Gaetz May Not Be Confirmed, Trump Admits. He’s Pushing Him and Others Anyway.
The president-elect is taking a flood-the-zone approach to his cabinet nominations, betting that the Senate won’t dare to turn them all down.
In his private conversations over the past few days, President-elect Donald J. Trump has admitted that his besieged choice for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, has less than even odds of being confirmed by the Senate.
But Mr. Trump has shown no sign of withdrawing the nomination, which speaks volumes about his mind-set as he staffs his second administration. He is making calls on Mr. Gaetz’s behalf, and he remains confident that even if Mr. Gaetz does not make it, the standard for an acceptable candidate will have shifted so much that the Senate may simply approve his other nominees who have appalled much of Washington.
Mr. Trump’s choice to lead health and human services has made baseless claims about vaccines. His selection for defense secretary is a former Fox News host whose leadership experience has been questioned. His nominee for the director of national intelligence is a favorite of Russian state media.
“Donald Trump is a blunt-force instrument applying blunt-force trauma to the system,” said Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist who remains close to him and was recently released from federal prison for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Presidents do not normally approach cabinet selections this way. Historically, they work with their teams to figure out in advance what the system will tolerate, eliminating the possibility that skeletons in the closet of a nominee might emerge during Senate hearings.
Mr. Trump largely followed this risk-averse approach at the start of his first term. He appointed people like the four-star general Jim Mattis, who was confirmed with a 98-to-1 bipartisan vote to be Mr. Trump’s first defense secretary.
But this time, emboldened by victory and the submission of the Republican Party, Mr. Trump is innovating. He is using an approach that has been discussed in the past for judicial nominees, which is nominating so many extreme choices that they cannot all be blocked. The strategy has never been used for cabinet picks.
It is possible that enough Republican senators are willing to risk their careers to oppose Mr. Gaetz, although it is unclear what the backup plan would be should Mr. Gaetz falter. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and pick for deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, is seen as a possibility.
It is also possible that Mr. Gaetz is confirmed, along with the three other nominees who have raised such a furor in Washington. Mr. Trump has wasted no time in barreling ahead and putting personal pressure on senators.
One thing is certain: His four choices would have had virtually no chance of confirmation in a Republican-held Senate in the Washington that existed before 2024.
The president-elect’s choice to lead the Defense Department, Pete Hegseth, is facing an allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman, which he has denied. Beyond that, Mr. Hegseth, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has faced questions about having the requisite experience to run a department with an $850 billion annual budget, three million employees and 750 military bases around the world.
Mr. Trump’s choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is not only a vaccine skeptic but also a supporter of abortion rights who has all but declared war on the pharmaceutical and food industries that have long funded the Republican Party.
And his choice for intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, has blamed the United States and NATO for provoking Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Then there is Mr. Gaetz, who helped orchestrate the ouster of the previous Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Mr. Gaetz has been under a yearslong investigation by the House Ethics Committee into allegations that he engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
Hours after Mr. Trump announced his selection as attorney general, Mr. Gaetz resigned from his seat as a House member from Florida, which effectively ended the investigation. But there is building pressure on the Ethics Committee to release a report on the inquiry.
The question has repeatedly come up in Washington about the vetting done for Mr. Trump’s nominees. The question misses the point. Little more than a cursory Google search would have shown that Mr. Gaetz, Ms. Gabbard and Mr. Kennedy would draw all kinds of protests. Mr. Trump nominated them anyway.
The Trump team, people briefed on its activities say, did engage in vetting for some of his choices, such as Mr. Hegseth. But the sexual assault allegation did not show up because it involved a private settlement agreement with the woman in question, the people briefed on it said.
That left the team dealing with the one thing that Mr. Trump tends not to like: information that he was unaware of, which became an unwanted headline in the media. Still, he has told aides he is firmly behind Mr. Hegseth.
Karoline Leavitt, the incoming White House press secretary, said Mr. Trump had won with “a resounding mandate from the American people to change the status quo in Washington.” She said he had picked “brilliant and highly respected outsiders to serve in his administration, and he will continue to stand behind them as they fight against all those who seek to derail the MAGA agenda.”
For much of the past decade, Mr. Trump has repeatedly swamped the system with provocations. Mr. Bannon memorably stated that their strategy for dealing with the news media was to “flood the zone” with manure.
The strategy has ensured that little focus stays on any single scandal. The caravan moves quickly on to the next, and the next, creating an overall blurring and flattening effect. He has survived them all, including 34 felony convictions and being held liable for sexual abuse.
He has already driven into retirement or primary defeat most of the congressional Republicans who opposed him in his first term. And since defeating Vice President Kamala Harris and becoming the first Republican to claim the popular vote since 2004, Mr. Trump has made clear he will tolerate little dissent from the G.O.P. majorities in the House and the Senate.
He has demanded that the next Senate majority leader, John Thune, allow recess appointments that would let Mr. Trump push through appointees who would otherwise be deemed unfit, making such an agreement a condition for anyone who wanted to be leader.
Liam Donovan, a former National Republican Senatorial Committee aide, said that “we’re on a collision course between traditional senatorial prerogatives and the unique power dynamics of the Trump restoration.”
Now, as Mr. Trump prepares to take office for the second time, he is demonstrating how confident he is that the branches of government will bend even further to accommodate him.
He plans to test just how far he can go.
Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman
Jonathan Swan is a political reporter covering the 2024 presidential election and Donald Trump’s campaign. More about Jonathan Swan
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