Like any other would-be autocrat, President-elect Donald Trump is selecting people for key positions overseeing the military and legal system based not on objective merits but their personal loyalty to one man: in this case, a 78-year-old Republican who felt betrayed in his first term when more-or-less qualified cabinet officials would balk at some of his more extreme demands. This time, he’s saying with his early picks, there will be no one second guessing the leader or, in the words of his son, thinking they “know better” than a man with the nuclear codes.
The nomination of former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who resigned from Congress on Wednesday, is the clearest sign yet that Trump intends to govern as an authoritarian who will use all the levers of the state to harass his critics and avowed opponents. Gaetz graduated from William & Mary Law School but otherwise has no experience that would suggest he’s qualified to lead the Department of Justice.
"Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department," Trump proclaimed.
There is no shortage of right-wing lawyers who would love to serve as attorney general and do just that. Ken Paxton, currently Texas’ attorney general, would have been a perfect MAGA pick: In 2020, he sued to disenfranchise those who voted for President Joe Biden in an effort to keep the loser of that year’s election in power; he has since sued the Biden administration no less than a hundred times and has used his office to go after groups that provide aid to immigrants; he’s even ordered raids on the homes of his political opponents, including an 87-year-old member of a Latino civil rights group he baselessly accused of voter fraud.
Gaetz, however, is unsurpassed in his sycophancy. Elected in 2016, he has draped himself in the Trump flag perhaps more than any other member of Congress, past or present, even boasting that he met his wife at Mar-a-Lago, where he’s a regular fixture. He is also compromised: Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., accused Gaetz of having sex with a 17-year-old and the department he’s been nominated to lead investigated him for sex trafficking, with witnesses saying that the former lawmaker attended drug-fueled parties with underage girls (he was never charged with a crime).
The House Ethics Committee had also investigated the accusations against Gaetz and was due to release its findings this week. By nominating Gaetz, and him subsequently resigning from Congress, Trump helped a loyalist avoid potential embarrassment, if not worse: As Gaetz is no longer a member of the House, the House can no longer issue a report about him.
Having an attorney general with so much potentially compromising dirt on him could be an asset, it being hard to say “no” to someone would could arguably ruin you. It’s also a test, intentional or not: Just how loyal is the rest of the GOP?
Gaetz, as a man, appears to be widely detested by his former colleagues, given the number willing to publicly lambaste him. The guy “is literally worse than the gum on the bottom of my shoe,” Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, told CNN on Wednesday. Former Rep. Barbara Comstock, R-Va., likewise called the pick “absurd,” saying the selection of Gaetz — along with the nomination of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, for director of national intelligence — suggests Trump is filling his cabinet with “Putinists and pedophiles.”
But House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., struck a different tone. Gaetz, he claimed, was an “accomplished attorney,” despite his thin legal resume, and “a reformer in his mind and heart.”
“I think he’ll bring a lot to the table,” the Louisiana Republican said.
But the Senate is where lawmakers’ opinion really matters. It is the upper chamber and its narrow Republican majority that will have to confirm Trump’s cabinet picks (although Trump is also urging his allies there to just let him name people to his cabinet via recess appointments). The reception Wednesday was chilly.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she was “shocked” by the nomination, saying it reaffirmed the need for the Senate to hold on to its constitutional duty of providing “advice and consent.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, charged that Gaetz is simply “not a serious candidate.” That’s two votes that area already iffy; Trump can hardly afford to lose two more.
But there were also immediate signs that Republicans may be willing to put aside their misgivings and give their president-elect a win. Last year, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., accused Gaetz of showing his fellow lawmakers videos of “girls he had slept with,” saying he “bragged about how he would crush ED medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night.”
On Wednesday? Mullin said he was open to voting for someone he had previously described as a shameless pervert.
“You know, Matt Gaetz and I, there’s no question that we’ve had our differences,” Mullin told CNN. However, “I completely trust President Trump’s decision-making on this one,” he continued, saying only that Gaetz would have to address any concerns during his confirmation hearings.
But would Republicans, who just saw their leader sweep every battleground state and narrowly win the popular vote, be willing to derail a second Trump presidency — and invite his rage — by actually denying him one of his most important cabinet picks? As Axios put it Thursday: “President-elect Trump is daring Senate Republicans to defy him.”
Those senators are likely to be familiar with how defying Trump worked out for Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who is now on his way to retirement. In 2024, skepticism that might have previously lasted a whole news cycle now evaporates the same day. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., for example, wasn’t sold on Gaetz as of Wednesday morning: “I’ll have to think about that one,” he told CNN. By Wednesday evening, on Fox News, Graham was rallying the troops: “To every Republican, give Matt a chance.”
Graham, who similarly criticized Trump before learning to love the MAGA movement, knows how important this pick is to his to party’s leader. And Trump picked Gaetz for a reason, as one advisor to the president-elect explained to The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo.
“None of the attorneys had what Trump wants, and they didn’t talk like Gaetz,” the adviser said of the competition for attorney general. “Everyone else looked at AG as if they were applying for a judicial appointment. They talked about their vaunted legal theories and constitutional bulls**t. Gaetz was the only one who said, ‘Yeah, I’ll go over there and start cuttin’ f***in’ heads.’”
It is possible that the Republican-led Senate holds confirmation hearings and decides, at the end, to defy their president and reject his pick to take on the “Deep State” and his many “enemies from within.” Perhaps Gaetz, now out of a job, will have to settle for a position that doesn’t require Senate confirmation — or a gig on Newsmax.
After nearly a decade of this, though, anyone who has bet good money on elected Republicans standing up to Trump has already gone broke.
