For those who take a step again – make that a number of steps again – it’s simpler to grasp what Donald Trump is doing.
Why would he intentionally ignite a media firestorm over such controversial nominees as Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth, and to a lesser diploma with Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr.?
The quick reply is that the president-elect can’t run once more and needs these nominees to disrupt – and even blow up – the departments they’d be in command of operating. And in the event that they don’t have the same old credentials, in the event that they’ve by no means run a big group, he doesn’t give a rattling.
However wouldn’t it higher serve his functions to appoint equally disruptive Cupboard members who don’t have the luggage of a Matt Gaetz? However would they’ve the unquestioned loyalty?
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President-elect Trump is standing by his nominations of Pete Hegseth and Matt Gaetz to top-ranking Cupboard positions. (Roy Rochlin/Getty Photographs | Aaron Schwartz/NurPhoto through Getty Photographs)
Even skeptical members of his internal circle haven’t any selection however to let Trump be Trump.
If Gaetz had been to change into legal professional normal, as an example, he might fireplace FBI chief Chris Wray relatively than Trump having to be the dangerous man.
The considering in Trump World is that the Senate gained’t have the ability to reject greater than two of his nominees. So even when Gaetz, who doesn’t seem to have the votes, is rejected, and maybe Hegseth as properly, everybody else will get via, together with Kennedy and Gabbard.
And wouldn’t or not it’s laborious for the Republican Senate, within the wake of such rejections, to be basically obligated to approve the substitute nominees, given the magnitude of Trump’s victory? Is that this four-dimensional chess?
White Home chief of employees Susie Wiles was on the airplane, with Gaetz, when Trump supplied the now-former congressman the AG’s job. Whether or not Wiles, who ran a tightly organized marketing campaign, knew about it or not, she had no energy to cease it.
Privately, some Trump advisers are against essentially the most radioactive picks, however additionally they know that the boss will get what he desires.
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The incoming Senate majority chief, John Thune, who’s not a Trump fan and was opposed by Trump, is deemed not prone to go together with recess appointments, which might be surrendering the chamber’s constitutional function of advise and consent.
New reporting has difficult issues for Gaetz and Hegseth, the adorned Military fight veteran and former Fox weekend host tapped to run the Pentagon.
The Washington Submit scoop about Hegseth’s lawyer saying he paid off a feminine accuser who says he raped her in 2017, as a part of a non-disclosure settlement, would sink a nominee below some other president. Hegseth, visibly intoxicated, says the encounter in his lodge room was consensual; the 30-year-old girl was on the conservative convention together with her husband and young children.
Speaker Johnson has pushed again in opposition to stress to launch the Ethics Committee’s report on Gaetz. (Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg through Getty Photographs)
Within the case of Gaetz, Home Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t need the ethics committee report launched, because the man has resigned his seat. Does anybody doubt that if this was a Democrat, he would take the other stance and denounce the nominee as a pervert?
In any occasion, a lawyer for a number of ladies making accusations of sexual misconduct informed ABC that two of his purchasers say Gaetz paid them for intercourse. And he plans extra interviews.
Lawyer Joel Leppard stated that of their Home ethics testimony, staffers “essentially put the Venmo payments on the screen and asked about them. And my clients repeatedly testified, ‘What was this payment for?’ ‘That was for sex.’” .
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Leppard had beforehand stated that one in every of his purchasers had additionally watched Gaetz have intercourse with a minor.
John Clune, one other lawyer for a girl who contends that Gaetz had intercourse with a minor then in highschool, referred to as the Gaetz nomination “a perverse development in a truly dark series of events.”
And as CNN famous, one of many underage ladies says she had intercourse with Gaetz on an air hockey desk, in line with her testimony.
Reporting on Gaetz’s alleged previous has considerably difficult what was already a longshot nomination for legal professional normal. (Photograph by Kent Nishimura/Getty Photographs)
One factor is definite: Trump continues to assist each nominees. He isn’t going to again down.
By the best way, if Kamala Harris had gained the election, I’d be scrutinizing her nominees the identical manner. Plenty of pro-Trumpers on-line accused me of Trump Derangement Syndrome for overlaying essentially the most controversial nominees, which is hilarious as a result of the president-elect granted me two interviews in 10 months, one simply a few weeks earlier than the election, and informed me that each had been truthful.
In the meantime, Trump’s determination to fulfill with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who’ve relentlessly bashed him for the final seven years, was an excellent transfer. Each made the request, and Trump was magnanimous sufficient to grant them an viewers at Mar-a-Lago – actually a shocking growth.
As they defined yesterday on “Morning Joe:”
“We talked about a lot of issues, including abortion, mass deportation, threats of political retribution against political opponents and media outlets. We talked about that a good bit,” Scarborough stated.
“It will come as no surprise to anybody who watches this show, has watched it over the past year or over the past decade, that we didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues and we told him so.”
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What they did agree on, Brzezinski stated, “was to restart communications.”
She famous that her father, the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, “often spoke with world leaders with whom he and the United States profoundly disagreed. That is a task shared by reporters and commentators alike. We had not spoken to Trump since March of 2020, other than a personal call that Joe made after the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania.”
Trump was “cheerful and upbeat” and “seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues.”
“Morning Joe” co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough enraged liberals on social media after assembly with President-elect Donald Trump. (Getty Photographs)
As for the anticipated liberal backlash for assembly with a person they’d described as a fascist, Mika turned it round: “Why wouldn’t we?”
Trump later informed Fox’s Brooke Singman: “Many issues had been mentioned, and I very a lot appreciated the truth that they needed to have open communication. In some ways, it’s too dangerous that it wasn’t performed way back…
“In order to Make America Great Again, it is very important, if not vital, to have a free, fair and open media or press.”
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Trump additionally stated of his assembly with the husband-and-wife MSNBC hosts that they “congratulated me on running a ‘great and flawless campaign, one for the history books,’ which I really believe it was, but it was also a campaign where I worked long and hard — perhaps longer and harder than any presidential candidate in history.”
“We talked about various Cabinet members — both announced and to be announced. As expected, they like some very much, but not all. The meeting ended in a very positive manner, and we agreed to speak in the future.” And right here’s the olive department: “I expect this will take place with others in the media, even those that have been extremely hostile.”
Trump stated he has “an obligation to the American public, and to our country itself, to be open and available to the press.”
“If not treated fairly, however, that will end.”
President-elect Trump was fast to pigeon-hole the media right into a carrot-and-stick scenario – deal with him pretty this go-round, in any other case, his openness to press inquiries might meet a swift finish. (Jovanny Hernandez/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK through Imagn Photographs)
So there you could have it, a carrot and a stick.
The denunciations got here quick and livid.
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“Byron York – Annals of shamelessness: They call Trump a fascist, and much, much more, and then, just 22 days after his ‘Nazi-like’ rally, they fly to Florida for an audience. Afterward, they say, ‘We didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues,’ but they want to ‘restart communications.’ What?”
Steve Cortes – “It’s difficult to overstate how dishonest these two are. Mika & Joe scream for months that Trump is a ‘fascist’ who would ‘end democracy.’ Now that he’s elected — and very popular — they visit him like it’s just coffee with an opposing party politician???”
I couldn’t disagree extra. The assembly, which might not be unrelated to scores, means they may have some entry to their onetime pal and, they are saying, criticize him after they assume he’s incorrect.
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Who desires to listen to one other 4 years of Trump-bashing, which didn’t work? This manner they will report what the following president says after which take a stance. And with Trump vowing to succeed in out to different hostile retailers, I hope the truce lasts.
Footnote: Trump has named former Congressman Sean Duffy, a co-host of “Bottom Line” on FOX Enterprise, as Transportation secretary.
