Congratulations on Your Fiasco

By Noah Rothman

Friday, January 17, 2025

 

Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence nominee, Tulsi Gabbard, may not have Mitch McConnell’s vote, Axios reported on Thursday. And if the former Senate majority leader withholds his support, McConnell may provide the Senate GOP conference’s quieter members, who value the maintenance of the U.S.-led order abroad over even their standing with Trump and the MAGA movement, cover to do the same.

 

That’s the upshot of the piece. But it concludes with a question mark about the extent to which the Senate Democrats, who are beholden to a progressive interpretation of geopolitics, might break with their party’s leadership to back their former Democratic colleague. For his part, Chuck Schumer thinks he can keep his caucus in line. Of all Trump’s nominees, the report concluded, “They see Gabbard” as the candidate they are most likely to derail.

 

But do Democrats have a strategy? If Axios has accurately described Schumer’s thinking, probably not. “Minority Leader Chuck Schumer views the party’s grilling of Hegseth as a success,” the dispatch read. “He’ll demand the same for their treatment of Gabbard, HHS nominee RFK Jr., and FBI director nominee Kash Patel.”

 

If that’s the plan, Gabbard can start measuring the drapes at ODNI today. Maybe he’s just saving face, but Schumer has no right to the view that his party’s grilling of Pete Hegseth was anything like a success. Spectators to that exhibition were treated to an overwrought display of maximum pique from Democrats, whose theatrical hostility to Hegseth and deliberately hyperbolic misinterpretation of his views made Trump’s defense secretary-designate look sober, rational, and unperturbable by contrast.

 

It was a textbook backfire. As Rich observed of Democratic garment-rending during this confirmation hearing, “They were often shrill and visibly frustrated, surely creating more sympathy for Hegseth among any Republicans not already with him.” And given the partisan makeup of the Senate chamber, that’s all that matters. Hegseth’s confirmation was likely but not assured before the hearing. It was all but a done deal afterward.

 

So, we must ask ourselves how Schumer is measuring “success.” We can’t say he defines it as making irrefutable arguments about Hegseth’s lack of fitness for the role to which he was nominated — Democrats didn’t effectively make that case. If they’re not going to scuttle the nomination, then Schumer must measure “success” in the number of gushing media reports over the Democratic Party’s scene-chewing histrionics and the small-dollar donations that coverage unlocks.

 

As successes go, this one is little more than a consolation prize. But the Democratic Party has encountered nothing but setbacks and losses since November 5, so maybe they have to make the most of what they’ve got.