Media Helping Senate GOP Shove Bananas In Our Tailpipes
We’re not gonna fall for it.
Donald Trump’s second term is the horror movie sequel we hoped would never happen, but after Merrick Garland fell asleep outside Trump’s crypt, 76 million people collectively removed the chains from his coffin and now he’s free to once again terrorize the nation.
I don’t feel eight years younger but nonetheless, I’m reading articles that seem as if they were written in November 2016. Trump has nominated a carnival freak show Cabinet: Fox News host Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, literal Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard for national intelligence director, anti-vax creep Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of health and human services, and not-so-secret sex predator Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Don’t worry, though, because people who are consistently wrong about everything reassure us that Senate Republicans will push back against this nonsense.
Business Insider reports that certain “Republican senators … could be headaches for Trump’s nominees,” and Fox News even suggests that there are six “Republican senators … could sink a Trump nomination.” The Hill puts that number up to nine. I doubt there’s even a single Senate Republican who would meekly cry “stop” if Trump tried to wipe his bottom with an original copy of the Constitution.
So, we’re playing this game again
The nine Senate Republicans The Hill suggests might foil Trump’s mad schemes are Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, freshman John Curtis, Bill Cassidy, Todd Young, Joni Ernst, Thom Tillis, John Cornyn, and former Republican leader Mitch McConnell. This is all quite hilarious. Back during Trump’s first horror show term, Collins and Murkowski were the only Republicans who occasionally defied Trump. McConnell gave them hall passes to oppose certain nominees and legislation when he knew it didn’t matter. The one time this backfired was when the late John McCain joined Collins and Murkowski at the last minute and voted against repealing the Affordable Care Act. You can tell from McConnell’s dour expression that this was not part of the plan. (Watch below for a much-needed pick-me-up.)
Democrats and liberal pundits argue that Trump has no real mandate because he only won the popular vote by less than two percentage points, and he didn’t win an outright majority of voters. However, Republicans don’t care about mandates. They have no interest in seeking consensus. All that matters to them is power and they have it.
If voters expected Republicans to do the right thing for once, they shouldn’t have rewarded them with every branch of government. Spineless Marco Rubio is set to serve as the next Secretary of State, which he likely sees as the launchpad for a presidential run in 2028. Liz Cheney stood up to Trump and she lost both her GOP leadership position and her House seat. Elise Stefanik replaced Cheney after embracing Trump’s 2020 election lies and is about to become the next UN ambassador with support from at least one Democratic senator, possibly more.
Trump’s actual running mate, Elon Musk, has near limitless funds to target any defiant Republicans. Sure, Collins has expressed her usual “shock” that Trump nominated Gaetz for attorney general, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to risk a primary challenge in 2026. (She easily defeated her 2020 Democratic challenger Susan Gideon, whose campaign was overfunded and poorly run.)
Democratic Rep. Katie Hill was forced out of Congress because of a revenge-porn fueled ethics investigation, but the House GOP leadership might generously bury its ethics report into Gaetz’s more repulsive activities.
Collins told CNN’s Manu Raju: “Obviously it would be helpful for us to see [the ethics report], but I believe it’s very likely that the information in that report would come out through the background check, the committee investigation and questioning at the hearings.”
Joni Ernst has said Gaetz has an “uphill climb” to confirmation, which only concedes that the nominee with what Diane Chambers would call “the morals of a rutting sea elephant” might not sail through his confirmation hearings. Maybe a few Republicans playing to the CNN electorate will muss up his hair a little, but that doesn’t mean they won’t vote to confirm. This is all familiar double talk. Senate Republicans will all eventually get to yes because they’re already there now, resting their feet.
There’s no upside to defying Trump. Even so-called “good” Republicans don’t want to appear as if they’ve enabled even the smallest Democratic victory, and Democrats have not done a great job at convincing voters that blocking Trump’s Goodfellas Cabinet is in America’s best interests. Although, to be fair, they haven’t actually tried. According to Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan at Punchbowl News, Democrats have decided to remain “strategically silent” about Trump’s terrible Cabinet picks, which get worse every day.
Chuck Schumer, soon to be the Senate minority leader, and other members of his political mime troupe think they can stand quietly in the corner while Republicans fight it out, but Republicans aren’t actually fighting each other. One Democratic insider said, “Republicans have made this mess, they have to clean it up.”
I struggle to comprehend why Democrats wouldn’t spend every moment until Inauguration Day actively turning the public against the next Trump administration. The average American will only understand the stakes if you tell them. Otherwise, they’ll just think Tulsi Gabbard as national intelligence director is no worse than Sean Duffy as transportation secretary. At least Duffy has extensive Road Rules experience.
Yet, what’s worse than remaining “strategically silent” is actually praising Trump’s Cabinet nominees, as Colorado Gov. Jared Polis did for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“I’m excited by the news that the President-Elect will appoint [Kennedy Jr.] to the [Department of Health and Human Services],” he willingly posted on social media. “He helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 and will help make America healthy again by shaking up HHS and FDA. I hope he leans into personal choice on vaccines rather than bans (which I think are terrible, just like mandates) but what I’m most optimistic about is taking on big pharma and the corporate ag oligopoly to improve our health.”
New York Times columnist Ezra Klein explains that Polis embracing Kennedy Jr. is a deliberate strategy to “win back the hippies.”
“The crunchy, anti-vaxx, anti-corporate politics [Kennedy Jr.] represents used to have a home in the Democratic Party,” Klein writes. “But the pandemic polarized Americans around trust in scientific and public health institutions, and comfort with public health mandates, and there’s little room left for people with Kennedy’s politics in the Democratic coalition.”
Strange how the global pandemic that killed more than a million Americas, more than any other country, has made most Democrats less tolerant of the kooky anti-vax Phoebe Buffays in their lives.
I know politics is addition not subtraction, but there’s zero benefit in supporting anyone who willingly aligned themselves with Trump — especially someone like Kennedy Jr. who wants to make polio great again. Polis did call out Kennedy Jr.’s kookier positions but he also encouraged Sen. Cory Booker to have an “open mind” about his nomination. I have no idea what’s going on here. This isn’t difficult: Do not collaborate with Trump or his Legion of Doom Cabinet. Do not offer them a veneer of respectability or pretense of normality. Never stop reminding Americans how corrupt and shameless they are. Do not help them. The fact I even have to say this means it’s gonna be a long-ass four years.
The Katie Hill story pisses me off. The correct response needed to be "fuck this ethics shit" and let the story die when the next shiny object comes along. Especially during the Trump era, this proved to be the best way through any scandal, especially one the voters don't give a crap about (name me one Katie Hill voter in her district who would have said "oh, wait she was unethical, eek, I won't vote for her now" and I'll sell you the extended warranty and undercoating). Instead, she resigned, losing that seat for good (it is still in GOP hands!).
Democrats have to learn to stop playing by chump rules.
I've asked people why Senate Democrats do not immediately hold hearings on these nominees at least to get negative news out about them before the GOP Senate gavels in, and I've been told--incorrectly--that no hearings can be held until Trump actually takes office and makes his nominations "official". (For the record--president-elects often nominate, and the Senate often approves, nominees before even taking office, so they have much of their Cabinet in place by inauguration day).
But why hold hearings or focus a coordinated media strategy on these guys, and why leak an ethics report, when we can just as easily sit back and silent and assume the media and "principled" Republicans will do the work for you?
It's bad enough that the American voters decided Trump is just fine and nothing matters. But it's even worse that the opposition party has decided a policy of "getting out of the way" is somehow going to pay off in some future election, as if that ever happened.