Trump got his first black eye with Matt Gaetz. His next problem? Pete Hegseth
President-elect Donald Trump notched his first major failure on Thursday when Matt Gaetz, his embattled nominee for attorney general, withdrew his nomination.
The Gaetz nomination was always going to end poorly for Trump. No amount of arm-twisting could get the former congressman, who was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, over the line with the Senate.
The fumble shows that Trump grossly misread his mandate. In an election so clearly about reducing prices and frustration with the Democrats, he decided to go full ultra-MAGA. House Republicans felt the need to run interference for Trump and Gaetz; Senate Republicans played coy even as they knew the nomination was doomed.
On top of that, as more ballots are counted from the general election, the less Trump can say that he has an overwhelming mandate. Yes, he won every swing state. But it looks like he narrowly won the popular vote. Decisive victory? Sure. Landslide win? Not exactly.
And this is even before Trump is officially president. Imagine the whiplash that everyone in Washington will experience once he actually enters the White House.
But Trump does not seem to have learned anything from this ordeal. Within hours of Gaetz rescinding his nomination, the president-elect had nominated Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, to lead the Department of Justice.
Trump’s selection of Bondi makes perfect sense. In 2016, when many Republicans gave mealy-mouthed support to Trump or said they “support but don’t endorse the nominee,” Bondi gave a fire-breathing speech at the 2016 Republican National Committee calling to imprison Hillary Clinton. She leads the America First Policy Institute’s legal branch and served as a legal adviser during Trump’s first impeachment trial. She even campaigned for Trump in Gastonia, North Carolina during the final weekend of the 2024 election campaign.
Bondi won her first election in 2010 as part of the Tea Party wave alongside Senator Marco Rubio, a sign that Florida was shifting from becoming a swing state to the MAGAritaville that it is now. Now Rubio is poised to become Trump’s secretary of state.
Both candidates will likely be easily confirmed. Bondi is a bog-standard conservative lawyer beloved by MAGA who appears to have no personal skeletons in her closet, and Rubio will likely get many Democrats to support his confirmation out of deference to a fellow senator.
That does not mean that all of Trump’s nominees will be easy to confirm. His nomination of Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman who became an enthusiastic supporter of Trump, to be Director of National Intelligence already received criticism from many, including Nikki Haley, his former ambassador to the United Nations. Gabbard has proven a controversial choice, not least because of a meeting she once held with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Republicans will also likely face criticism if they vote to confirm Robert F Kennedy Jr, the environmental lawyer-turned-vaccine conspiracist, to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.
But by far the biggest headache will be the confirmation process for Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News pundit whom Trump tapped to be his Secretary of Defense.
Aside from the fact that Hegseth lacks the conventional experience to lead the department, this week, news emerged about a 22-page police report where a woman accused him of blocking her from exiting a room, taking her phone and then sexually assaulting her. Hegseth has denied the allegations, and says that the encounter between him and the woman — with whom he later entered into a settlement agreement — was entirely consensual. The fact that he paid money to the woman has raised eyebrows, however. His attorney says the payment was made because Hegseth feared the woman would file a lawsuit, which would lead to him being fired from Fox.
Under normal circumstances, such revelations would immediately disqualify a cabinet nominee, let alone for one as vital as Secretary of Defense. The same types of senators reluctant to confirm Gaetz — such as Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and others — might wince at voting for someone like Hegseth. This coterie might also feel more emboldened to block him after they successfully iced out Gaetz.
And despite Trump’s grumbling about potential recess appointments, the Senate Republican conference might be inclined to oppose him adjourning the Senate in reality — lest a potential future President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or President Josh Shapiro invoke the same authority under a Republican-controlled Senate one day in the far future.
But of course, Trump has found ways to wriggle out of a bind in the past. Proof positive? On Friday, his sentencing for his New York guilty verdict was postponed indefinitely.