Trump And Biden Have Something In Common: Both Are Lame Ducks

Only One Has The Cajones To Give George Santos A Cabinet Position

Because he’s ineligible for a third term, Trump starts his presidency as a lame duck right from the start. On the one hand, he can go all-in on his policies and legacy goals without worrying about another campaign. On the other, it means others in his party might already start positioning themselves for the post-Trump era, which could make things a bit more unpredictable within the GOP. His lack of future candidacy will probably limit his influence over members of Congress, particularly those more concerned with their own re-election or with new GOP leadership poised to steer the party beyond his tenure. We’re about to see that play out in the bizarre nominations he’s started making for his administration, especially indefensible picks like Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard.

We took a quick look at the Gaetz nomination last night. I doubt anyone who isn’t a kamaʻāina has spent as much time dissecting Gabbard as we have, including a 2019 meeting she requested. But it’s worth reading Tom Nichols’ brief essay of her from Wednesday, Tulsi Gabbard’s Nomination Is a National-Security Risk— The Senate Can Stop Her. Noting that she’s “stunningly unqualified for almost any Cabinet post.’ She’s especially unqualified to be Director of National Intelligence. “But leave aside for the moment that she is manifestly unprepared to run any kind of agency,” wrote Nichols. “Americans usually accept that presidents reward loyalists with jobs, and Trump has the right to stash Gabbard at some make-work office in the bureaucracy if he feels he owes her. It’s not a pretty tradition, but it’s not unprecedented, either. To make Tulsi Gabbard the DNI, however, is not merely handing a bouquet to a political gadfly. Her appointment would be a threat to the security of the United States… She’s been an apologist for both the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. [Let’s not forget Modi.] Her politics, which are otherwise incoherent, tend to be sympathetic to these two strongmen, painting America as the problem and the dictators as misunderstood.”

Gabbard’s shilling for Assad is a mystery, but she’s even more dedicated to carrying Putin’s water. Tom Rogan, a conservative writer and hardly a liberal handwringer, summed up her record succinctly in the Washington Examiner today:

She has blamed NATO and the U.S. for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (again, to the celebration of both Russian and Chinese state media), has repeated Russian propaganda claims that the U.S. has set up secret bioweapons labs in that country, and has argued that the U.S. not Russia is wholly responsible for Putin’s nuclear brinkmanship.

When she appeared on Sean Hannity’s show in 2022, even Hannity blanched at Gabbard floating off in a haze of Kremlin talking points and cheerleading for Russia. When Hannity is trying to shepherd you back toward the air lock before your oxygen runs out, you’ve gone pretty far out there.

A person with Gabbard’s views should not be allowed anywhere near the crown jewels of American intelligence. I have no idea why Trump nominated Gabbard; she’s been a supporter, but she hasn’t been central to his campaign, and he owes her very little. For someone as grubbily transactional as Trump, it’s not an appointment that makes much sense. It’s possible that Trump hates the intelligence community— which he blames for many of his first-term troubles— so much that Gabbard is his revenge. Or maybe he just likes the way she handles herself on television.

But Trump could also be engaging in a ploy to bring in someone else. He may suspect that Gabbard is unconfirmable by the Senate. Once she’s turfed, he could then slide in an even more appalling nominee and claim that he has no choice but to use a recess appointment as a backstop. (Hard to imagine who might be worse as DNI than Gabbard, but remember that Trump has promised at various times to bring retired General Mike Flynnback into government. Flynn is a decorated veteran who was fired from Trump’s White House in a scandal about lying to the FBI; he is now a conspiracist who is fully on board with Trump’s desire for revenge on his enemies.

Gabbard has every right to her personal views, however inscrutable they may be. As a private citizen, she can apologize for Assad and Putin to her heart’s content. But as a security risk, Gabbard is a walking Christmas tree of warning lights. If she is nominated to be America’s top intelligence officer, that’s everyone’s business.

…Presidents should be given deference in staffing their Cabinet. But this nomination should be one of the handful of Trump appointments where soon-to-be Majority Leader John Thune and his Republican colleagues draw a hard line and say no— at least if they still care at all about exercising the Senate’s constitutional duty of advice and consent.

Katie Rogers called the 3 strangest nominations— Gaetz, Gabbard and that weird Fox guy with the Nazi tattoos— a show of force that demonstrates how he “prizes loyalty over experience and is fueled by retribution.”

In a since deleted Tweet, he wrote “We ought to have a full-court press against this WEAPONIZED government that has been turned against our people. And if that means abolishing every one of the three letter agencies, from the FBI to the ATF, I’m ready to get going!”

Referring to the Gaetz, Gabbard and the Fox guy (Hegseth) nominations, Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice, said ““These are so appalling they’re a form of performance art.”

This parade of loyalists is Trump’s first show of force to Senate Republicans, who will be under immense pressure to either confirm his nominee or sidestep that process altogether. But it is also something of a denial-of-service attack against one of the checks on the presidency: Trump has insisted that the next Senate majority leader allow for recess appointments, which would grant him the ability to unilaterally install cabinet members.

That newly elected leader, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, told reporters on Wednesday that the Senate would “explore all options” to make sure Trump’s appointees “get moved and that they get moved quickly.”

The president-elect, Waldman said, had effectively “provoked his first constitutional crisis” eight days after winning the election.

“He’s going to pick people who are conservative, who are Republicans,” Waldman said. “You know, that’s what you get with an election. But these choices seem designed to poke the Senate in the eye.”

…[T]he election of Thune signals that Republicans are willing to buck pressure— on a blind ballot, at least— to install Trump loyalists like Senator Rick Scott of Florida, a longtime backer of Trump’s. But among lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the reactions to the appointments— Gaetz’s in particular— drew a mixture of surprise and disbelief.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said Gaetz is “not a serious candidate” and compared him to the disgraced fabulist who was expelled from the House last year, saying, “If I wanted to make a joke, maybe I would say now I’m waiting for George Santos to be named.”

…Timothy O’Brien, a longtime biographer of Trump, said that the selections are his way of ensuring loyalty to him above competence for the role.

“He prizes loyalty above competence, atmospherics above expertise, and buffoonery above maturity,” O’Brien said. “He values that at the expense of almost everything else, other than his own survival.”

Indeed, the one theme in Trump’s running personnel announcements is that no one will step in to establish guardrails for a president who despises them.

Instead, the Senate will now grapple with confirming Hegseth, whom Trump praised as “tough, smart and a true believer in America First,” but who may lack the experience needed to lead the 1.3 million active-duty men and women of the American military. In Trump’s eyes, Hegseth’s criticisms of “woke” behavior in the armed forces and of the military’s diversity programs could be qualification enough.

They will also review the credentials of Gabbard, who is one of Trump’s most vocal supporters. She has long been popular with Russian state media. Democratic senators are expected to ask her about her decision to meet with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and her past embrace of Russian talking points.

And they will consider the track record of Gaetz, who was recently the subject of a federal sex-trafficking investigation that was concluded in 2023. If he is confirmed, he will lead the Department of Justice, which carried out that investigation.

Gaetz was also the target of a House Ethics Committee investigation into accusations of drug use, using campaign funds for personal use, and sharing inappropriate material on the House floor, among other offenses. He resigned from the chamber on Wednesday after Trump chose him for attorney general, effectively ending the investigation.

As a congressman, Gaetz has also introduced legislation that would limit sentences for people who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol, and became notorious for his conflicts with other House members. (Representative Max Miller, Republican of Ohio, told reporters on Wednesday that at least the House would be a more peaceful place without Gaetz.)

“The Justice Department usually prosecutes bomb throwers,” Waldman said. “This would be somebody whose entire political brand is as a bomb thrower, being put in charge of an agency with extraordinary responsibility and power.”

It will now be up to the Senate to decide whether, or how, Trump’s choices will be installed. As a candidate, Trump had promised that he would root out government corruption, combat censorship and seek revenge on “enemies from within” who have unfairly targeted him. As president-elect, Trump’s organized, quick, headline-grabbing cascade of choices is designed to show that he meant what he said, and that he intends to redirect institutions from functioning on behalf of the national interest to functioning on the behalf of his.

“There all sorts of things going on inside those agencies that we’re not going to be able to see, that are really important to the integrity and the smooth functioning of American life,” O’Brien said. “And they’re going to be in there with matches, seeing what, what catches fire first.”

Yesterday, David Graham noted that what Gaetz, Gabbard and the Fox News nazi guy have in common is “a shared sense of having been persecuted by the departments they’ve been nominated to lead. It’s what they share with Trump as well as one another, and it’s their main credential to serve under him.” Yesterday, Bill Kristol after noting that Gaetz is “the poster child of moral degradation”— does that mean Trump no longer is?— wrote that Trump— as promised— is “going to turn the federal government into an instrument of MAGA policy and grievance. He’s going to pursue retribution against enemies. He’s going to destroy what remains of the older norms that guide the operations of the government, and of the institutional checks that constrain the abuse of power… [T]he party’s biggest benefactor— co-president Elon Musk— is gleefully encouraging it all.”

CNN’s Stephen Collinson chalks this latest demonstration of predictable GOP dysfunction up to Trump wanting to outrage a DC Establishment he has never had any respect for. In fact, he wrote that “the outrage is the point, noting that Gaetz’s and Tulsi’s “selections for Trump’s MAGA dream team caused such a stir that they almost overshadowed the pick of Fox News anchor Pete Hegseth to serve as defense secretary on Tuesday night [and that all 3] are perfectly in tune with Trump’s campaign trail promises and political project. The dismay engulfing establishment elites contrasted with the euphoria rocketing through conservative networks and social media among Trump fans. The president-elect draws political strength from his position as an outsider scourge of the establishment, and if his picks are confirmed by the Senate— a huge if in the case of Gaetz— they will be tasked with his mission of defenestrating government and driving out those Trump sees as enemies.”

You can call it trolling or “owning the libs” or just disrespect for the establishment; but serious governance? Not really. Still, noted Collison, “A president-elect who feels liberated from constraints after his election victory may not yet be finished rocking the boat with positions yet to be announced, including secretaries of the Treasury and Health and Human Services. It is no wonder Trump started this week demanding GOP senators acquiesce to his demands for recess appointments for nominees if they cannot win swift confirmation. Trump has set up the first test of whether there will be any pushback from a new Republican Senate majority against a president who believes he will be all powerful once he’s sworn in.”

They all know that loyalty to him eclipses competence— let alone ethics— and revenge is prioritized over governance. He doesn’t want any Republicans in DC for forget it or think otherwise. If these nominations succeed, they represent the institutionalization of grievance politics, where critical departments of the government become tools of personal retribution. For a country founded on checks and balances, it’s a direct challenge to any remaining boundaries against authoritarian rule. Trump's dream team isn’t just a threat to norms— it’s a warning that, in his second term, the ideals that keep democracy functional might be on the chopping block, kind of what Democrats were warning about during the campaign.