Mike Luckovich
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Lessons from our success!
November 22, 2024
Robert B. Hubbell
Matt Gaetz’s withdrawal from consideration for Attorney General is instructive on many levels. Most of the lessons learned should fortify us for the battles to come.
Lessons include:
Public pressure works. Although the proximate cause of Gaetz’s withdrawal was a lack of support among GOP Senators, that lack of congressional support was the first derivative of public outrage over Gaetz’s reprehensible conduct. We must repeat that public pressure with respect to Pete Hegseth, Robert Kennedy, and Tulsi Gabbard, among others. Everyone who called their Senators or otherwise raised the alarm about Gaetz deserves a pat on the back.
Just because Trump wants something doesn’t mean he can get it. Those who oppose Trump sometimes accept the myth that he can accomplish everything and anything he wants. Not so. On Wednesday, Trump expressed public support for Gaetz’s nomination as Attorney General. On Thursday, he told Gaetz, “You don’t have the votes.” If we resist, we can win. Timothy Snyder advises us, “Do not obey in advance.” To that admonition we should add, “Do not concede before the battle is over.”
Trump was bluffing about recess appointments. Like most bullies, Trump relies on bluffing to get most of what he wants. When challenged, he retreats. Trump threatened to use recess appointments (and the Adjournment Clause) to force nominations through the Senate. However, he allowed Gaetz to drop out as soon as it was clear that Gaetz did not have the votes for confirmation. See The Bulwark, ‘You Don’t Have the Votes’: How Trump Barred the Gaetz
If Trump were serious about forcing the Senate into an involuntary adjournment, he would not care whether Gaetz had the votes. The fact that Trump cared whether Gaetz had the votes for confirmation shows that Trump was bluffing about forcing recess appointments.
Every defeat suffered by Trump weakens the illusion that he is invincible. Part of Trump's bluffing strategy depends on the fiction that he is invincible. But every time Trump loses a battle, the illusion of his invincibility becomes weaker. That should give us hope in the battles over Hegseth, Kennedy, and Gabbard.
Trump has other corrupt and corruptible candidates to replace every nominee we defeat. That’s okay. Trump immediately replaced Gaetz with Pam Bondi, former Attorney General of Florida. Bondi supported Trump's claims that the 2020 election was rigged and dropped an investigation against Trump University’s fraudulent practices after Trump donated $25,000 to her campaign. See NYTimes, New Records Shed Light on Donald Trump’s $25,000 Gift to Florida Official. Per the Times,
[In September], a check for $25,000 from the Donald J. Trump Foundation landed in the Tampa office of a political action committee that had been formed to support Ms. Bondi’s 2014 re-election. In mid-October, her office announced that it would not be acting on the Trump University complaints.
There is no bottom to the supply of corrupt and corruptible Trump loyalists who can (and will) replace every corrupt and corruptible nominee or appointee who takes office in the Trump administration. That’s okay. The point is to resist, disrupt, and expose the corruption. We need to keep it up, every day!
As I replied to a friend who alerted me to Matt Gaetz’s announcement on Twitter that he was withdrawing, “One down. Fourteen to go.”
Will Matt Gaetz rejoin the House of Representatives? Maybe.
Matt Gaetz resigned from the 118th Congress, which ends on January 3, 2025 at 11:59 a.m.
Gaetz was elected to the new Congress (the 119th), which begins on January 3, 2025, at Noon.
In his letter of resignation, Gaetz said that he “does not intend” to take his seat in the 119th Congress. Saying that you “do not intend” to do something is not the same as a “resignation.”
What if Gaetz changes his mind and shows up on January 3, 2025, to be sworn into the 119th Congress? Gaetz could easily say, “I didn’t intend to be sworn into the 119th Congress because I thought I would be the Attorney General. That didn’t happen, so I changed my mind.”
If that happens, the answer to “What comes next isn’t clear.” See HuffPo, So, Matt Gaetz Won’t Be AG. Can He Go Back To Congress?
I don’t know what will happen. I am simply noting that Gaetz has a plausible path back to Congress—which would presumably resurrect the House Ethics investigation. Query whether that investigation would need to begin from scratch. The 118th Congress is not the 119th Congress.
New questions about Pete Hegseth emerge
On Thursday, news organizations obtained a copy of a police report investigating a reported sexual assault by Hegseth in 2017 at a conservative conference. See AP, Police report reveals assault allegations against Hegseth, Trump's pick for defense secretary. The police report is linked in the AP article. It contains graphic descriptions of the reported assault.
The conclusion of the report states, “I recommend this report be forwarded to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office for review.” That recommendation does not exonerate Hegseth, as he claimed in statements to the press on Thursday. See ABC News, Hegseth says he's 'completely cleared' in sex assault case. The police report doesn't say that.
Hegseth later entered into a non-disclosure agreement with the woman who reported the assault. Hegseth paid the woman an undisclosed amount of money to enter into the non-disclosure agreement. Hegseth’s attorney claims that the the woman “was the aggressor” and that she fabricated the story of rape in order to “save face” with her husband, who was staying at the hotel with his wife when the sexual assault took place.
More evidence will be gathered, including the investigation from local prosecutor to whom the case was referred for review. And since Hegseth has made public statements about the alleged assault despite the non-disclosure agreement, it may be that the woman he allegedly assaulted is free to speak to Senate investigators and the media.
The incident took place while Hegseth was in the middle of a divorce from his second wife and fathering a child with his then-girlfriend, who is now his third wife. If Hegseth was an active duty military officer at the time, it is likely he would have been discharged—possibly dishonorably.
Equally troubling are Hegseth’s public statements that express strong sympathy for white nationalist views and animosity toward fellow Americans who do not share those views. See Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic, Pete Hegseth Might Be Trump’s Most Dangerous Nominee.
Chait writes,
In his [Hegseth’s] three most recent books, Hegseth puts forward a wide range of familiarly misguided ideas: vaccines are “poisonous”; climate change is a hoax (they used to warn about global cooling, you know); George Floyd died of a drug overdose and was not murdered; the Holocaust was perpetrated by “German socialists.” [¶¶]
The Marxist conspiracy has also, according to Hegseth, begun creeping into the U.S. military, the institution he is now poised to run. His most recent book calls for a straightforward political purge of military brass who had the gall to obey Democratic administrations: “Fire any general who has carried water for Obama and Biden’s extraconstitutional and agenda-driven transformation of our military.” [¶¶]
In the most chilling passage of his three books, Hegseth declares his fellow citizens to be enemies:
The clearest through line of all three books is the application of Hegseth’s wartime mentality to his struggle against domestic opponents. American Crusade calls for the “categorical defeat of the Left,” with the goal of “utter annihilation,” without which “America cannot, and will not, survive.” Are the Crusades just a metaphor? Sort of, but not really: “Our American Crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.” (Emphasis—gulp—his.)
Hegseth bears tattoos that are associated with the white supremacist movement. He is unfit to serve in the military, much less serve as Secretary of Defense. Call your Senators to let them know how you feel about a man accused of rape (allegations he papered over with a non-disclosure agreement) and who views his fellow Americans as the enemy.
You can reach your Senators by entering your home state in the dialog box at U.S. Senate: Contacting U.S. Senators.
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Women, in particular, are in disbelief that their fellow Americans did not rise to defend their status as full citizens under the Constitution. And after the reprehensible effort by the House to stigmatize trans people, everyone who is not straight, white, and in a same-sex marriage is understandably looking over their shoulder to see if the morality police are following them.
Yesterday, Heather Cox Richardson addressed an op-ed in the WSJ by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. See November 20, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson. The Musk-Ramaswamy op-ed distressed many readers. (See the Comments to Today’s Edition Newsletter date 10/21/24.)
Professor Richardson criticizes the Musk-Ramaswamy op-ed and planned “Department of Government Efficiency” in her usual professional, historical, and classy way—which is why she is a national treasure.
Me, not so much. I will say it directly: Musk and Ramaswamy are like a couple of twelve-year-old boys who know nothing about the world but are confident that they can make the world bend to their will because they are twelve-year-old boys who don’t know any better.
They have been put in charge of a fake “department” that can make recommendations that are dependent entirely on members of Congress—who will think twice about cutting two trillion dollars from programs that directly impact their constituents. To underscore this point, Musk has been on a diet of humble pie for over a week—repeatedly failing to persuade Trump and US Senators that Musk’s favorite candidates for the cabinet should be appointed. If Musk were a baseball player, his batting average would be perfect—0.000.
I am not saying that Trump will fail in his effort to cause chaos and inflict pain. He will do so intentionally and negligently in abundance. But the Dynamic Duds of Musk and his sidekick Vivek will be engaged in the equivalent of a kindergarten production of “Wheels on the Bus” while the adults are across town at the opera house watching Wagner’s Ring cycle.
Musk and Ramaswamy are designated psychological terrorists. Their purpose in the new administration is to issue baseless but ominous pronouncements that will garner press coverage and create the illusion that Trump is doing something. They will hold live hearings. Indeed, they will livestream them on Twitter so that Musk can fabricate viewer numbers that do not match reality. Musk and Ramaswamy will slap one another on the back as they congratulate themselves for the masterful production of “Wheels on the Bus.”
Their job is to upset us. Don’t let them. They are jesters in the classic sense of the word. Their job is to mollify the petulant and bored king. Do not let them fool and distract us. The real action is in the Oval Office and the Capitol. Let’s focus our resistance on those venues—which are ultimately accountable to the American people, as the Matt Gaetz withdrawal demonstrated today.
[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]
