By Jeffrey Blehar
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
And the cabinet announcements were going so well up
until now.
I will admit that up until about 20 minutes before I
began writing this, I’d been quite pleased about the appointments Trump has
been announcing for his new cabinet: Representative Mike Waltz as national
security adviser, former Trump director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe
at the CIA, Elise Stefanik representing America (and putting antisemites in
their place) at the United Nations, Lee Zeldin to the EPA, and particularly
Marco Rubio as secretary of state — you could be hard-core MAGA, a Trump skeptic,
or even a center-left Democrat and rate every single pick as anywhere from
“perfectly cromulent” to “great.” (I particularly look forward to Rubio finally
returning seriousness to U.S. foreign policy in the western hemisphere. Sorry
Maduro, it’s about to become a really rough four years to be a dictator.)
Some have rolled their eyes at the idea of Pete Hegseth
running the vast bureaucracy of the Pentagon — and the generals will indeed
immediately try to undermine his authority like piranhas furiously
skeletonizing a cow — but I tend to agree with Charlie Cooke’s assessment of Hegseth
and think that a man closer to the enlisted ranks than the pompously entrenched
brass is the viewpoint that the Department of Defense needs. I was even willing
to accept Trump naming Democrat-turned-Republican Tulsi Gabbard as director of
national intelligence, because (1) war skeptics authentically deserve a voice
at the table (sorry, Liz) and Gabbard will not automatically melt into the
Beltway “Blob” of consensus; (2) the ODNI ought to be abolished wholesale
anyway as the post-9/11 monstrosity it’s always been. (The real question is
whether you feel comfortable with someone who held secret meetings with Assad
now holding the highest-level security clearances in the nation.)
But today our luck finally ran out. If you thought Donald
Trump was going to make a sane pick for attorney general, then treat
yourself to a round of sausage: He has announced that he intends to
nominate none other than Matt Gaetz, the odious Florida congressman, to the
position. Not some minor post (where his absence from the House would at least
be welcome addition by subtraction), but one of the three most important
positions in the entire administration.
It remains to be seen whether this is all an imposture —
as often as people joke about the idea of “Trump playing 4-D chess” (when in
fact he pretty much never does), there is a chance that Gaetz’s nomination is
designed to fail in the Senate, either to lay the groundwork for a more
acceptable (but still fiercely Trump-loyalist) candidate later or to cast the
Senate as the designated Establishment scapegoats for subsequent Trump
legislative failures.
But it will be almost impossible to confirm Gaetz, as
well it ought to be. Leave aside the fact that Matt Gaetz only ever “practiced”
law for 24 months at a small-time law firm in northwest
Florida. (He was given the job as a favor to his father, Don Gaetz, a member of
the Florida senate.) Leave aside the fact that Gaetz is most famous as the man
who plunged the House of Representatives into weeks of chaos last year by
toppling Speaker Kevin McCarthy in a revolt that accomplished exactly nothing
except time-wasting. Leave aside, even, the transparent reality that Gaetz is
not being nominated to serve as anything but a lickspittle toady and hatchet
man to yield to Trump’s most unmediated instincts.
No, the most obvious reason that Matt Gaetz should not,
and cannot, become attorney general of the United States is that he is quite
likely a statutory rapist. And a proudly boastful one at that. This is not an exaggeration. Gaetz was notoriously caught bragging
about his dating and having sex with girls to other
Republican congressmen back in 2021 — and then showing photos of them to others on
the House floor. The feds actually formally investigated him — they
declined to bring charges — but he was under a House ethics investigation for
the acts (both morally appalling and illegal), which is the real reason
he toppled Kevin McCarthy from his perch. McCarthy himself has been more
than happy since his ouster to discuss the matter freely, for example here on CNN
in an interview during the Republican National
Convention:
A lot of people have concerns
about him. And I’m not sure if he’s on something, but I do hope he gets the
help that he needs. But more importantly, I hope the young women get the
justice they deserve when it comes to him.
I usually like to end my pieces with some kind of joke,
or rhetorical flourish. (Such as: “Matt Gaetz’s first big initiative upon
becoming attorney general will be to retroactively lower the nationwide age of
consent to 16.”) But I don’t feel like it tonight. Gaetz is so utterly unworthy
of being attorney general, so transparently farcical as a serious pick, that
his selection at all is indefensible. If he is confirmed, Senate Republicans
have lost their spine and their credibility. If Trump thinks he can provoke
a constitutional crisis by forcibly adjourning the
Senate against its will, he will both forever alienate his own party and be
unanimously crushed by the Supreme Court. I cannot quite say with certainty
that Gaetz will never serve as attorney general. What I can say with certainty
is that he should never set foot inside the Department of Justice unless it’s
for questioning by law enforcement. He should take care to bring an actual
lawyer with him, if so.
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