Made Man

By Nick Catoggio

Thursday, June 04, 2026

 

The essential thing to understand about the president’s decision to nominate Todd Blanche as attorney general is that it’s unnecessary.

 

In some cases, like Bill Pulte’s recent promotion to acting director of national intelligence, the law limits how long an acting leader can serve in a vacant position. Well, sort of: A White House that’s willing to game the rules (ahem) could legally keep Pulte in place for a loooooong time.

 

But if Donald Trump wants him in that role all the way to the end of his term—he says that he doesn’t, but you know him—he’ll need the Senate to give Pulte a thumbs-up at some point.

 

Not so with Blanche. Unlike Pulte, he’s already the duly confirmed deputy director of the department that he now leads in an acting capacity. As long as the position of attorney general remains vacant, he can continue to serve as acting AG indefinitely.

 

There’s recent precedent for it, in fact.

 

The Senate confirmed Julie Su as deputy secretary of the Labor Department in 2021. She became acting secretary two years later when the top job went vacant, at which point Joe Biden nominated her for the position. But Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema opposed her, denying her the votes she’d need for confirmation.

 

Biden and Chuck Schumer responded by doing … nothing. The then-president refused to yank the nomination, and the then-majority leader of the Senate declined to bring Su up for a vote, preserving the vacancy atop the department. Su ended up staying on as acting labor secretary for 22 months, until the day Biden left office.

 

In other words, the Democratic Senate forfeited its “advice and consent” power under Article II to please the White House. It used the fact that it had already exercised that power with respect to Su’s nomination for the deputy position as an excuse not to exercise it in more difficult political circumstances, when she was nominated for the big chair.

 

It was a profile in cowardice, a congressional specialty. Trump is now borrowing that playbook with respect to Blanche.

 

It’s possible that Senate Majority Leader John Thune will follow Schumer’s lead by not bringing up Blanche for a vote, ensuring that he continues to lead the Justice Department in an acting role. But I can imagine scenarios in which the nomination comes to the floor and is defeated, if not by the current Republican-controlled Senate, then certainly by a Democratic-controlled one next year.

 

And if that happens, unless I’m mistaken, Todd Blanche will continue to lead the Justice Department anyway. The fact that the Senate will have deemed him unfit to be attorney general won’t affect his ability to go on serving in the role in an acting capacity. All Trump would need to do to make Blanche untouchable is keep the AG job vacant.

 

The Senate’s power of “advice and consent” over the most important position in federal law enforcement would be functionally nullified.

 

All of which is to say that nominating Todd Blanche for attorney general seems oddly pointless. Trump doesn’t have to do it to keep him in the job indefinitely, and given his stated preference for having “acting” officials in key spots, it’s surprising that he would bother at all. Doing so achieves nothing except to make life harder for Senate Republicans.

 

And maybe that’s the point.

 

An unfit nominee.

 

I won’t waste (much) time explaining why the Senate should reject Blanche. A man who’s committed at least one and arguably two impeachable offenses in as many months on the job should not be confirmed for that job, let us hopefully agree.

 

We can argue over whether the preposterous “seashells” prosecution of James Comey is a high crime or misdemeanor. Incompetence isn’t impeachable, so the fact that the indictment in that matter is the flimsiest anyone has ever seen isn’t necessarily cause for removal.

 

What is impeachable is gross corruption, which is what Blanche demonstrated by pursuing charges against the former FBI director. He wanted to impress Trump by showing how willing he was to abuse state power to harass the president’s enemies, even—or especially—in a case like Comey’s that hasn’t a prayer of surviving under the First Amendment. It appears to have worked.

 

Impeachable or not, any senator would be justified in concluding that America can do better than let the DOJ be led by a guy capable of pinching off legal dookie like the Comey indictment.

 

The gravity of Blanche’s offense in midwifing the taxpayer slush fund for MAGA sociopaths is less debatable. It’s a straight-up heist from the U.S. Treasury carried out on the White House’s behalf by the head of federal law enforcement, reducing the role of attorney general to criminal “fixer.” The fact that Blanche used to be the president’s defense lawyer, and therefore has a conflict of interest with all things Trump that he continually ignores, is icing on the cake.

 

Even yesterday, after lawmakers browbeat him during testimony into saying that the slush fund won’t move forward, Blanche refused to put anything in writing that would formally rescind it. (I wonder why.) And he confirmed that the addendum to the fund plan that grants the president and his family absolution from any prior tax offenses they’ve committed will remain in place.

 

That giveaway is worth potentially $100 million to Trump. It “resembles a self-pardon, except that it extends even further, encompassing civil violations as well as criminal offenses,” Reason’s Jacob Sullum noted. If helping your crooked boss fleece the IRS to prove what an eager lackey you are isn’t impeachable, what is?

 

Todd Blanche is a Schmitt-ian nightmare, a conniving postliberal henchman who wields his power as chief prosecutor to help “us” and punish “them.” He’s a disgrace to his office and to his profession. And Senate Republicans know it: Remarkably, several are calling for legislative action to kill the slush fund despite Blanche’s assurances that it’s already dead. They don’t trust him to keep his promises to do the right thing unless he’s legally obliged, and why should they?

 

In short, if Republicans are looking for reasons to defeat his nomination, they don’t want for them. Are they looking to defeat it, though?

 

Could be!

 

Defiance.

 

It’s strange to think of Thune and his conference wanting to vote on this matter when they could just follow the Julie Su precedent and ignore it.

 

But there are a lot of Republicans in the chamber who are fed up with the president, Thune included, and who might enjoy an opportunity to stick it to him. The slush fund, the ballroom, the aimless Iran war and its impact on gas prices, and of course the presidential jihad against well-liked incumbents like Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn: Trump palpably could not give less of a rip how miserable his petty lusts and grudges are making life for Senate Republicans.

 

Now he’s saddled them with two indefensible promotions in the figures of Pulte and Blanche. (“We don’t need a weaponized DNI, we need professionals there,” Thune said tersely of the former’s appointment.) Perhaps the majority party in Congress is finally ready to make life—a little—miserable for Trump in return, especially as his job approval sinks beneath the waves.

 

It happened yesterday in the House, in fact, when four Republicans joined Democrats to pass a resolution that would block the president from ordering more strikes in Iran. It could happen again if the Senate Judiciary Committee takes up Blanche’s nomination. That committee happens to include Cornyn, who has an obvious axe to grind with Trump, and the retiring Thom Tillis, who’s bucked the president before on nominations and is no fan of Blanche’s. If they join Democrats in opposing the nominee, he would fail in committee.

 

And if they don’t, it’s conceivable that Cassidy, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins would cross the aisle to reject the nomination on the floor. Collins in particular might have reason to do so, as she’ll face her home state’s Democratic-leaning electorate at the polls in five months. Then again, she might not: Inflicting a humiliating defeat on the president and his nominee in the thick of the campaign could alienate Republicans in Maine.

 

It’s a no-win conundrum for the entire conference, really. If Blanche is confirmed, they’re on the hook for all of the corruption yet to come under his leadership, potentially a considerable electoral burden this fall. If they reject him or refuse to vote on him, they risk infuriating right-wing voters by demonstrating their “disloyalty” to the president. Why would Trump put them in that position?

 

To punish them, of course. He’s daring them to keep their recent mini-rebellion going by opposing Blanche, knowing that Blanche will remain on the job no matter what they do.

 

Any other president would spare his party a needless dilemma in an electoral climate as inhospitable as this one, but this president relishes “retribution” above all things—and doubling down on Blanche is retribution of a sort. The Senate blocked his ballroom money and then blocked his slush fund to prove that there’s a limit to how much corruption they’re willing to indulge. Answering that by nominating an unethical hack to be attorney general is his way of showing them that he’s unchastened by their resistance, still fully intent on using government to serve his personal interests.

 

The reason Schumer never put Julie Su up for a vote, I assume, is that he and Biden believed it would be untenable politically for her to remain as acting Labor secretary if her nomination were rejected. Lacking the Senate’s confidence, either she would feel obliged to resign or the White House would feel obliged to replace her. Trump and Blanche will feel no such dignified compunction.

 

If anything, the president might savor the prospect of keeping Blanche on after his nomination has been formally defeated. Doing so would extend an autocratic middle finger to Thune and the gang by demonstrating the futility of their “disloyalty.” What greater humiliation could there be for their “advice and consent” role than to have a rejected nominee continue serving in the job anyway?

 

Spite has always influenced Trump’s behavior as heavily as strategy has, but never more so than now that he’s reached his YOLO phase.

 

Incentives.

 

If you’re desperate for a strategic explanation for what’s happening, though, I’ll give you a few possibilities.

 

One is that the White House is trying to get Blanche confirmed before control of the Senate changes hands, in case a blue wave arrives in November. Having a Democratic Senate take up and defeat his nomination could trigger a legal battle over whether he’s lawfully permitted to remain as acting attorney general afterward. I think he is, but the opinion of The Dispatch’s worst lawyer doesn’t count for much.

 

In any case, better safe than sorry. Confirming Blanche now would remove any potential legal cloud over his eligibility. And if Republicans prove reluctant to do so, Trump could always motivate them by threatening to make Pulte acting AG if Blanche is defeated, as federal law entitles him to do.

 

Speaking of which, it’s possible that Trump nominated Pulte for the DNI position as a sort of sacrificial lamb, to soften up the Senate GOP with respect to confirming Blanche.

 

He did something similar by nominating Matt Gaetz to be attorney general shortly after the 2024 election, you may recall. Senate Republicans were so mortified by the pick that Trump’s many other execrable Cabinet selections seemed to become less mortifying by comparison. He eventually threw them a bone by withdrawing Gaetz—whereupon they turned around and rubber-stamped everyone from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Pete Hegseth to Kash Patel.

 

Maybe that’s the play with Pulte and Blanche too: “Confirm my embarrassingly unethical and unfit attorney general and I’ll throw you a bone by withdrawing my even more embarrassingly unethical and unfit national intelligence pick.” Another big “win” for Senate Republicans.

 

I do think there’s a strategic angle to Blanche’s nomination, but it’s much simpler than either of the convoluted theories above. It’s this: As usual, the president is seeking to incentivize corrupt behavior on his behalf by ostentatiously rewarding someone who’s already engaged in it.

 

That was also the point of pardoning the January 6 defendants and later creating a slush fund to enrich them. Postliberalism is a game of sticks and carrots, where you get the stick for posting a photo of seashells spelling out “86 47” and a carrot for trying to imprison the guy who posted it. The aim is the same in both cases: to communicate to the world at large that you’re far better off being a “friend” to the person who wields the carrots and sticks than an “enemy.”

 

Nominating Todd Blanche for a job he already has and will continue to have no matter how his nomination fares only makes sense when viewed as one of those carrots. By bestowing a showy honor on Blanche for committing impeachable offenses to serve him, Trump is signaling to other degenerates that they too will be honored and elevated if they choose him over the law.

 

If you know anything about the mafia, you’re familiar with the concept of a “made man.” The distinction is bestowed by the leadership on high-achieving thugs, granting them special privileges in the organization. In return for their absolute loyalty, they enjoy exalted rank and near-absolute immunity from being targeted for death by other mafiosos. Being “made” means you’ve earned the trust of the family by behaving ruthlessly on its behalf and are officially worthy of joining it.

 

That’s what Trump is doing with Blanche’s nomination. It won’t change a thing about how the DOJ operates, regardless of whether the Senate approves or rejects it. But that’s not the point. The point is to bestow an honor on a high-achieving thug, to incentivize other thugs—inside and outside the government—to emulate his ruthlessness in service to the family. As of yesterday, Blanche is a made man.

 

Elect a mafioso president, and your government will be run like the mafia. Congratulations to the nominee on an honor well-earned.