Just a little more than two weeks after Donald Trump’s historic reelection, the president-elect has already suffered his first major setback.
Trump’s abhorrent choice for attorney general — Matt Gaetz — has withdrawn his name from consideration after realizing that even members of his own party were not going to vote to confirm him.
Gaetz had two things working against him. One he could possibly overcome: The back-stabbing former congressman is not very well liked on Capitol Hill. But the other — accusations of sexual misconduct with minors — was almost certain to prove fatal to his chances.
Gaetz, with Trump’s apparent cooperation, was trying to keep those creepy allegations from being fully aired. On the day Trump announced the Florida congressman as his pick to head the U.S. Justice Department, Gaetz resigned from Congress, even though he was not yet legally obligated to do so.
Gaetz would only have had to leave Congress if he was confirmed by the Senate to move over to the executive branch. But he knew that if he stayed in Congress, even temporarily, the House committee that had been investigating him would be compelled to release its nearly ready report.
It was naive for Gaetz to think that his resignation would stop that, even though House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Trump loyalist, was on board in trying to keep the report under wraps. Rep. Michael Guest, the Mississippi Republican and former prosecutor who chairs the Ethics Committee, was not inclined to buck his party leaders, but there were Democrats on the committee who were sure to leak the report to the press or to Democratic senators on the committee that would hold Gaetz’s confirmation hearings. And there was always the possibility that Gaetz’s accusers, who had testified behind closed doors to the House Ethics Committee, would come forward to openly testify at those Senate hearings.
How Trump could not have foreseen the potentially damaging spectacle reflects yet again how his judgment is clouded by his desire to seek retribution for his own legal troubles. Trump, reportedly against some of his own advisers’ counsel, wanted Gaetz to lead the nation’s chief law enforcement agency not because Gaetz was morally or professionally qualified for the job but because Trump was certain he could get Gaetz to do his bidding.
This may not be the only setback Trump’s slate of nominees suffer because of either how poorly they were vetted or how indifferent the president-elect was to the incriminating information he received about them.
His inexperienced choice for secretary of defense, former Fox host Pete Hegseth, is accused of sexual assault and white supremacist leanings. Trump’s equally controversial choice for secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has a well-documented antagonism to medical science, not to mention his own allegation of sexual misconduct. It would not be surprising if both of them withdraw or are rejected by the Senate as more information surfaces.
During his first term in office, Trump acquired a reputation of governing by chaos. Early signs are that nothing much has changed in the intervening four years.
