Matt Gaetz News confirms Trump’s revenge talk was not a blunder

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If you search the text chains of virtually any political nerd from the past 48 hours, you’ll come across one profane shorthand that’s likely to appear repeatedly, regardless of their political affiliation: WTF?

That has been the general reaction during the first full week since Donald Trump began forming an administration ready to deliver on his promise. complaint handling agenda. At first, the choices were novel, albeit flashy. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida as secretary of state is an unexpected choice for an incoming president who has long despised Rubio’s. neocon worldview as folly. Neither South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as head of Homeland Security nor former Representative Lee Zeldin, in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency, exactly comes across as an expert in the departments they will now lead.

Then came the announcements from Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard. The next president seriously wants a Fox News host for Secretary of Defense and a long-standing Russian sympathizer for Director of National Intelligence?

What the factual F?indeed

But none of that prepared the public for the biggest bombshell yet, one that drew audible gasps from members of the House of Representatives at a closed-door meeting when they learned Wednesday that Trump planned to nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz as the next attorney general.

In short order, the “WTF?” lyrics have been upgraded to “AYFKM?”

There are almost too many reasons why the prospect of Gaetz as the nation’s top law enforcement official has stunned a Washington that was already bracing for Trump to make some outside-the-box Cabinet choices. Beyond the MAGA faithful who love his epic trollsGaetz is perhaps best known as the congressman who spent years staring a secretive ethics panel into his own behavior fish a fish teens, cash and sex. His colleagues reject him as an adolescent with a voting card, a walking embodiment of Trumpist impulses. Even the Justice Department investigated whether Gaetz’s conduct violated some federal laws. Gaetz is now in line to take over that same Justice Department.

To make the whole story even shadier, Gaetz resigned from the House of Representatives on Wednesday, reportedly just days before the House Ethics Committee planned to release a report that has long been a rumor in Washington. While Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing and claimed he is being singled out in retaliation for daring to question GOP leadership, the bipartisan panel has been quietly working on a report that could be released as early as Friday. Usually the ethics committee ends it examines whether a member quits their job because they can no longer punish a colleague for their actions, but it may also be possible to steer his findings to the Justice Department or even to the Senate, where Gaetz will face a difficult hearing.

But put all that innuendo and intrigue aside and think only of Gaetz’s reputation as a member of Congress. Almost exactly a year ago, Gaetz had just removed Chairman Kevin McCarthy from his leadership, a move that stemmed of a personal one resentment that continues to this day go both ways. Gaetz soon revealed that he had no plans to get another Republican in the House of Representatives enough support to replace McCarthy as Speaker, leaving Congress immobilized for weeks while this self-inflicted drama played out. My editor flagged this paragraph from a DC Brief column from the moment:

Most lawmakers, including many in the far-right Freedom Caucus, have had it with Gaetz. While they once approved of his antics, most now simply dismiss him as a show horse more interested in booking TV hits than passing legislation. ‘Charlatan’ and ‘fraud’ are spread around without reservation. “A smart guy with no morals” was one lawmaker’s cruel assessment. Even Gaetz’s normal enablers are growing tired of the headlines generated without regard to what the second day story might look like.

What many in Washington are concerned about now is that Gaetz won Trump’s endorsement not despite the reputation laid out in the paragraph above, but because of it. Trump vowed during his presidential campaign revenge against those he viewed as enemies — Democrats, NeverTrumpers, journalists, academics, regulators, prosecutors — and left the threat of violence hanging in the mix. When former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney returned to the campaign trail in support of Trump’s rival, the former president suggested she should see if she still supported Kamala Harris when “guns were pointed at her face.”

On Wednesday night in Washington, many realized that Gaetz might be the perfect person to carry out Trump’s revenge agenda. ‘The hunted become the hunters’, Trump ally and podcast provocateur Steve Bannon saidpredicting that Gaetz would send to prison those who sought accountability for Trump and his allies. Lawmakers — even those inclined to give Trump a pass — couldn’t contain their positions contempt for the vote that set Trump in motion.

Professional prosecutors are shocked and consider their next steps. Many are reviewing the DOJ’s dismissal and separation policies. Mainstream norms wondered if there were ways to limit the power of any AG, through congressional additions, budget provisions, or simply denying him the basics of parking lots. Even some Trump apologists believed Gaetz was a step too far rationalized the announcement as a symbolic show of force intended to soften opposition to his own Real choose when it comes. Also political insiders mused that this could be a ‘false flag’ operation to make the next choice more palatable.

So yes. We apologize if this entire exercise seems rather irrational, hasty and reckless. While the choice of loyalists is understandable, the selection to install Gaetz as the nation’s top cop is more than just bucking norms. It is a signal to take Trump’s most offensive, anti-democratic claims of the past year deadly seriously. And given a second chance, he appears willing to make the most of largely unchecked power.

Senate Democrats will not entertain the slightest reality that Gaetz can be confirmed, and many Republicans were eager to make it a non-startereven in a Trump-dominated Washington where Republicans have a relatively free hand to do as they please. But Trump is setting up an early test of the GOP’s flexibility suggestive he could bypass the Senate’s role in confirming his appointments altogether and let Trump build up his Cabinet while lawmakers are in recess. While such recess agreements are not uncommon, they often are considered a short-term patch for specific nominees, not a wholesale strategy based on senators renounce their constitutional powers in astonishing acts of complicity.

Yet here we are. This is the coming administration – at least as Trump sees it in his imagination and Republicans fear in their nightmares. At least for the time being, all of Washington should regard it as a serious play with dire consequences if it proves fruitful.

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