If you take a step back (take several steps back), it's easier to understand what Donald Trump is doing.
Why would he deliberately cause a media storm over such controversial nominees as Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth, and to a lesser extent Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr.?
The short answer is that the president-elect can't run again and wants these nominees to disrupt – or even blow up – the departments they would be in charge of running. And if they don't have the usual credentials, if they've never run a large organization, they don't give a damn.
But wouldn't it be better for their purposes to nominate equally disruptive Cabinet members who don't have Matt Gaetz's baggage? But would they have that unquestionable loyalty?
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President-elect Trump stands by his nomination of Pete Hegseth and Matt Gaetz for top Cabinet positions. (Roy Rochlin/Getty Images | Aaron Schwartz/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Even skeptical members of his inner circle have no choice but to let Trump be Trump.
If Gaetz became attorney general, for example, he could fire FBI chief Chris Wray instead of Trump having to be the bad guy.
The idea in Trump World is that the Senate will not be able to reject more than two of its nominees. So even if Gaetz, who doesn't seem to have the votes, and perhaps Hegseth as well, are rejected, everyone else will come out ahead, including Kennedy and Gabbard.
And wouldn't it be difficult for the Republican Senate, after such rejections, to be essentially forced to approve the replacement candidates, given the magnitude of Trump's victory? Is this chess 4 dimensions?
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was on the plane with Gaetz when Trump offered the now-former congressman the attorney general job. Whether Wiles, who ran a tightly organized campaign, knew it or not, he was powerless to stop it.
Privately, some Trump advisers oppose more radioactive picks, but they also know the boss gets what he wants.
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Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who is not a Trump supporter and whom Trump opposed, is considered unlikely to accept the recess appointments, which would mean giving up the constitutional advice and consent role of the camera.
The new reports have complicated matters for Gaetz and Hegseth, the decorated Army combat veteran and former Fox weekend host tapped to lead the Pentagon.
The Washington Post's scoop on Hegseth's lawyer saying he paid an accuser who says he raped her in 2017, as part of a confidentiality agreement, would sink a candidate under any other president. Hegseth, visibly intoxicated, says the encounter in his hotel room was consensual; The 30-year-old woman was at the Conservative conference with her husband and young children.
President Johnson has rejected pressure to release the Ethics Committee report on Gaetz. (Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In the case of Gaetz, House Speaker Mike Johnson does not want the ethics committee report to be released since the man resigned from his position. Does anyone doubt that if he were a Democrat, he would take the opposite stance and denounce the candidate as a pervert?
In any case, an attorney for several women alleging sexual misconduct told ABC that two of his clients say Gaetz paid them for sex. And plan more interviews.
Attorney Joel Leppard said that in his House ethics testimony, staff “basically put the Venmo payments on the screen and asked about them. And my clients repeatedly testified, 'What was this payment for?' 'That was for sex.'”
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Leppard had previously said that one of his clients had also seen Gaetz having sex with a minor.
John Clune, another attorney for a woman who claims Gaetz had sexual relations with a minor in high school, called Gaetz's nomination “a perverse development in a truly dark series of events.”
And as CNN noted, one of the underage girls says she had sex with Gaetz on an air hockey table, according to her testimony.
Reporting on Gaetz's alleged past has significantly complicated what was already a risky nomination for attorney general. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
One thing is certain: Trump continues to support both candidates. He's not going to back down.
By the way, if Kamala Harris had won the election, she would be vetting her nominees the same way. Several Trump supporters online accused me of Trump derangement syndrome for covering the most controversial nominees, which is hilarious because the president-elect gave me two interviews in 10 months, one just a couple of weeks before the election, and He told me that they were both fair.
Meanwhile, Trump's decision to meet with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who have criticized him relentlessly for the past seven years, was a brilliant decision. They both made the request and Trump was magnanimous enough to grant them an audience at Mar-a-Lago, a truly surprising development.
As they explained yesterday on “Morning Joe”:
“We talked about a lot of issues, including abortion, mass deportation, threats of political retaliation against political opponents and the media. We talked about that quite a bit,” Scarborough said.
“It won't surprise anyone who watches this show, who has watched it over the last year or over the last decade, that we disagreed on a lot of issues and told them so.”
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What they did agree on, Brzezinski said, “was to restart communications.”
He noted that his father, the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, “often spoke to world leaders with whom he and the United States deeply disagreed. That is a task shared by reporters and commentators alike. We had not spoken to Trump since March 2020, others than a personal call Joe made after the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania.”
Trump appeared “cheerful and optimistic” and “seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues.”
“Morning Joe” co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough angered liberals on social media after meeting with President-elect Donald Trump. (Getty Images)
As for the expected liberal reaction to meeting with a man they had described as a fascist, Mika turned it around: “Why wouldn't we?”
Trump later told Fox's Brooke Singman: “A lot of things were discussed and I really appreciated the fact that they wanted to have open communication. In many ways, it's a shame it wasn't done a long time ago…
“To make America great again, it is very important, if not vital, to have a free, fair and open media.”
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Trump also said of his meeting with the husband-and-wife MSNBC hosts that they “congratulated me on running a 'great, impeccable campaign, one for the history books,' which I truly believe it was, but it was also a campaign in which I worked long and hard, perhaps longer and harder than any presidential candidate in history.”
“We talked about several Cabinet members, both announced and yet to be announced. As expected, they really like some, but not all. The meeting ended very positively and we agreed to talk in the future.” And here's the olive branch: “I hope this happens with other media outlets, even those that have been extremely hostile.”
Trump said he has “an obligation to the American public and to our own country to be open and available to the press.”
“However, if it is not treated fairly, this will end.”
President-elect Trump was quick to pigeonhole the media into a carrot-and-stick situation: Treat him fairly right now, otherwise his openness to press inquiries could come to a quick end. (Jovanny Hernandez/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
There you have it, the carrot and the stick.
The complaints came fast and furious.
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“Byron York – Annals of Shamelessness: They call Trump a fascist, and much, much more, and then, just 22 days after his 'Nazi' rally, they fly to Florida for a hearing. Then, they say: 'We don't agree' on many issues,” but they want to “restart communications.” What?”
Steve Cortés – “It's hard to overstate how dishonest these two are. Mika and Joe have been screaming for months that Trump is a 'fascist' who would 'end democracy'. Now that he's elected – and very popular – do they visit him as if “Was it simply a coffee with a politician from the opposition party?”
I couldn't disagree more. The reunion, which may not be related to ratings, means they will have some access to their former friend and, they say, will criticize him when they think he is wrong.
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Who wants to hear another four years of Trump attacks that didn't work? This way they will be able to report what the next president says and then take a position. And since Trump has promised to reach out to other hostile media, I hope the truce lasts.
Note: Trump named former Congressman Sean Duffy, co-host of “Bottom Line” on FOX Business, as transportation secretary.
