The relative calm in Trumpworld since the withdrawal last week of Matt Gaetz — the former Florida congressman initially tapped to be attorney-general — has given America-watchers the chance to ask broader questions about a second Trump administration. Questions like “Just how practical are the policies being promised?” and “Wait, how many of his cabinet choices have been accused of sexual misconduct?”
The accused
Firstly, Gaetz. Emblematic of Trump’s longstanding policy of saddling departments with leaders who hate them the most, the controversial Florida rep was to head the very same Department of Justice which had been investigating him for sex trafficking involving a 17-year-old girl. Gaetz was also being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for those same alleged crimes, plus illicit drug use and sharing photos and videos of his sexual partners with colleagues on the House floor. Gaetz’s withdrawal in the face of consternation from even Senate Republicans appears to be the first failure in Trump’s testing of how compliant the Senate would be regarding his outlandish choices.
Speaking of outlandish choices, consider Trump’s selections for Defence and Health: Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Fox News host Hegseth paid hush money to a woman who accused him of rape (he contends the encounter was consensual). Meanwhile RFK’s former nanny Eliza Cooney has accused him of groping her in the late 1990s when she worked for the family. He has apologised but insists he has no memory of the incident.
Hegseth, Kennedy and Gaetz have not faced criminal charges on these matters, and all have denied wrongdoing.
None of this is to mention Trump himself, who has been heard on tape boasting about grabbing women “by the pussy” and has been found by a civil jury to be guilty of rape. Neither impacted his electoral prospects.
Then there’s Elon Musk, selected to co-head a new “department of government efficiency”, who was sued over the sexual politics of the workplace at SpaceX, for allegedly “treating women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size” and “bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter.” Musk has previously denied claims he sexually harassed a flight attendant who SpaceX paid US$250,000 in a severance settlement, and has declined to comment on reports he had sexual relationships with several of his employees, including interns and direct reports.
Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick for education secretary, was accused in an October lawsuit of knowing about and failing to prevent the sexual abuse of teenage World Wrestling Entertainment workers during her time as, yes, CEO of the WWE.
The loyalists
Trump’s new pick for attorney-general, Pam Bondi, betters her predecessor in at least one way; she has experience as an A-G, having served in that role for Florida between 2011 to 2019. This, though, seems incidental to her true talent: unwavering loyalty to Trump. She endorsed Trump in the 2016 Republican primary, called his first impeachment in 2019 a “sham”, repeated on TV the lie that he had been the victim of electoral fraud in 2020, and, in response to the fourth round of criminal charges brought against Trump, promised that the “prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones”.
On the other side of things, she solicited and received a $25,000 donation from Trump during her 2013 reelection campaign. At the time Bondi was deciding whether Florida would join a lawsuit filed by then New York attorney-general Eric Schneiderman alleging Trump University, a real estate seminar run for profit, was “engaging in persistent fraudulent, illegal and deceptive conduct”. Following the donation, Florida did not join the lawsuit. In 2018, Trump settled the suit for $25 million.
That said, Trump also donated to Kamala Harris while she was attorney-general of California, and after reviewing the matter, her office also did not pursue the Trump University case. So if Bondi falls through, perhaps Harris could jump in?
Over the weekend Trump also picked Brooke Rollins as his agriculture secretary. Rollins is a veteran conservative operator and, as ever most important, a veteran Trump loyalists. In 2018, she was hired as assistant to the president in the Office of American Innovation, making her one of the very few members of the first administration to still be on good terms with the former and future president.
The transition
Meanwhile the transition continues to rumble along. The Washington Post has a detailed rundown of what it says is a bad-tempered, cliquey and “freewheeling” process:
His team has returned to the patterns of his first term in office — with shouting matches, expulsions from meetings and name-calling, all between the public celebrations and rocket-ship photo ops. As during Trump’s first term, competing factions have begun to run roughshod over each other, sometimes kicking up clouds of dust.
Of particular focus is the relationship between Trump and Musk. Quite apart from the near certainty that the “radical reform” and US$2 trillion in savings promised by Musk and his co-head of the proposed “department of government efficiency” are completely unachievable, or the ethics of tweeting about government employees already in his sights, there are questions around whether the world’s richest man has the stomach for four years of governing. “In private meetings at Mar-a-Lago, Musk shows little familiarity with policy or the potential staff members being discussed,” reports Theodore Schleifer. Meanwhile there are reports Musk has already started to outstay his welcome with many figures close to the president.
Have something to say about this article? Write to us at letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
