Senate Republicans won't save us
John McCain isn't walking through that door.
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Donald Trump is swiftly assembling a Legion of Doom cabinet, which includes Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, Tulsi Gabbard for national intelligence director, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of health and human services, and, yes, that Matt Gaetz for attorney general. These picks stand out for their sheer scope of unfitness and corruption.
Already, the mainstream media has offered the faint hope that the Senate, soon to be under Republican control, will faithfully execute its constitutional duty for advice and consent on Trump’s nominees. Last weekend, NBC News quoted unnamed Republican sources who claimed that a majority of Republican senators saw no path for Gaetz’s confirmation. Newsweek seized on GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s comment on Meet the Press that sexual assault allegations could sink Hegseth’s nomination. Politico ran a piece titled “These senators hold RFK Jr.’s fate in their hands.” Fox News even suggested that there were “6 Republican senators who could sink a Trump nomination.”
It’s comforting to think that there are still adults in the room when Senate Republicans meet. But you shouldn’t get your hopes up.
Republican senators folded time after time in the face of Trump’s excesses and abuses of power during his first term. Now, he returns to the White House far more powerful than he was after his failed coup. Although his popular vote margin has shrunk since Election Day, he still received a larger share of the vote than his past two presidential races. He carried the Rust Belt states by a larger margin than in 2016. He flipped back Arizona and Georgia, both states he tried to steal in 2020 (he’s even under indictment for doing so in Georgia).
This is not 2017 when Trump entered office as an outsider. Over the past eight years, he’s steadily purged the party of anyone but MAGA loyalists, pathetic sycophants, and craven opportunists. It’s completely his party now.
Don’t count on a Senate Republican resistance
During a 60 Minutes report on the cabinet picks, correspondent Scott Pelley correctly observed that ”some nominees appear to have no compelling qualifications other than loyalty for Trump,” adding, “It’s up to the new Republican majority in the Senate to determine if these nominees are equipped to represent the American people.”
Political scientist Don Moynihan posted on Bluesky, “If the Senate GOP actually fulfills their constitutional advice and consent responsibilities, these nominations will not make it.”
It’s possible that one or more of Trump’s nominations won’t make it. Hegseth in particular is reeling amid reports he not only hushed up a woman who accused him of sexual assault but also didn’t tell the Trump team about it until after his nomination was announced. But even if Trump ends up having to nominate a different right-wing TV host to run the military, it’s highly unlikely Senate Republicans will serve as a meaningful bulwark against his extremism.
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We’re eight years into the MAGA age and journalists still give credence to the notion that Republicans might prioritize the interests of the American people over maintaining their power and good standing in the party. During Trump’s first term, the media would often report on Republican senators’ private concerns about Trump’s nominees that never materialized into actual action. Former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake might’ve criticized Trump on the Senate floor but he still voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after a sham FBI investigation into sexual assault claims against him. Maine Sen. Susan Collins’s ongoing “concerns” became a running joke that showcased her utter fecklessness. (She’s still at it.)
When Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski announced days after Trump’s first inauguration that they weren’t voting to confirm the unqualified Betsy DeVos as education secretary, the Atlantic warned that DeVos could only afford one more GOP defection. Of course, that defection never came. It often seemed as if Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell offered Collins and Murkowski hall passes for more controversial nominees and legislation. This maintained their faux-moderate credentials without jeopardizing Trump’s agenda. That looked to be the case for the GOP’s attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act — Collins and Murkowski’s “no” votes would’ve been performative without the late McCain’s surprise vote to save the health care law. (Senate Republicans will have three votes to spare this time, assuming Dave McCormick is confirmed as the winner in his race against Bob Casey.)
McCain is obviously no longer in the Senate. Flake, Rob Portman from Ohio, Bob Corker from Tennessee, and Ben Sasse from Nebraska are also long gone, although they rarely defied Trump when it mattered. Remember when Senate Republicans warned that if Trump fired Jeff Sessions as attorney general, they might not confirm a successor? Sasse declared on the Senate floor in August 2018, “I find it really difficult to envision any circumstance where I would vote to confirm a successor to Jeff Sessions if he is fired because he’s executing his job rather than choosing to act as a partisan hack.” But when Sessions was eventually fired for that very reason, Sasse nonetheless voted to confirm his replacement, Bill Barr. The red lines never hold against Trump. They’re just for show.
The grim reality is that despite Trump’s attempted coup, criminal record, and openly extremist positions, voters still reelected him and handed Republicans control of both chambers of Congress. As a result, Republicans have far less reason to fear any serious political fallout from enabling Trump. Their more immediate concern are direct threats and intimidation from the unrestrained MAGA cult.
When CNN asked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene last week what would happen if Republican senators refused to confirm Trump’s nominees, she said, "Well then they have to deal with Donald Trump and they'll have to deal with Elon Musk and his great new PAC and the American people.” (Watch below.)
Musk, who runs the rightwing propaganda outlet once known as Twitter, has near limitless funds to spend bankrolling primary challenges to any senator who doesn’t reflexively support the MAGA agenda. Collins is up for reelection in 2026, and while Democrats would love to finally unseat her in a state they’ve carried in the past nine presidential elections, she’s at greater risk of losing to a well-funded MAGA challenger in a primary.
Electing a criminal has consequences
The fact of the matter is that Gaetz, Gabbard, Hegseth, and Kennedy aren’t being nominated in spite of their unfitness. They are being nominated because of it. They are Trump’s latest loyalty test.
Gaetz and Hegseth in particular are shockingly unfit for their proposed cabinet positions, and both are burdened with personal scandals that would’ve tanked a nomination coming from any other president. Journalist Judd Legum has detailed multiple disqualifying facts about Hegseth, including a column he wrote in college that argued having sex with an unconscious woman is not rape (he has also been accused of rape). Gaetz was already under a House ethics investigation for allegations of sexual misconduct and misuse of funds (he was also recently under federal criminal investigation for sex trafficking).
Trump is a convicted felon and an adjudicated rapist. Multiple women have accused him of sexual assault. Why should we expect the Senate to hold Trump’s cabinet to higher legal and moral standards than voters held the next president of the United States, especially after Trump has spent a decade priming his supporters to yell “witch hunt” in response to any investigation that incriminates him?
Consider how Senate Republicans handled the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh. Not only did they confirm him, but they made good on his veiled threat that Democrats would “reap the whirlwind” for airing them in the first place. When Republicans rammed through Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation even though voting was already underway in the 2020 election, Lindsey Graham claimed this was justified because “Chuck Schumer and his friends in the liberal media conspired to destroy the life of Brett Kavanaugh and hold that Supreme Court seat open.” (Democrats in fact had no such diabolical plan.) Even the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority didn’t lessen Republican resentment, and nearly four years later, Senate Republicans grilled Ketanji Brown Jackson during her own hearings about how Democrats had apparently mistreated poor Justice Kavanaugh.
Republicans are already playing victim regarding the controversies surrounding Hegseth. The Associated Press reported that a fellow service member flagged Hegseth as a possible “insider threat” because he has a tattoo on his arm that’s been associated with white supremacist groups. JD Vance insisted the tattoo was merely a Christian symbol and accused the AP of “anti-Christian” bigotry. Conservative commentator Erick Erickson seized on this absurd spin, tweeting, “The AP is now attacking Pete Hegseth for being Catholic.”
Vance has also morally equated Gaetz to current Attorney General Merrick Garland. We won’t get into it, because it’s not supposed to make sense. The point is to feed the MAGA persecution complex and provide a permission structure for Senate Republicans to do the wrong thing yet again.
Trump’s language is domination and submission
Political reporters and Republican strategists have suggested that out of all Trump’s terrible Cabinet nominations, Gaetz is a “sacrificial lamb” that Republicans can reject so Trump can advance other, equally bad nominees without a fight. But this seems like copium that ignores fundamental aspects of Trump’s personality.
It’s always a mistake to apply three-dimensional chess reasoning to Trump’s choices rather than basic snake-brained motivations. No, Trump probably isn’t advancing extreme candidates as a carnival sideshow so he can then install more superficially acceptable candidates with limited opposition. Trump nominated Hegseth, Gabbard, Kennedy, and Gaetz because he wants compromised true believers without a whiff of inconvenient scruples. He’s never stopped complaining that his past establishment picks for attorney general, Sessions and Barr, refused to serve as his personal attorney or enable his 2020 coup attempt.
Gaetz is highly unlikely to tell him anything he doesn’t want to hear. RFK Jr. also shares Trump’s conspiratorial, anti-science views on public health, and Trump still holds a grudge against Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx, and any other medical professional who even mildly challenged him during the covid pandemic.
Trump’s team is skipping FBI background checks for some nominees, and House Republican leadership is helping bury the ethics report on Gaetz. This is a show of defiance, not fear. Trump doesn’t care whether Republicans have to stand behind an embarrassing vote. He resents the very notion of advice and consent. He wants to appoint his cabinet like he’s a king, not a co-equal branch of government.
Ultimately, Trump expects every Senate Republican to support his clown car cabinet. He probably won’t make peace with any performative but meaningless “no” votes from Collins and Murkowski either. He demands full submission. If and when Senate Republicans vote to confirm some combination of Gaetz, Hegseth, Gabbard, and Kennedy, they’ll swear an unspoken oath to Trump that they’ll do whatever he wants, no matter how disturbing or humiliating.
These cabinet picks are also a test of voter apathy. Trump cynically gambles that most voters won’t care who’s appointed to these positions and they couldn’t make an informed decision about their relevant qualifications if they did. In our new MAGA reality, the political cost for Republicans who’d block unfit, morally degenerate nominees is far greater than just blindly supporting them.
That’s it for today
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Well, of course the gop senate will do nothing to stand in the way of their king.
Ask any Black Woman who voted on Nov 5th. Go ask us what we think in any of our subs on reddit. (We all left twitter) Some Black women are relocating to new countries or researching new countries. We all have crystal balls called history.
No one is coming to save us from
Ourselves.
They will absolutely acquiesce to every one of these u qualified nominations. We are about to witness every republican in congress giving up their power and getting on board with the agenda of 45 and project 2025. I doubt we will make it to 2026 with fair elections, but even if we do, with all the disinformation, I'm not even sure we will susuccessfully defeat them.