gotchanewsdaily.com 
CNN
—
Editor’s Note: This is the third of a five-part series that looks at how Donald Trump mounted the greatest comeback in American political history, how he is preparing for what he and his own team describe as a potentially tumultuous second term, and what all that might mean for those who support him — and those who don’t. Read parts one and two.
For the MAGA faithful, Matt Gaetz might be the perfect pick for US attorney general.
The Florida congressman has defended Donald Trump at every turn, embraced the lie of a stolen 2020 election and pushed the idea that perhaps Trump supporters weren’t really responsible for the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. When Trump was on trial in New York in his hush money case and on his way to being convicted, Gaetz joined the procession of Republicans trouping in to support their leader. Along with a photo of himself standing behind Trump, Gaetz posted a phrase associated with the far-right, extremist Proud Boys: “Standing back and standing by, Mr. President.”
On Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, the president-elect writes in mid-November, “Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department.” A shockwave rolls through that department, which Gaetz has called so partisan it should be radically reformed or abolished. Then something at least modestly peculiar happens. Gaetz resigns his House seat.
Some Republicans say by stepping down from the 118th Congress promptly, Gaetz could help the party quickly replace him through a special election, protecting one more vote in the next Congress for Trump’s agenda. But critics note a detail: His resignation will halt a long investigation of Gaetz by the House Ethics Committee. And suddenly here is Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, another Trump booster, saying since the Cabinet pick from Florida is no longer in Congress, any findings should remain sealed. “I’m going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report,” Johnson says.
For a brief time, the buttress holds. But information from the investigation is soon splintering off to lawmakers and the media. The rumbles grow more intense, and everything comes crashing down. Not too many days after Gaetz is tapped for the top law enforcement job in America, his coveted nomination is in ruins. He bows out to the disappointment of Trump and the relief of some who were to sit in judgment.
“There were a lot of Republican senators who were concerned about defying Trump,” CNN’s Manu Raju reports from Capitol Hill, “but just could not get themselves to supporting Matt Gaetz’s nomination.”
When the report is released after much wrangling, it is every bit as bad as Republicans feared. Gaetz is rocked with allegations he paid women tens of thousands of dollars for drugs or sex – among them, a 17-year-old. He repeatedly denies having sex with a minor or paying for sex. Gaetz admits to unsavory behavior in his younger years but denies committing crimes, and commentators note he was never charged with breaking laws despite a Justice Department investigation. However, weeks later, when it is announced on the House floor that the MAGA firebrand will not be reclaiming his seat, some members of Congress applaud.
Commentators note it is the first and biggest failure for Trump since his November victory. Trump issues a terse thanks to Gaetz and pulls in former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as a replacement, noting on social media, “I have known Pam for many years — She is smart and tough, and is an AMERICA FIRST Fighter.”
Mindful of the urgency to charge out of Inauguration Day staffed and ready for action, Trump is now stacking up his other Cabinet picks fast. He’s made a safe bet choosing Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state. Although the Florida senator has been the butt of many of Trump’s jokes, he is an experienced political pro who will likely draw relatively little heat. New York Rep. Elise Stefanik is picked for United Nations ambassador — a tidy fit for Trump’s more combative views about international relations. Former pro-wrestling executive and big Republican donor Linda McMahon gets tapped for the Department of Education, which Trump is threatening to shutter. Howard Lutnick, head of the big financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, is chosen for the Department of Commerce. “He will lead our Tariff and Trade agenda,” Trump posts. There are more names.
Each selection will face the gauntlet of confirmation, but the Republican grip on the new Senate and a long tradition of giving incoming presidents freedom mean most of them will likely get through. CNN’s Jeff Zeleny says even if the votes for some seem shaky, Team Trump has a quick way of shoving reluctant GOP senators back in line — the danger of their own party pushing a more agreeable candidate in the next primary. “They’ve managed to whip the MAGA base into a menacing enough threat,” he says, “so look … I think he will get largely the nominees that he wants.”
The Gaetz saga, however, is a cautionary tale that indicates some of Trump’s picks may be hard sells. Among the hardest is an outlier from a legendary Democratic political dynasty: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
An independent candidate for most of the presidential contest, RFK Jr. suspended his campaign in late August and mounted the stage alongside Trump in a shower of fireworks. Trump told the cheering crowd, Kennedy is “a man who has been an incredible champion for so many of these values that we all share.” Now he is Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. It’s an odd pairing, considering that Kennedy formerly accused Trump of betraying his MAGA followers, and Trump called Kennedy “the most radical left candidate in the race.”
But if Trump can push aside the differences, some lawmakers and healthcare advocates are deeply concerned about a choice that strikes them as unusual to the point of unhinged. Although Kennedy denies being against vaccines, he has long suggested they should be voluntary. He’s raised unfounded questions about the safety of inoculations and promoted unproven links to autism. He says fluoride should be removed from the nation’s water supplies, even though it has long been considered key to preventing childhood tooth decay. He’s promoted conspiracy theories about AIDS, saying it comes from wearing down the immune system with drug use, which is not true. And he once allegedly chainsawed a dead whale on a beach and dumped a dead bear in Central Park.
Worries about what he might do in the nation’s top health role are so profound, 77 Nobel laureates send a letter to the Senate urging his defeat.
“You’re not going to lose the polio vaccine. That’s not gonna happen,” Trump tells reporters as the drumbeat against RFK grows. “I think he’s going to be much less radical than you would think. I think he’s got a very open mind, or I wouldn’t have put him there.”
Trump’s choice of another former Democrat to be director of national intelligence triggers more outcry. Former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is an Army National Guard veteran and Reserve officer who, like Trump, has shown an unusual affinity for some of America’s top adversaries. Republican Sen. Mitt Romney once accused her of “parroting false Russian propaganda.” The sudden overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the midst of Trump’s transition brought fresh headlines about Gabbard’s trip to see Assad in 2017, and her eventual pronouncement that the brutal dictator was “not an enemy of the United States.”
Nonetheless, Trump stands firmly by Kennedy and Gabbard.
He stands by Pete Hegseth too. When Trump taps the telegenic Fox News host and combat veteran to head the Department of Defense, some critics accuse the incoming president of trying to staff the government like a reality show — with people long on looks and short on experience. To be sure, Hegseth’s resume holds little to suggest he would know how to lead an organization of millions of people. What’s more, media coverage quickly focuses on how Hegseth had disparaged the role of women in combat and has faced allegations of sexual assault, drinking problems and financial mismanagement at veterans’ advocacy groups. Even his tattoos draw scrutiny. Hegseth, who denies the assault claim, excessive drinking in the workplace and reports of financial mismanagement, works the hallways of Congress fighting to dodge the fate of Gaetz.
But even ironclad Trump allies such as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham see a brutal battle ahead. “He obviously has a chance to defend himself here,” Graham says, “but some of this stuff is – it’s going to be difficult.”
Trump made no secret during his campaign about what kind of team he would assemble: people who will be fiercely loyal to him, clear away legal and regulatory barriers and scramble expectations. Many of his choices seem distinctly suited to help him build a presidency free of internal opposition and unfettered by advisers who might bring too much of the kind of experience, education or independence that might constrain his impulses.
“This time around, he’s putting people in place … who are not experts in their field,” says CNN’s Jim Acosta. After years of covering Trump, he believes the incoming president is seeking a kind of grand, political experiment. “He’s almost a mad scientist in a way because I think he wants to go back into the laboratory and see what happens if there are no guardrails. In the way that we learned the consequences of having a post-truth presidency, we might learn the consequences of having a post-expertise presidency.”
Just before Thanksgiving, Trump goes to Texas with his new government makeover mogul, Elon Musk, to watch the launch of a massive SpaceX rocket. The tech billionaire later shows up at Trump’s side at the Army-Navy football game too. Close observers say the pair is growing tighter by the day. The richest man in the world is helping the president-elect make picks for the new team and has shown a taste for dabbling in the issues. And the two new buddies are not waiting for the inauguration to flex their muscles.
‘President Musk’
Outside the White House, a jubilation of song and dance heralds the lighting of the National Christmas tree. President Joe Biden, who has kept his public appearances low-key since the election, seems once again in his element — smiling, clapping, enjoying the season. “My wish for you and for the nation, now and always,” he says to the cheering crowd, “is we continue to seek the light of liberty and love, kindness and compassion, dignity, and decency. Merry Christmas, America!”
But that was a few days ago. Now, two miles away, where Biden was inaugurated in a ceremony Trump unceremoniously skipped, the grand white dome of the Capitol is covering an uproar. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has negotiated a delicate bipartisan budget deal called a “continuing resolution” to avoid a government shutdown before the holiday. Capitol Hill is joyful over the rare show of cooperation that produced the 1,500-page agreement. Then Musk blows it all up.
“This bill should not pass,” he writes on his social media platform X. Through more than 100 posts in a day, he rips the deal as misguided, wasteful and “criminal.” Never mind that some of his claims about it are provably false. He invokes the ever-present threat of retribution by the MAGA base, writing, “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!”
Trump comes out against it – and injects a new demand of raising the nation’s borrowing limit before he takes office. The bill collapses. Over the next few days, a stripped-down version is cobbled together, the votes are wrangled for approval, and all of official Washington furiously speculates about what the episode might portend for this new presidency.
For Democrats, like Washington state Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the read is easy: “It’s clear who’s in charge, and it’s not President-elect Donald Trump. President Elon Musk spent all day railing against Republicans’ CR, succeeded in killing the bill, and then Trump decided to follow his lead.” Others on her side of the aisle start pushing “President Musk” and “shadow president” memes online.
Trump, at least initially, gives no sign he is bothered. But voices inside his team indirectly suggest he is by insisting to journalists that Trump, not Musk, really is in charge. And again, there is an interesting detail: The final version of the budget bill does not contain the debt ceiling suspension Trump seems to badly want. Trump tells CBS he’d like to go even further. “The debt ceiling should be thrown out entirely,” he says.
The move surprises Republicans who have frequently criticized Democrats who want more borrowing authority as economically careless. But many analysts say Trump’s wish is underpinned by a simple reality. For all his talk of making government smaller and cheaper, he is proposing a combination of programs and tax cuts that could cost trillions of dollars. He may need all the money he can get. And if he can expand his right to borrow it on Biden’s watch, so much the better to avoid future blame.
Yet, his party’s congressional delegation has told him no. And in the rapid sequence of events that led to that moment, in the influence of Musk, and in this gentle but effective pushback from the party, Zeleny suspects potential future troubles for Trump. “Even a month before Trump’s second term starts,” he says, “we (were) seeing these challenges of governing. Lot of cooks in the kitchen, and who is in charge?”
Undaunted, the weekend before Christmas, Trump throws a fresh stunner into the headlines. He declares he wants the US to retake the Panama Canal, which President Jimmy Carter put under the control of Panama in a 1977 deal that guaranteed neutral, international access to the waterway.
Trump ominously suggests that somehow China is up to shenanigans. And Panama is charging too much. “We’re being ripped off at the Panama Canal,” he declares in a cut-and-paste of his standard grievance, “like we’re being ripped off everywhere else.” Within days he will expand his Christmas wish list to include American ownership of Greenland, as Donald Trump Jr. cavorts on the island territory taking selfies and handing out MAGA hats. His dad hints that it would also be nice to scoop up Canada and rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. And if force is needed, Trump indicates he might consider deploying the military to Greenland and Panama and putting an economic squeeze on Canada. Some world leaders shrug, some ridicule the idea, all imply any notion of America conquering their lands is ludicrous.
But the clock keeps ticking down to the final hours of 2024, and for better or worse, Trump keeps rolling out his aspirations and lining up his team. With the backing of agreeable judges he planted in the courts his first time around, he is bracing to meet the flurry of legal challenges his norm-shattering agenda will surely bring. He seems confident he can ignore any noise from the cornered Democrats, and unconcerned about any rebellions that might arise from Republicans.
Indeed, just as he did in his first term, only more so, Trump seems prepared to push the limits of presidential power as far as he can. And everyone knows if it works, he could become the most powerful chief executive in modern times. Maybe ever.
