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More Trump appointees — 71 Comments

  1. I would have thought Gabbard might have been handed a role in the Veterans Administration.

  2. Might be wise to put in a 48-hour moratorium on believing anything in the legacy media on who Trump is “appointing” or anything else he plans to do. Right now a lot of people looking for jobs are leaking to friendly reporters, and unfriendly reporters are trying to make sure Trump looks bad. Things Trump tweets himself may be a reliable guide to his intentions, at least on the day tweeted…

    All these people need Senate confirmation anyway, which won’t happen until next year. Except maybe Musk and Ramaswamy, because the “Department of Government Efficiency” is not a real department of the Executive, and I’ve not read of any plan to ask Congress to make it one (and if they did it would probably turn into a mess like Homeland Security by the time they got their snouts in the legislation).

  3. Does Trump not want a House majority? We are now at 3 vacancies which may all be filled by Republicans after special elections but that will be some time out in the meantime the tiny majority is even tinier.

  4. I’ll miss Marco Rubio here in Florida—he’s been great, IMHO, but has outgrown the Senator role, and is perfectly suited for Secretary of State.

    Niketas Choniates – please stop throwing cold water on the party! 😉

  5. @Karmi:Niketas Choniates – please stop throwing cold water on the party!

    I’m sure you’re familiar with the phrase “high on your own supply”, and on other posts here there have been showcased the sad, but hilarious, reactions of Dems who did that very thing with this election.

    People on the Right like to think they are more realistic than people on the Left, and I try to help them stay that way.

    The people who are twisting their knickers and clutching their pearls about the election of the Bad Orange Man are clowns, lunatics, and talking heads. Their sweet, sweet tears distract us from the serious MFs who have their knives out for us, who still occupy the leadership positions in all our institutions, and are super-pissed.

  6. Karmi – Wasn’t Rubio considering retiring after his last term? I never thought he was long for the Senate. You may have been losing him one way or another before too long.

    Per your remark to Niketas Choniates – let us hope that is the case with the Matt Gaetz/AG thing. I’m a little skeptical of Kristi Noem, but other than that I was onboard with Trump’s appointees until the Gaetz/AG thing.

    Appointing Matt Gaetz as Attorney General is a bad joke. Jeez, the guy barely practiced law before going into politics and has no experience with the DOJ other than on the receiving end of his recently-concluded criminal investigation. He’ll be good at causing problems and breaking things, but not much else. If Trump goes through with this, it is “hanging out with Laura Loomer on the eve of the debate” levels of stupid.

    That’s the thing about Trump. If you squint hard enough you can make yourself think that he’s going to do something good, and then pulls something like this that is nuclear levels of idiotic.

  7. On further thought, the chances of the Senate confirming Matt Gaetz as AG are approximately zero.

    Could there be a strategic reason that Trump is floating Gaetz? Maybe he has someone else in mind and wants to try to smooth their confirmation by offering them as a “compromise” candidate after Gaetz inevitably withdraws.

    One can hope. Otherwise, mark this down as the first significant self-own of the second Trump administration.

  8. Just for fun, I wonder if there was a quid pro quo discussion wherein Trump stays out of the Senate Majority Leader fight and Gaetz gets confirmed.

  9. I liked both Mark Paoletta and Mike Davis for AG and i think they would have been just as loyal as Gaetz but also more experienced and just plain better than Gaetz.

    Not a fan of the Noem pick either but she may not be terrible.

  10. Bauxite

    Yeah, that Matt Gaetz as Attorney General caught me off guard, so am still mulling ‘n researching what it means or will mean…

    Trump? He worked hard for the win, and deserved it, IMHO.

    I had cut him a lot of slack during his 1st four years…waited 2-3 more years until I actually looked closely at what he did and/or accomplished. Tore him apart here for his terrible leadership & behavior, etc.

    Have now moved on from those old four years, but will be paying extremely close attention during these next four years. Will credit him when it is due, and bash him when he deserves it. No passes from me this time…

    So far, though, he is light years ahead of where he was at around March of 2017, IMHO.

  11. DM has that Gaetz has been on the judiciary committee and has advocated for cleaning house at DoJ, so we will see. I am taken aback by this one.

    Tulsa as director of National Intelligence….yes! Other than SoD, this is perfect for the colonel. I hope she can clean out those agencies. Like all the appointees, the Borg will be out to assimilate them.

  12. The Gaetz pick makes it much, much less likely that Trump will get the recess appointments that he wants.

  13. Mike Johnson might have told Trump to promote Gaetz to get him out his own hair.

    While New York state might drag heels in scheduling the special election to replace Stefanik, the other appointees from the House are from states that will likely schedule the races before the new House is seated in January. In any case, all three House appointees can stay in their seats until they are confirmed by the Senate which probably won’t happen until late January or February in any case.

    Gaetz for DoJ is ok with me- he is an advocate for reform of the entire department and is young and aggressive about it. My main worry is that the Senate won’t confirm him because he is so abrasive.

  14. What rank did Mr. Hegseth attain? Does anybody know? I don’t understand why none of the several articles I’ve read about him today mention this seemingly simple fact.

  15. I think Gaetz is a great pick. Dismantling the rotten, corrupt DOJ is going to require a smart, relentless fighter. Gaetz is one of the very few people in Congress who actually has a record of bringing some accountability to government and he got results. Yeah Gaetz is abrasive. He upsets people. Good. There are a lot of people in this country who need to be upset.

  16. Re: The Department of Government Efficiency. Does anyone really want the Government to be more efficient?I don’t mind going around cutting budgets and stopping bureaucratic work arounds. But Government efficiency scares me.

  17. Even Trump’s surprise appointees are immune from serious doubt. Until Gaetz. Whether or not he’s a great guy and would turn out to be a fine AG, Gaetz has little or no criminal law or management experience, and his judgment is questionable-see the Speaker McCarthy affair.

  18. JFM:

    Yes, I want the government to be much, much smaller and more efficient. I spent 23 years working for the federal government and I’m quite confident in saying that the workforce could be cut by 70 to 80 percent if not more. In my experience most federal employees are conscientious people trying to do a good job. They are simply doing things that do not need doing and in some cases are doing things that are counterproductive.

    I look forward to seeing what Musk and Ramaswamy can do

  19. Did Dems criticize any of Bidens picks?
    Me, I think Trump won, he gets who he wants. Kibbitzing from the sidelines, may be fun, but you don’t get to choose.

  20. “Mark Halperin insinuated there are some stories that might sink Pete Hegseth. Didn’t say what they were.”
    The same Mark Halperin who touted rumors of “campaign ending stories” about Trump the week before the election?

  21. @Ira:the Speaker McCarthy affair.

    That’s when the New York Times and Washington Post told us that the conservatives in the House were the bad guys and we all just nodded along with that here.

    McCarthy’s spending priorities, negotiated with Joe Biden, are still being followed by the current House leadership, and the promises made by that leadership have not been kept, and will not be. They are planning to run us up against the debt ceiling in 2025. Gaetz actually tried to change that, and we crapped on him in the comments here. Not our finest hour, to uncritically swallow the narrative from our enemies against the people trying to achieve the goals we think we believe in.

  22. People who had no qualms about picking the most unethical atty general in history that would be garland 20 of them

    Gaetz called attention to the sham january 6th witchhunt including the murder of ashley babbitt

    The bribery by foreign powers through hunter to joe

  23. If im not mistaken, Peter Hegseth is a military veteran who served for over 20+ years. Which included multiple combat tours. He is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard.
    Following graduation from Princeton in 2003, Hegseth joined Bear Stearns as an equity capital markets analyst. But he has never worked for any part of the military industrial complex. Which might disqualify him with some in the senate.

    In 2020, Hegseth volunteered as one of the up-to-25,000 National Guard troops authorized by the Pentagon to be put on active duty to protect the inauguration of President Joe Biden on January 20, 2021, but was removed from that mission because he was one of twelve soldiers “linked to ‘right-wing militia groups,’ or found to have ‘posted extremist views online.'”
    Hegseth said that he was removed from the assignment because of a “Jerusalem Cross tattoo, which is just a Christian symbol.”

    This from WIKI and the NY Times

  24. Mrs. X, you should watch the video.
    I’ve enjoyed 2 Way, which includes Halperin, Sean Spicer and Democrat Dan.
    Halperin is a journalist, but I’ve found him to be reasonably even handed on his show.

    From a Newsweek article:

    Veteran political journalist Mark Halperin, who was among the first to report that President Biden would withdraw from the race in July, revealed on Tuesday that there is a “certain story” that has been pitched to major news outlets that — if true — could derail Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign in its final days.

    Speaking on his “Morning Meeting” show on YouTube, Halperin shared that although he does not believe the story is accurate, its impact—if it were—would be the October Surprise the political media has been waiting for.

    “I know of one story… I don’t believe it is true. But if it’s true, it would end Donald Trump’s campaign,” Halperin said, adding that he’s aware of various efforts to influence the race’s outcome with less than two weeks until Election Day.

    Halperin highlighted the nature of last-minute campaign tactics, comparing them to an attempt to “pull a Comey.” He was referring to former FBI Director James Comey’s actions during the 2016 election, when, just 11 days before Election Day, he sent a letter to Congress announcing that the FBI had reopened its investigation into Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

    He didn’t spread the rumor, just reported it existed.

  25. “He didn’t spread the rumor, just reported it existed.”

    That’s a pretty fine distinction. Reporting that kind of unsubstantiated innuendo is not innocent.

  26. Jimmy, that’s actually a big distinction, IMO.

    For all we know, he was giving the Trump campaign a heads-up.

  27. Ok – so NR is now reporting that Gaetz has already resigned from Congress. Apparently, the House Ethics Committee was planning was to release the results of its Gaetz investigation this Friday, and this is now cancelled because of his resignation.

    Gaetz is not going to be confirmed as AG. That’s not a surprise. Unless Trump is mentally deficient, which he is not, he knew before today’s announcement that there was no way this side of Hades that Gaetz would be confirmed as AG.

    My working theory now is that this is a choreographed maneuver and that neither man actually believed that Gaetz was going to be AG. So Trump gets an Obamaesque “stray voltage” maneuver to deflect attention from some of his other controversial nominees. Gaetz gets a golden parachute out of Congress ahead of the Ethics Committee report, so he can run for Governor or Senator in FL.

    So I predict that Gaetz will withdraw, probably after some of Trump’s other outside-the-box nominees are confirmed and probably in time to run for Marco Rubio’s seat in FL.

    I guess we’ll see.

  28. Bauxite, the problem with your scenario is whether DeSantis would choose Gaetz to fill the seat. Hannity tonight said that Rubio’s seat may be offered to Lara Trump.
    When he asked Mrs. Trump about that, she said she’d be honored if the position was offered to her.
    There will then be an election in 2026.

    I think Byron Donalds would be a great senator for Florida, offering the position to Lara Trump would be a good way for DeSantis to mend fences with the Trump administration. Plus she is a very capable person.

  29. Brian E – Trump gets what he wants here regardless of whether Gaetz ends up in the Senate or FL Governor’s mansion. I suppose its possible that Trump didn’t promise him anything and that Gaetz had to accept without any assurances to beat the Ethics Committee rap. It’s also possible that Gaetz believes that he’s actually going to be AG.

    This scenario really would be four-dimensional chess from Trump – purge a trouble maker and blame the fallout on the “RINO” Senators who won’t vote for him.

    (Frankly, running Gaetz for Senate or Governor sounds like a great way to reverse all of the good work that DeSantis has done turning Florida red. I’d prefer Donalds for FL Senate over Gaetz and Laura Trump. I really don’t like the family dynasty thing. I wasn’t wild about W. and opposed Jeb! for the same reason.)

  30. Bauxite, 20 Republicans voted to confirm Garland as AG in 2021. If Republicans fail to confirm Gaetz, it just shows what a slimy bunch of Republicans we still have in the Senate.

    Lindsey Graham was on Hannity and made the case that the President should get the cabinet he chooses.

    As to Donalds, I like him but the House can’t afford to lose anymore members. Donalds will have his chance.

  31. More about Hegseth, his career and qualifications, and his tattoos (h/t Karmi).
    The TDS goes all the way “down the ballot.”

    https://notthebee.com/article/check-out-the-very-sane-liberal-reactions-to-trumps-pick-for-defense-secretary

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14077417/Fox-News-host-Pete-Hegseths-tattoos-decoded-Donald-Trump-Secretary-Defense.html

    Donald Trump’s left-field Secretary of Defense pick Pete Hegseth is covered in tattoos – and many of them have already proved controversial for the Fox News host.

    The veteran who served tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq and is double Bronze Star holder and is a TV top presenter having fronted Fox and Friends since 2017.

    Hegseth, who is 44, started adorning his body with tattoos only recently after his father dissuaded him from getting tattoos at a young age.

    Most of his body art represents his Christian faith, his American patriotism and his history in the US military.

    His tattoos are only controversial if you are a leftist.
    And he has a LOT of them!

    Also, the Daily Mail is ignorant.
    “He also has a modern depiction of the current flag with a sniper at the bottom of the stars and stripes.”
    Under a picture of the tattooed flag with 13 stars.

    They give a long list of his accomplishments, and remarks about the current DOD leadership which they think are negative, but convinced me he is more apt for the position than even Gabbard would be.*

    “Critics of his appointment have pointed to his lack of experience in high office.”

    You betcha!

    PS Has anyone else noticed how many of our shop-worn idioms are not always as applicable as the authors suppose?
    For instance, this out of “left-field” pick is most clearly out of the right field, but that’s not the idiomatic baseball term.
    https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/62065/origin-and-meaning-of-from-out-of-left-field

    *https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/113
    (2) A person may not be appointed as Secretary of Defense—
    (A) within seven years after relief from active duty as a commissioned officer of a regular component of an armed force in a grade below O–7; or
    (B) within 10 years after relief from active duty as a commissioned officer of a regular component of an armed force in the grade of O–7 or above.

    That doesn’t seem to include National Guard or Reserves; anybody know for sure?

    https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/505

    Per Wikipedia:
    Gabbard’s current reserve rank: “In 2020, after serving with them for 17 years, Gabbard left the Hawaii Army National Guard for a new assignment with a California-based Army Reserve unit. On July 4, 2021, Gabbard was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant colonel, while she was deployed to the Horn of Africa working as a Civil Affairs officer in support of a Special Operations mission.”

    Hegseth’s highest rank: “By 2015 or 2016, Hegseth had been promoted to the rank of major, and was assigned to the Army Individual Ready Reserve….In 2020, Hegseth volunteered as one of the up-to-25,000 National Guard troops”

    Major is O-4, Lt. Col. is O-5. An O-7 is a Brigadier General.

  32. @ JFM > “They are simply doing things that do not need doing and in some cases are doing things that are counterproductive.”

    Exactly so!
    Remember that Musk fired about 80% of Twitter’s employees without any decline in effectiveness.

    Whenever the pundits or politicians complain about the legislature wrangling over “shutting down the government,” my opinion is that the shutting down isn’t the problem it’s the starting it back up again!

  33. Why Gaetz resigned Wednesday has little to do with the Ethics investigation; it’s procedural.

    https://redstate.com/smoosieq/2024/11/13/bombshell-gaetz-resigns-from-congress-n2181975
    Quoting Speaker Mike Johnson:

    “Matt and I were classmates — we came to Congress at the same time in the 115th Congress in January 2017 — and alphabetically, we were seated right next to one another in Judiciary Committee; we served there together for seven years. Some of y’all who cover Judiciary know those are long meetings. So, I got to know Matt very well.

    “Look, I’ll say this: Everyone who’s served with him will tell you he’s one of the most intelligent members of Congress. He’s an accomplished attorney. He’s very concerned about the lawfare that has been in the Department of Justice under the Biden administration — and the fact that the American people have lost their faith in our institutions of justice because of everything that we’ve seen. He’s a reformer in his mind and heart, and I think that he’ll bring a lot to the table on that.

    “I think, out of deference to us, he issued his resignation letter effective immediately — of Congress. That caught us by surprise a little bit, but I asked him what the reasoning was, and he said, “Well, you can’t have too many absences.” So, under Florida state law, there’s about an eight-week period to select and fill a vacant seat.

    “And so, by doing so today, that allows me — I’ve already placed a call to Governor DeSantis in Florida, and said, “Let’s start the clock.” He’s in Italy at the moment, and so we’re going to talk first thing in the morning about this. And if we start the clock now, if you do the math, we may be able to fill that seat as early as January 3rd, when we take the new oath of office for the new Congress. So, Matt would have done us a great service by making that decision as he did, on the fly, and so we’re grateful for that.

    “So, we move forward. Look, I’ll say this about — people have asked me all day long, “Um, President Trump is poaching all your talent.” Yes, but we have an embarrassment of riches here — the Republican conference is full of talented people who are extraordinary leaders and have great expertise. And everyone in this…conference could serve in a leadership position in the administration….”

  34. Good points in these posts. There were others at Red State and TownHall, but these will do. Separately considered, and in no particular order, but there is a bit of a thematic connection.

    https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/11/12/trumps-doing-exactly-what-past-presidents-have-done-and-the-left-cant-cope-n4934225

    “Donald Trump isn’t wasting time selecting loyalists to join his administration, stocking the White House and his Cabinet with MAGA diehards,” lamented Rolling Stone magazine.

    Axios whined that Trump is “putting a premium (so far) on picking people who are both experienced and MAGA loyalists, transition insiders tell us.”

    Former Obama advisor David Axelrod observed that “Trump is stocking his admin with seasoned loyalists who will not guide, but rather will BE guided, by HIM.”

    And so on and so on.

    To them, I say, “So what?”

    Let’s be honest, he’s doing nothing that his predecessors haven’t done before him — even after they pledged to do otherwise.

    In 2008, Barack Obama promised he wouldn’t surround himself with yes-men, and proceeded to surround himself with radical yes-men.

    Biden surrounded himself with loyalists and former Obama administration retreads, creating a team of left-leaning yes-men.

    He was well within his right to do so, but it wasn’t what he promised. It also wasn’t surprising. Honestly, the only thing shocking about Biden’s selections was that so many people actually deluded themselves into thinking Biden would assemble an ideologically diverse cabinet.

    Yet the media treats Trump’s selection of loyalists like it’s something terrible and unprecedented. It’s not. Frankly, Trump didn’t do that the first time, and it caused lots of problems. That he’s picking people who won’t undermine him is a good thing.

    And I can’t wait for the new administration to get to work and clean up the Biden-Harris mess.

  35. https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/11/13/scott-jennings-gives-masterclass-in-shutting-down-lib-outrage-over-trumps-defense-secretary-pick-n4934236

    Scott Jennings mounted a robust defense of Pete Hegseth’s selection to lead the Pentagon, challenging critics who dismiss the pick due to Hegseth’s lack of Washington experience.
    Jennings questioned the credibility of current Pentagon leadership, bluntly asking, “Does anyone have confidence in the current leadership of the Pentagon and the way the defense situation has been operating for the last several years?” he asked.

    “I’d say I’ve had just about enough of the so-called insiders running the Defense Department. I think we ought to give Pete Hegseth a chance,” he said before Bernstein interrupted him.

    Of course, Jennings wasn’t done. “All the criticism of him is that he’s not the expected Washington pick. And I’m just saying … the American people just voted against the expected Washington pick.”

    He argued it’s time to give Hegseth a shot, pointing to his twenty years of service in both Iraq and Afghanistan, his two Bronze Stars, and his education at Princeton and Harvard. “Yes, he’s on TV, but so were the rest of us,” he pointed out. “And I think he ought to be given a chance.”

    When Abby Phillip pushed back, noting that many of the recent defense mishaps came from civilian rather than military decisions, Jennings countered by saying, “The civilian leadership made decisions, and then the people they put in charge of the Pentagon carried it out, and it was all pretty much a disaster.” He added that the new administration’s choice to appoint “non-insiders” is a direct response to these failures, underscoring that while Hegseth would still have to “prove his knowledge of how to do this job” to Senate Republicans, “we ought to give this man a chance.”

    Several commenters made relevant observations:

    travis690

    The irascible Carl Bernstein gets the idea right, but the motivation entirely wrong.

    The Secretary of Defense was intended to be a civilian post, not a military post. The military version of the SecDef is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The SecDef is intended to be a counter-balance to that, and to have a citizen-controlled military.

    Among other things, the military is battling a stupid program that is Dumb, Evil, and Insidious (DEI), that needs to be eradicated. This was something put into the Armed Forces by some people within the Biden regime, with the assistance of military leadership. How can any sane person argue that this was a good idea? At least Pete Hegseth came out on the right side of that argument; for that alone, he is eminently worthy of consideration for the post of SecDef.

    Getting back to Carl Bernstein’s opposition to ripping out many ideas of Roosevelt’s New Deal: There were enough bad ideas from the New Deal that would allow him to write a new book, and it would be longer than the World Book Encyclopedia. But I don’t think his brain is up to that task.

    Steve_Seattle

    After his experience with insubordinates like Milley, Austin, and Vindman, Trump probably figured he needed to go outside the current hierarchy to find someone he could trust.

    CheshireCat George K

    I’m reading his book “War on Warriors” an excellent example of his thoughts. He notes that our big problems start with Obama/Dems.
    Warren’s philosophy is not good for our country and she is a radical Democrat.

    But this is my favorite —

    piscorman

    All we are saying is give Pete a chance.

  36. The headline is kind of click-baity, because Taft’s suggestion is pretty obvious; it’s the implementation that will be hard.

    “How Will Trump Get Rid of the ‘Deep State’? Not the Way You Think.”
    https://pjmedia.com/victoria-taft/2024/11/13/deep-state-n4934222

    I don’t know about you, but when I heard that Donald Trump vanquished Kamala Harris like a grease-painted political special operator with a sharpened-to-perfection Ka-Bar, I breathed a sigh of relief. The next thing I thought was bye, bye, Barack Obama. And the next thing I thought about was, how will Trump scrape the Deep State barnacles?

    Trump has gone on the record about what he will do about this Deep State.

    He’s laid out ten goals during his campaign that will begin right away which are all laudable:

    Take a look at the list if you haven’t already seen it.

    Everything. Let me repeat: EVERYTHING that has happened to tear down Donald Trump since he declared for president in 2015 has been done with the blessing, endorsement, or, at the very least, the tacit approval of Barack Obama.

    He promised to “fundamentally change the United States of America,” and he did.

    At every step, Obama was on the side of obliterating norms. After all, the communist students strived to accomplish the transformation of America.

    I don’t know how Trump might go about attacking the influence of Obama, but it’s a worthy goal.

  37. ATTENTION Gregory Harper, et al.
    ADDING TO THE Matt Gaetz discussion, a Democrat State legislator in Florida has enthusiastic words in support for his AG candidacy, from JustTheNews:

    Florida Democratic lawmaker on Wednesday appeared to praise President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of GOP Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz as his attorney general, claiming that Gaetz was “extremely loyal” and “extremely competent.”

    Trump officially nominated Gaetz as Attorney General Merrick Garland’s successor on Wednesday, claiming he was a “deeply gifted and tenacious attorney,” who “distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice.”

    Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat, said he knows Gaetz well and that he played an important role in getting him confirmed as the emergency management director in Florida in 2019.

    “Trump was not shy about what he wanted to do in this country,” Moskowitz told CNN. “In Matt Gaetz he does not only get someone who is fiercely loyal, but fiercely competent. Matt Gaetz knows exactly what to do in the attorney general’s office and he will turn that into the most powerful attorney general in American history.”
    https://justthenews.com/government/congress/matt-gaetz-attorney-general-gets-unexpected-support-florida-democrat

    Now THAT’S an endorsement!

  38. Yeah, it’s the one you’re thinking of.
    https://pjmedia.com/charlie-martin/2024/11/12/the-lesson-of-robespierre-n4934208

    I think we need to be careful.

    First of all, we’ve elected a president, not anointed a king. There are things we permit a president to do and things we don’t permit a president to do.

    A whole lot of people are calling for Trump to do things right away that he’s not actually permitted to do.

    Of course, there are things he certainly can do. He can, and should, clean out the top brass in the military, and while he can’t charge, e.g., Gen. Milley with treason, Trump can recall him to active duty where he can be tried by court-martial. Along with other possibilities, a good one for an officer is “conduct unbecoming.” And I think looking at the Espionage Act has some promise in the civilian courts.

    He certainly can clear out the top levels of Department of Justice lawyers, a lot of the top level of the State Department, in general, a whole bunch of holdovers from Biden-Harris. Some of the holdovers were converted to civil service — an obvious ploy to preserve Obama’s influence after the election — so they will be harder to outright fire, at least until Congress can change the civil service laws as part of the move to the Department of Government Efficiency.

    For those people, I want to recommend to Trump an old Japanese custom. It’s called a “window seat.” If someone is not performing, you reassign them. Maybe you move them to an office in New Mexico and give them responsibility for counting the gay prairie dog population. Maybe you just move them to a rented office in Arlington with a phone and internet but with no access to government systems and no responsibilities other than verifying they’re in the office every 15 minutes. The point is that you make things sufficiently unpleasant that they, as the saying goes, self-deport.

    But now, a warning.

    During the French Revolution, a man named Maximilien Robespierre became powerful. He actually started out as recognizably One of Us, demanding among other things an end to slavery and a right to bear arms. But as the revolution continued, it became the Reign of Terror. Robespierre sent many many people to the guillotine. Then the political winds shifted, and he eventually died rather horribly on the guillotine himself.

    There’s a lesson here. No matter how much you resent what a political opponent does, you need to remember that the political winds can change and your political opponents can and will come to power again.

    Remember the Lesson of Robespierre: if something can be done for you, it can be done to you.

    Of course, as we’ve discussed here before, the Democrats always count on the Republicans NOT doing unto them the things they’ve done unto us.
    Some of that can, and should, change without anyone becoming Robespierre (or his opponents).

    If they did something illegal, they should be prosecuted just like anyone else ought to be.
    That can be done without Republicans breaking any laws themselves.

    If what they did was unethical but not strictly illegal, then put them on the “window seat” so that they know their behavior was unacceptable, and so they can no longer profit by it, and are in no position to repeat it.

    That consequence is not itself unethical, or every effective parent would stand condemned.

    And always remember that, when Democrats (as presently constituted) return to power (never, if we are blessed), they WILL continue to do illegal and unethical things whether the Republicans did any to them or not.

    They will start where the original Robespierre left off.

  39. One doesn’t become an “accomplished attorney” by practicing law full time for two years and then part time for six.

    And the whole thing about working with the entire Democrat caucus to oust McCarthy with absolutely no plan as to what would come next? Either he’s not as intelligent as you think or he’s a profoundly cynical chaos agent. (I tend to believe he’s the latter.)

    And about this being about avoiding absences? You have a man who resigned from the House two days before an Ethics Committee report about his shenanigans with a high-school age girl is set to drop. He claims that he actually resigned to “avoid absences.” And you believe him? Bless your heart.

    My guess is that Johnson is thrilled to be rid of Gaetz and that his statement is just politics.

    Regardless, he’s an absolutely terrible pick who will never be confirmed, and should never be confirmed.

  40. Bauxite

    One doesn’t become an “accomplished attorney” by practicing law full time for two years and then part time for six.

    Jeff Sessions was an “accomplished attorney” — that idiot basically opened the door for DEMs & their Swamp to take Trump down and wreck the Republican party.

    I’ll take Matt Gaetz over any 1,000 100,000 so-called “accomplished” attorneys…

  41. Clearly then, Matt Gaetz must be the Attorney General, since the deep-state has declared him enemy number one, their greatest, most feared threat. Thanks for the heads up, deep-state! And thanks for standing forward to declare yourselves as opponents of American recovery from bureaucratic tyranny.

  42. Karmi – I was reacting to the Mike Johnson statement. I think Johnson is blowing smoke for political purposes because Trump just got rid of a problem for him.

    Regardless, though, your logic is very suspect. Jeff Sessions was an accomplished attorney and a terrible AG. That doesn’t mean that Jeff Sessions was a terrible AG BECAUSE he was an accomplished attorney, or that someone who is not an accomplished attorney is more likely to be a good AG. I submit that both of those things are false.

    And frankly, if Matt Gaetz is confirmed, which is unlikely, he will be just as terrible an AG as Jeff Sessions, albeit for entirely different reasons.

  43. sdferr – Sometimes an incompetent media-hounding hack is just an incompetent media-houding hack, and not a secret signal from the deep state.

  44. Bauxite

    I didn’t vote against Harris and the Democrats to get another MILQUETOAST Attorney General and/or cabinet.

    I wanted a meaner, nastier, and younger version Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. One who wouldn’t even be afraid to take down the Soros Crime Family.

    Yeah, I didn’t like a lot of Matt Gaetz’s actions in the House, but that same type of mentality could make him the best Attorney General that America has ever had.

    Trump deserves the cabinet he asks for – any Senator taking a stand against any pick should be pressured to a breaking point. Give Trump what he wants, and then he owns it…

  45. Karmi – My problem with Gaetz is not that he isn’t milquetoast. My problem with Gaetz is that if you want to dismantle the machine, you need someone who understands how it works and can play the game.

    This is the critique that I had of Trump’s first term. He fights! Yes, but he fights stupidly and loses. I want someone who can fight smart. That’s not Matt Gaetz. The DOJ bureaucrats would eat him alive. And you can’t fire all of them. You need people who actually know how to run the department or very basic aspects of the justice system fail.

    Basically, I don’t think that Gaetz is capable of being an anti-Garland. Oh, he would try, and fail miserably.

    The chances of Gaetz putting together a team that could actually make meaningful changes at the DOJ are slim and none. He is much more likely to make administration-threatening disasters for Trump.

  46. Bagpipe bob let them get away with the laptop, he let the rioters get organized and burned down 50 cities, then he pretended this kabuki sham of January 6th was real, we saw what they did to Matt Whitaker,

    Sessions fell for the same trick as Ashcroft in the Bush administration, instead of actually challenging the fraudulent Russian hoax, and most of Gaetz detractors like Andrew Weissman are high order criminals who enabled the looting of Arthur Andersen,

    Eric Holder was the devils advocate for the Purdue pushers and the Gitmo bar, he was also the quartermaster for the Sinaloa Cartel,
    yet he is given deference day and after day

  47. And to the point about responding to lawfare in kind – the lawfare against Trump failed. It failed to prevent him from being elected, yes. But it also failed as a matter of law because it is (intentionally) pretty darn difficult to criminalize even the bad behavior of your political activity.

    Smith failed in Florida, never even made it to trial. Smith probably would have won a conviction in the J6 cases given the judge and the jury pool, but there is a very small chance that case would have stood up on appeal. The Supreme Court has been regularly slapping down the kinds of expansive stretches of the criminal law that Smith was making in that case (including in Smith’s previous cases). Fani Willis’s “RICO” prosecution in Atlanta was farcical and would never have survived Georgia appellate courts. The less said about Alvin Bragg’s case the better, but suffice it to say that it wouldn’t have stood a snowball’s chance in Hades of surviving appeal. Ditto for Tish James’ ridiculous civil “fraud” case. I’m going to enjoy seeing her slapped down by the appellate courts.

    But anyway, Jack Smith is an overly aggressive hothead with a massive self-righteousness streak, but he’s also a pretty good trial attorney. Alvin Bragg is a partisan cynic, but again, he’s a pretty good trial attorney. Merrick Garland? Again, he’s a massively self-righteous and ideologically-blinded hack but he’s also a very skilled and very experienced practitioner of the law. I’m not as impressed by Fani Willis or Tish James, but that’s not necessary for the point.

    My point is that you’re going to take a loudmouth who practiced corporate law for two years full time at a mid-sized firm in Florida and expect him to accomplish what these highly seasoned attorneys did not? I’m sorry. That’s nuts.

  48. But anyway, Jack Smith is an overly aggressive hothead with a massive self-righteousness streak, but he’s also a pretty good trial attorney.
    ==
    Since when are you in a position to evaluate his skills as a trial lawyer?
    ==
    While we’re at it, he’s not who you say he is. He is an abuser making use of state institutions to injure political opponents. He deserves disbarment and prison.

  49. Well, there goes that hundred thousand dollar budget for the government’s important study of the sexual life of turtles on the Andaman Islands, and a long list of similar expenditures of taxpayer’s dollars.

  50. McDonnell zip on appeal, yet he enabled that scoundrel McAulliffe to take power, and sabotaged Cuccinelli, Edwards he failed the smell test, then he nearly sparked a civil war
    in Kosovo, going after a warlord empowered by the Clintons,
    then you have this thread bare Election case, that didn’t pass the smell test, but he and his wingman in DC, led to the death of six good men, in this sham trial,

    the Clintons who have enabled the looting of Nigeria, Haiti and half a dozen other countries, including Kazakhstan, the Bureau seems to be not working for the people but for the criminal cartels, so are their selected judges like Gleason who is a flack for Chinese proxies, he and Weissman were buds from the Gotti case, a tiny guppy in the big scheme of things, Weinstein, Epstein Raniere, Nasser, they all got a pass, as apparently Combs while they chased their white whale,

    for nearly as long they seem to cast a blind eye against the entire support system of the Moslem Brotherhood that includes CAIR and whose branch is Hamas I do recall the Bureau was enthusiastic to go after AIPAC in that same period of time,
    funny how that works

    all the Russian hoaxers, all of te White whale hunters are aghast, they should be, their cheap partor tricks were dismissed last tuesday,

  51. The responses to my comments all seem to focus on how awful Garland, Smith, etc. are. Good grief, I agree and said so in my comments. Pointing out that they are bad does not negate that they are skilled attorneys.

    Bottom line, it takes skills to accomplish the malevolent things that Garland, Smith, Bragg did, even if they fell short of their ultimate goal. Gaetz doesn’t have those skills. Not even close. Two years as a full time associate at a mid-sized east coast firm practicing corporate law prepared him to not only be AG, but the AG who succeeds where Garland, Smith, et al. failed? Again, that’s nuts.

    This isn’t a matter of will or courage.

    And as to the “shrieking lamentations of their women,” enjoy it now, because of the Gaetz nomination becomes typical of the second Trump administration, it’s all downhill from here.

  52. all of these senators showed enthusiastically bad judgement when it came to Garland, all 20 of them, they enabled the extraordinary abuses of power, they doubled down on Lisa Monaco and Clarke, they hold power because Trump literally risked his own life to win this, otherwise they would be on the back bench,

    who did the Dems put in after their first two nominations collapsed in 1993, Janet Reno, a remarkably unethical
    prosecutor from the Countrywalk case, to selective prosecution of small and large matters, like the Hot Suits case, among those she didn’t prosecute was her own aide, who partook of the

    we can go on to Waco and her covering for the Clintons, in every way she saw fit,

    or Loretta Lynch, another hack, who covered for the Clintons again, who
    was later part of the resistance,

    no one of any good will has been at Main Justice with the Dems in 30 years,

  53. miguel cervantes – So what? The issue is not whether previous AGs were bad, it is whether Gaetz has the ability to be a successful AG. He does not. Full stop. Pointing out the (substantial) faults of previous AGs doesn’t change that.

  54. Naturally the shrieking will intensify for a time. Eventually however, it will subside as better circumstances take effect.

  55. well eventually they will run out of oxygen, or realize they might as well be mimes,

    they screamed about the afghan bounties yet when Abbey Gate, they were silent, its rather striking they really care about anything that matters, the lara logans, the Catherine Herridges of the world, they are driven off or utterly deplatformed, yet every fresh scoop from the same old tired voices, well this time for sure,

  56. Hegseth supposedly attained the rank of Major, which for a 20-year career is cited as un-exceptional.

    But, he may well have found it difficult to attain promotions because the Obamoid flag officers of that era saw that he didn’t have the “wrong stuff” like they did!

  57. Eventually they will run out of oxygen? No. If Gaetz is actually confirmed, which is exceedingly unlikely, he will make mess, after mess, after mess as career staff run rings around him and leak like sieves. And Trump being Trump, he’ll probably insert himself up to his neck in Gaetz’s messes.

    If you want Trump to actually succeed, you do not want Matt Gaetz to be AG.

    Another point, people just get sick of this nonsense. Trump seems to think that making everyone’s head explode is good for him. It is not. People want government to work and, above all, they don’t want to have to pay much attention to it. Trump’s three-ring circus act is the reason that he lost in 2020. It is also the reason that Democrats stand to have a very good year in 2026 and the reason that, to a significant portion of the electorate, someone like Josh Shapiro is going to look like a welcome respite in 2028.

  58. probably look what they did to senior chief gallagher a few years down the road, perhaps the best enlisted men in the seals, does the Pentagon want war fighters or perfumed princes, we know who we face off against with Russia or China, with our much depleted forces,

    we know how they treated General Flynn, perhaps the premier military intel officer we have produced, drawing the counterinsurgency plan at the tribal level, he quickly became skeptical about the progress of the War, and his berth at DIA solidified this point, why Obama dismissed him with a desk man even after the Islamic State, proved to be much more varsity, all of these talking heads at the command staff level, who have no
    real accomplishment to show for 20 years
    of this conflict, that ended in Capitulation, yet some dream of even more fanciful resolutions,

  59. Bauxite, you might want to sit this one out, given how bad your judgement has been up till now on all things Trump.

    I must have missed that delicious crow stew you ate after the election.

    Of course you and the left will keep whining about everything Trump does that offends your sensibilities. You think that’s the way back to power. Trump has a short time to make a dent in the cronyism/corruption saturating DC.

    Trump didn’t come back to DC to make friends– but to expose his enemies and the enemies of Democracy.

  60. Tulsi Gabbard is too much of an isolationist and Putin fangirl.
    I do hope that the new attorney general whoever it is opens up an investigation as to the funding of all these Hamas freaks on campus.

  61. CC™ is starting to regain control of Bauxite.

    Not that it matters, but I have little regard for the foolishness that the Gaetz group (Blue Balls clique) pulled in the House, that still isn’t on President Trump IMO.

    The main job of most Representatives seem to be getting re-elected every 2 years.

  62. we foolishly thought we could get any budget discipline, marc elias roulette stole another bloc of seats, in new york largely, in virginia Colonel Bear claw’s brother snuck in, In Michigan they stole enough precincts, to get Slotkin in, who will soon enough reveal what side she is on, I’m not going to belabor the coincidences behind Jacky Rosen’s return, so they stole but more surrepticiously,

    after 20 years of promising the Afghan army would stand up, all those complicit in that fraud, leave me cold,

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