Cracks Among the Crackpots

Trump wants the worst people in his cabinet. That’s a problem not just for us, but for his top allies and advisors.

Images courtesy of The Boston Herald

The clown car is unloading its passengers, and what a circus it’s becoming.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse than Fox & Friends host and alleged sexual assaulter and extremist Christian nationalist Pete Hegseth heading the Defense Department, Trump has named

• Credibly accused pedophile Matt Gaetz for Attorney General,

• Russian propagandist Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence, and

• Anti-vax conspiracy nut job RFK, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Make no mistake. Trump, who is driving the clown car, is creating a spectacle and trolling us hard. His own party members, who ought to be used to him acting this way, are reportedly shocked by the appointments. It’s as if Trump is daring his own GOP Senate to oppose him and vote them down.

And it’s still an open question whether they will. Keep an eye on this, because if they fold here, they will fold on nearly anything, including preserving and protecting the ACA, Social Security and Medicare.

This is all really terrible, no question. But you know me. I’m always looking for signs that Trump and the GOP are overreaching and overplaying their hand. With an autocrat like Trump in charge, the story is often about how his underlings will maneuver, curry favor, and try to carve out as much for themselves as they can without offending Dear Leader. 

Today I want to talk about two developments coming out of these outrageous appointments: 1) early fissures within the Trump team and 2) major challenges to the GOP-controlled Congress.

Who really is steering the ship?

The U.S.S. Trump is an unwieldy vessel that is difficult if not impossible to guide safely back into harbor. Those who have tried in the past have seen themselves on the outs in short order, sometimes with a book deal as a consolation prize, sometimes with an indictment to go with it.

The current pitiful captain is Susie Wiles, who had the misfortune of also trying to keep Trump on message during the campaign. (She didn’t succeed at that, but they won anyway.) She built enough trust with Trump to be named Chief of Staff, and in that role she’s supposed to have enormous clout. No one should be able to get in to see the big guy without going through her. 

And yet. The Gaetz appointment apparently caught Wiles off guard. According to a report in Politico, Wiles wasn’t even consulted on the choice of Gaetz for Attorney General. His name, as of Monday, wasn’t even on the short list of candidates.

But Trump wasn’t happy with any of the choices presented to him. As one Trump adviser told The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo, “None of the attorneys had what Trump wants, and they didn’t talk like Gaetz.” He continued, “Everyone else looked at AG as if they were applying for a judicial appointment. They talked about their vaunted legal theories and constitutional bullshit. Gaetz was the only one who said, ‘yeah, I’ll go over there and start cuttin’ fuckin’ heads.’”

So if he wasn’t on the short list, how did he get picked? Apparently, it all went down Wednesday evening aboard Trump’s plane, while he was en route to Washington. Gaetz was on board. As one insider revealed,

BORIS EPSHTEYN played a central role in the development, lobbying Trump to choose Gaetz while incoming White House chief of staff SUSIE WILES was in a different, adjacent room on the plane, apparently unaware.

This should set off some red flags. You may recall, Boris Epshteyn is unidentified co-conspirator #6 in Jack Smith’s federal January 6 indictment, and he is among the 30 unindicted co-conspirators in the RICO criminal case in Georgia. He is also a co-defendant in the fake elector case in Arizona and considered one of the architects of the illegal scheme to steal the 2020 election. Having an ally like Gaetz as AG could mean significant pressure by the Justice Department upon state prosecutors.

But Epshteyn going around Wiles to get his guy in place at Justice is a move that is highly embarrassing for the new Chief of Staff. If this were a television series, the camera would linger on Wiles’s face for a while after she heard this news. She didn’t get where she is now by being humiliated and circumvented without consequence. We’ll have to see if she lives up to her last name when we see how she pushes back.

There was another moment where a key Trump aide wound up with egg on his face. After Trump began saying at rallies that he intended to let RFK, Jr. “go wild on health,” the head of Trump’s transition team, Howard Lutnick, went on CNN to try and deliver assurances.

Collins: “Vaccines don’t cause autism. Which is what RFK, Jr. pushes. Why is why people are concerned that he could get a job at HHS.

Lutnick: “He’s not getting a job for HHS!”

Collins: “You’re saying, he will not be in charge of HHS.”

Lutnick: “No, of course not.”

Either Lutnick knew and was lying, meaning he should never be interviewed or believed again, or he was unaware that Trump was going to pick RFK, Jr. or somehow believed he could stop that from happening.

Whatever the answer is, Lutnick is now really “chair” of nothing, in that the transition will happen with the people Trump wants, irrespective of what Lutnick thinks, says or promises. 

That leaves a big power vacuum, because if Lutnick and Wiles are no longer trusted gatekeepers despite their titles, who is it that has Trump’s ear and confidence? We know from before that this is something of a revolving door. We also know that as people who have Trump’s ear change, so too do the fortunes of those they helped put in place.

The reverse is also true. If people like Gaetz start becoming a serious political liability for Trump, then those such as Ephsteyn who pushed hard for him to be there will suffer the consequences of having damaged Trump through their counsel. 

That’s why it matters a great deal right now to direct as much energy to shooting down these appointments, or if they squeak past, to keep the inquiries, investigations and press pressure going. Trump hates bad headlines and the people who cause them for him. And with his top advisors already being undermined by others in Trump’s inner circle, the posturing, backstabbing and blame games are only getting started. 

Chaos in Congress

Trump isn’t even president yet, and already his choices are putting his own party’s congressional leaders in a serious bind.

With the naming (and quick resignation!) of Matt Gaetz, Trump has reduced the House GOP conference by yet another member. If you’re watching the House race scoreboard, you know that the GOP currently has 218 seats to the Democrats’ 209, with eight seats still up for grabs. Democrats currently lead in four of those races and are expected to take the lead in a fifth (Derek Tran’s race to unseat Trump ally Michelle Steele in CA-45—thanks to all here who donated to that key race!).

There is easily a world where we wind up with a 220 to 214 split, with Gaetz already gone. That’s already the narrowest majority ever in the House, and it was the undoing of the GOP when it tried to pass just about anything before. It gives any three House GOP members incredible power.

But Trump’s poaching of House GOP members to fill his cabinet is exacerbating this already difficult problem. It looks like he may peel away five House members for positions in his administration, leaving those seats vacant until special elections can be held. Johnson had better hope he gets reelected as Speaker before those resignations happen. 

The Senate has not been spared Trump’s chaos. With these outrageous appointments, Trump has now guaranteed that every GOP senator will spend the next few weeks being asked whether they support a credible accused pedophile, someone who has been under investigation by the Justice Department, as Attorney General.

It’s one thing to claim they support Trump, a convicted felon, because the Democrats waged lawfare on their candidate and the verdict was somehow unjust. It’s another to protect someone whom most of them revile, about whom there is a written House ethics report, generated by a GOP-controlled Congress and committee, credibly accusing him of sleeping with a 17-year old.

Add to this Trump’s other wackadoodle appointments, and it’s clear that Trump has hung an albatross on the neck of incoming Majority Leader John Thune. Thune has a Hobbesian choice: Either defend the indefensible (a pedophile in charge of Justice, a Russian asset in charge of intelligence, and a conspiracy kook in charge of health) or defy the leader of his party and risk beginning his tenure with a flood of death threats from MAGA extremists.

The former is the easier path, but it would cement Thune as nothing but a Trump lackey, having power only in name but not reality. Thune hasn’t worked for decades to get where he is only to have no real say.

The latter would require a complex response that musters enough GOP opposition, at least to Gaetz and perhaps the other two, that there are too many moles for Trump and his MAGA goons to whack. Mustering a minimum of 10 to 15 votes against Gaetz is a lot stronger and safer of a position, one that ultimately still leaves Thune as a gatekeeper to power. My guess is that Thune is very interested in finding a way to make that happen somehow, without destroying his relationship with Trump.

Thune will soon find out, as will Elon Musk, that Trump doesn’t like anyone else to hold any cards or win any tricks against him. They ought to know this by now, but their own pride and hubris has them still thinking they can guide, counsel or even oppose Trump without getting burned from being too close.

Good luck in your senior year, guys.