After a decade on the national stage, Donald Trump still has the power to stun, as he demonstrated to foes and admirers alike on Wednesday with the announcement that he’s nominating Florida Representative Matt Gaetz to be attorney general. As The New York Times notes, the Gaetz pick is “a provocative move to install a compliant ally at the helm of the Justice Department as he seeks retribution against those who prosecuted him.” The newspaper also observes that Gaetz “was the focus of a three-year federal sex-trafficking investigation that ended in 2023 when the Justice Department under President Biden declined to bring charges. He was the subject of a House Ethics Committee inquiry into his conduct until he resigned from his seat late Wednesday, effectively ending the investigation.”

In both his fealty to Trump and the ethical controversies that swirl around him, Gaetz resembles Trump’s first mentor, Roy Cohn, the notoriously crooked lawyer who trafficked in blackmail and backroom deals. In 2017, at the start of his first term, Trump was annoyed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions wasn’t doing enough to protect him from the investigation into Russian collusion. Trump was upset that Sessions wanted to recuse himself from the investigation, leading the present to cry out, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”

While Gaetz doesn’t have anything like Cohn’s ruthless animal cunning and genuine evil genius, the nominee shows every sign of being an utterly subservient loyalist who will turn the weapons of the legal system against Trump’s enemies. Indeed, Gaetz has already shown a firm conviction that the law is merely a tool of political warfare. In 2018, Gaetz called for Jeff Sessions to prosecute Hillary Clinton. Gaetz has also said, “We’re proud of the work we did on January 6”—a reference to the 2021 attack on the Capitol.

Punchbowl senior correspondent Andrew Desiderio reports, “My phone is blowing up with Senate Republican aides aghast at Trump’s nomination of Gaetz. Some quite confidently saying there’s no way their boss votes to confirm him.”

Idaho Representative Mike Simpson, a Republican, was asked if Gaetz had the character and experience necessary to be attorney general. He responded, “Are you shittin me, that you just asked that question? No! But hell, you’ll print that and now I’m going to be investigated.” Maine Senator Susan Collins said she was “shocked” at the nomination and that “if the nomination proceeds I’m sure there will be an extensive background check by the FBI and public hearings and a lot of questions.”

Collins is perhaps being optimistic that she and her fellow Republicans, who will form a majority in the new Senate, will be permitted to play their constitutional role of advising on and consenting to presidential nominations. This assumes that Trump will govern within the rules of the Constitution.

Current Issue

November 2024 Issue

Trump has already demanded that Republicans in the Senate allow him recess appointments to fill his government quickly, without Senate oversight. On Sunday, Trump wrote: “Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!).” On Wednesday Ed Whelan, an influential lawyer in the conservative movement, tweeted:

Hope it’s wrong, but I’m hearing through the grapevine about this bonkers plan: Trump would adjourn both Houses of Congress under Article II, section 3, and then recess-appoint his Cabinet. As a predicate for Trump’s exercise of adjournment power, one House of Congress would seek the other House’s consent to adjourn and be denied. So Speaker of House would need to be complicit in evisceration of Senate’s advice-and-consent role.

This move to circumvent the advise-and-consent role of the Senate parallels another Trump move to push aside traditional congressional authority. On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported, “President-elect Donald Trump’s aides are readying unconventional strategies to implement at least some recommendations from a new government spending commission with or without congressional approval.” This move is being done to empower Trump’s plutocratic allies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in a nongovernmental agency tasked with cutting spending. The Post added, “Although changes to government spending typically require an act of Congress, Trump aides are exploring plans to challenge a 1974 budget law in a way that would give the White House the power to unilaterally adopt the Musk commission’s proposals.”

The schemes to bypass the Senate on nominations and Congress as a whole on spending are both evidence of Trump’s authoritarian push to move beyond the checks and balances of the Constitution. It’s unclear that Republicans in Congress, or indeed many of their Democratic peers, have the will to resist this authoritarian onslaught.

Trump needs to subvert advise-and-consent laws because he wants a government of loyalists. Trump’s nominees to date have been a mixed-bag politically. Some have been typical right-wing Republican politicians such as Marco Rubio (slotted to be secretary of state), who have been welcomed by the bipartisan establishment as likely to stay within the Washington consensus. Others have have been more unusual: for example, Fox News host Pete Hegseth, nominated to be defense secretary, and former representative Tulsi Gabbard, slated to be director of national intelligence. Hegseth is an extremist who in 2017 called for a preemptive nuclear attack on North Korea, while Gabbard is an unorthodox thinker who has a mix of anti-war and militarist positions. While Gabbard has unfairly been accused by Hillary Clinton of being a Russian asset, the real trouble with her is her deep Islamophobia.

What unites these disparate figures is they are all Trump loyalists, proving their fealty in the political or media arena where they boldly defended the incoming president. In nominating these figures, Trump is acting like a cult leader testing the loyalty of his flock. He is forcing Republicans to bend the knee and kiss his ring.

Will Congress be able to resist Trump’s move to create a government of cronies?

The Gaetz nomination is controversial enough that it may be shot down. Indeed, given how widely Gaetz is hated, it is hard not to speculate that he is merely being used as a diversion, to make it easier for figures like Hegseth and Gabbard to sail through. There’s even an argument that Gaetz is likely to be so incompetent that he might be the best choice for Democrats.

But, such wishful thinking apart, there’s little real reason to be hopeful. Over the last eight years, Republicans have repeatedly caved to Trump. The usual pattern is initial criticism—followed by abject surrender. After all, the vast majority of Republicans in the House were unwilling to impeach Trump for inciting an attack on the Capitol, nor were most Republicans in the Senate willing to remove or punish him for the offense.

Asked if recess appointments could be used to confirm Gaetz, Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie said, “He’s the Attorney General. Suck it up!” Texas Representative Troy Nehls said, “There’s no question [Trump] is the leader of our party. He’s got a mission statement. His mission, his goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it. All of it. Every single word. If Donald Trump says, ‘Jump three feet high and scratch your head,’ we all jump three feet high and scratch our head.” Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville warned any Republican considering voting against Trump’s nominees, “We’re gonna try to get you out of the Senate if you try to do that.” These are not the words of free men, but of men who have sold their souls to a personality cult.

Republicans such as Tuberville can only threaten other lawmakers of their own party. But there is little sign that Democrats are prepared to resist either. Democratic lawmakers still seem in shellshock after losing the presidency. The attention of Democratic Party leaders has turned inward, toward reflection on what went wrong. Ordinary Democrats, who formed a once vibrant popular resistance movement, are also licking their wounds.

When Trump won in 2016, there were immediate protests all over the country. Nothing comparable has emerged in 2024. The retreat of the Democrats and the absence of any organized popular resistance is a major problem. Trump is making his authoritarian push now. The only way to slow it down is for the opposition to get its act together and make each Trump victory politically costly. In the absence of such resistance, Trump is likely to secure unprecedented presidential power.