned or were dismissed in 1992 after being accused of sexually assaulting young boys; in particular, Phillips had already been dismissed in 1988 for sexual misconduct, but had been rehired several weeks afterwards under the condition that he "stop chasing after kids". McMahon's possible involvement in the “ring boys scandal” was known prior to her tenure as Small Business Administrator; a vetting document from Trump's first transition team, leaked in 2019 and cited in the lawsuit, listed the scandal as a possible "red flag" against her. The lawsuit also alleges the McMahons fostered a culture of sexual abuse within the WWE, additionally citing the concurrent sex trafficking lawsuit and federal investigation against Vince and other allegations highlighted by the Netflix documentary series Mr. McMahon.

This brings me back to Al Franken.

You may remember in the mists of the Before Times that the Minnesota senator was forced to resign by his fellow Democrats after he was accused of sexual misconduct.

Franken’s fall was stunningly swift: he resigned only three weeks after Leeann Tweeden, a conservative talk-radio host, accused him of having forced an unwanted kiss on her during a 2006 U.S.O. tour. Seven more women followed with accusations against Franken; all of them centered on inappropriate touches or kisses. Half the accusers’ names have still not become public. Although both Franken and Tweeden called for an independent investigation into her charges, none took place.

A few years back the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer asked Franken if he regretted his decision to resign so quickly — without a formal investigation.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Absolutely.”

He wishes that he had appeared before a Senate Ethics Committee hearing, as he had requested, allowing him to marshal facts that countered the narrative aired in the press. It is extremely rare for a senator to resign under pressure.

In retrospect, other Democrats share his regret.¹ The defenestration of Franken — at the height of #MeToo — was supposed to give the Democrats the moral high ground, the better to shame the Trumpist GOP. In retrospect, of course, the only effect it had was the sacrifice of Franken. The GOP was not only unashamed — it has now redoubled its tolerance of —and enthusiasm for — the bros who fondle, grope, rape, and grab.

Where does Franken go to get his apology?

Yes, we have dogs

Eli really loved Pete.

1. Via the New Yorker: “A remarkable number of Franken’s Senate colleagues have regrets about their own roles in his fall. Seven current and former U.S. senators who demanded Franken’s resignation in 2017 told me that they’d been wrong to do so. Such admissions are unusual in an institution whose members rarely concede mistakes. Patrick Leahy, the veteran Democrat from Vermont, said that his decision to seek Franken’s resignation without first getting all the facts was “one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made” in forty-five years in the Senate. Heidi Heitkamp, the former senator from North Dakota, told me, “If there’s one decision I’ve made that I would take back, it’s the decision to call for his resignation. It was made in the heat of the moment, without concern for exactly what this was.” Tammy Duckworth, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, told me that the Senate Ethics Committee “should have been allowed to move forward.” She said it was important to acknowledge the trauma that Franken’s accusers had gone through, but added, “We needed more facts. That due process didn’t happen is not good for our democracy.” Angus King, the Independent senator from Maine, said that he’d “regretted it ever since” he joined the call for Franken’s resignation. “There’s no excuse for sexual assault,” he said. “But Al deserved more of a process. I don’t denigrate the allegations, but this was the political equivalent of capital punishment.” Senator Jeff Merkley, of Oregon, told me, “This was a rush to judgment that didn’t allow any of us to fully explore what this was about. I took the judgment of my peers rather than independently examining the circumstances. In my heart, I’ve not felt right about it.” Bill Nelson, the former Florida senator, said, “I realized almost right away I’d made a mistake. I felt terrible. I should have stood up for due process to render what it’s supposed to—the truth.” Tom Udall, the senior Democratic senator from New Mexico, said, “I made a mistake. I started having second thoughts shortly after he stepped down. He had the right to be heard by an independent investigative body. I’ve heard from people around my state, and around the country, saying that they think he got railroaded. It doesn’t seem fair. I’m a lawyer. I really believe in due process.”

“Former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who watched the drama unfold from retirement, told me, “It’s terrible what happened to him. It was unfair. It took the legs out from under him. He was a very fine senator.”