The week in US politics: Gaetz fiasco shows Trump he won’t get everything his way
It has been a busy week for US president-elect Donald Trump. On Wednesday alone, he found time to not only take to the phone to lobby for Matt Gaetz, his attorney general pick and the subject of sexual misconduct allegations, but to also unveil the latest product in his range of merchandise. The limited-edition electric guitar features the American eagle emblem and the president’s signature and retails at $10,000 (€9,600).
Perhaps it occurred to him to gift one to Gaetz who had, by Thursday, decided to end his futile bid to gain confirmation for the coveted attorney general role.
On Thursday CNN’s legal affairs correspondent, Paula Reid, had approached Gaetz’s office seeking comment on information she had received that the House of Representatives ethics committee, in the course of its investigation into Gaetz, had heard evidence from a woman who said she had had two sexual encounters with Gaetz at a party when she was aged 17, the second of which also involved an adult woman.
The Florida congressman has repeatedly denied that he had sex with a minor and after an investigation, the department of justice declined to press charges. Gaetz had spent Wednesday in the company of vice-president-elect JD Vance on Capitol Hill meeting senators whose support he required to secure his appointment as attorney general, and claimed he was encouraged by the response.
Later that day, the ethics committeemet and concluded that it would not release its report on Gaetz given that he had resigned from the House. But it was also clear that Gaetz would fall short in the Senate confirmation vote confirmation for his nomination as attorney general.
On Thursday, it ended quickly. CNN made it known that it planned to go live with its new reporting at about 12.30pm. No response was received. But shortly before the report aired, Gaetz confirmed by a social media post that he had decided to withdraw his name from the position of attorney general.
“It is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition,” he wrote in a post on X. “There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General.”
It was a bitter blow to a figure who carried with him through his years in the House of Representatives a radioactive ambition. The relief in the Senate was clear.
“I think because of the reports that were coming out, it was probably a good decision,” Oklahoma Republican senator Markwayne Mullin commented.
The president-elect, meanwhile, delicately sidestepped the reasons that made Gaetz such a toxic choice to many of his party colleagues.
“I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz in seeking approval to be Attorney General,” Trump posted.
“He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the Administration, for which he has much respect. Matt has a wonderful future, and I look forward to watching all of the great things he will do!”
That remains to be seen. As Gaetz resigned his congressional seat immediately after accepting Trump’s invitation, his time on Capitol Hill has reached an end for now. And his withdrawal left Trump back at square one in the first setback of his second term in office – and provides the first signal that he may not have the Republican side of the Senate completely at his beck and call.
But the Gaetz fiasco serves as a vivid example of how to stand out in the court of Donald Trump. He reportedly settled on the 42-year-old after finding alternative candidates stiff and unimpressive as performers. Gaetz had, prior to the House ethics investigations, emerged as a confident and aggressive television persona and a trenchant defender of Donald J Trump.
It was easy for Trump to see him fulfilling the role of his ideal vision of an attorney general willing to facilitate his use of the department of justice as an instrument to prosecute political adversaries. As it turned out, the anticipation over who would fill the void Gaetz departure creates was brief. “It’s good for democracy,” the Connecticut Democratic senator Chris Murphy said of Gaetz’s departure. “But who comes next? It could be worse.”
Within hours, Trump had selected another Floridian, the former state attorney general Pam Bondi.
“Pam will refocus the [department of justice] on its intended purpose of fighting Crime and Making America Safe Again,” the president-elect wrote on his Truth Social platform. “I have known Pam for many years – she is smart and tough and is an America First fighter, who will do a terrific job as Attorney General.” Legislators from both sides agreed that Bondi, at the very least, possesses the experience required for the office.
The Gaetz controversy sucked up so much oxygen that it could easily be overlooked that JD Vance was also busy this week trying to help another Trump nominee, his defence secretary pick Pete Hegseth, assure senators there was nothing to allegations made by a woman that he had sexually assaulted her following a conference in California.
“As far as the media is concerned, I’ll keep this very simple. The matter was fully investigated, and I was completely cleared. And that’s where I’m at,” Hegseth said tersely in his only public remarks this week. Hegseth will, if confirmed, serve as a Pentagon chief intent on running a wrecking ball through the progressive steps taken by the military in recent decades: he has questioned the role of women serving in combat situations, has complained, in one of several books he has written, that “woke” and “effeminate” appointees to top roles have weakened the US military, and in 2019 he asked Trump to pardon service members accused of war crimes.
Hegseth is also a proven television performer. The former veteran is a co-host on the Fox News show Fox & Friend Weekends. He joins other Trump picks, Dri Mehmet Oz to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, who started out as Oprah Winfrey’s television show doctor before hosting his own show, and Sean Duffy, a former reality television star and more recently a Fox business show host, who has also served as a member of Congress. He is to serve as transportation secretary.
Trump’s other high-profile and controversial picks of Robert F Kennedy for health and Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic presidential primary candidate, his nomination for national intelligence director, never served as television show hosts. But both are high-profile and familiar television faces. Gabbard’s nomination has alarmed many current and former colleagues in Congress given her sympathetic stances taken on Russia, Iran, Syria and China in the past.
“This is a job for an honest broker without any pronounced policy biases,” Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN in Trump’s last administration and his opponent in this year’s Republican primary said during the week. But force of personality has obliterated policy record as Trump puts together a cabinet that, from a distance, seems composed of television folks who caught the eye of one of US politics’s most dedicated consumers of television shows. It all hints at an incendiary upcoming administration in Washington
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