How Republicans Can Save Trump’s Presidency
Photo by The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
It’s T minus 62 days until Donald Trump becomes president again and his presidency is already in trouble. A flurry of ill-advised and poorly conceived nominations threaten to undermine the new Trump Administration before it even starts.
Donald Trump famously claimed to hire the best people, but many of the nominations for his new Administration are unqualified and poorly vetted sycophants and hangers on. Robert F. Kennedy, the conspiracy minded Democrat is only the worst and most well known pick. Matt Gaetz’s appointment to attorney general seems to have been engineered in part to help him escape an upcoming House ethics report detailing his alleged sex with underage girls. Defense Department nominee Pete Hegspeth was also accused of sexual assault and was revealed to have paid his accuser to sign a nondisclosure agreement. The chief qualification for Trump’s solicitor general nominee seems to be that he served as Trump’s lawyer in the presidential immunity case.
Trump is not draining the swamp. He’s installing his own swamp creatures, and apparently attempting to cover up possible actual crimes committed by some of them.
It’s going to get worse. Presidents typically appoint about 4,000 people to various positions. With Trump already placing dregs into high-profile jobs, I can only imagine how badly unqualified his appointees to lesser jobs will be.
And that’s not even considering the Project 2025 reinstatement of Schedule F government employees, which would allow Trump to fire large numbers of career bureaucrats and replace them with… who knows who he would replace them with? Recently pardoned January 6 convicts? VIP pass holders from campaign rallies? Random people off the street
I think one thing is going to be true: The more jobs that Trump has to fill, the worse the overall quality of his appointees will be.
The poor quality of top cabinet appointments, which require Senate confirmations, is obviously why the Trump transition team wants to bypass the Senate with recess appointments. If we go far enough down the list, many lesser jobs don’t require confirmation at all.
The fact that the Trump team is skipping FBI vetting of some appointees makes the problem even worse. We literally don’t know how bad and dangerous some Trump officials will be.
Republicans have a chance to set the tone for the second Trump presidency by reining in Trump before he goes farther off the rails. There are a couple of reasons to draw the line here. First and most obvious, if Trump doesn’t have dependable and competent people, his government is not going to be dependable and competent. That’s especially true if he follows through with firing the careerist employees who make government agencies run smoothly.
The second reason is that Trump’s self-destructive tendencies are well known. Left to his own devices and impulses, Trump will turn his second term into an orgy of self-indulgence and corruption. This is not how we get good – or even acceptable – government.
Unfortunately, Republicans seem poised to knuckle under to Trump’s power grab. John Thune, the incoming Senate Majority Leader, recently told FoxNews that recess appointments were “on the table” if Democrats try to block Trump’s nominees.
Early indications are that some of Trump’s nominees, particularly Gaetz and Kennedy, will face a difficult confirmation process with Republicans as well as Democrats. In the past, however, Republicans have often clucked and grumbled about Trump’s behavior but then quietly backed him when the time came. It would not surprise me if that turned out to be the case here as no Republican will want to break ranks to oppose the popular-within-the GOP new president.
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) was kidding on the square when he recently said, “If Donald Trump says, ‘jump three feet high and scratch your head,’ we all jump three feet high and scratch our head.” The comment was reported by Punchbowl News and is uncomfortably accurate. Don’t expect congressional Republicans to be a check and balance on Trump.
Letting Trump run amok with no accountability isn’t doing him any favors. Keeping Trump focused and tethered to reality is the only way to salvage the next four years to any extent. If Trump gets his way, the likely result will be large Democratic gains and the end of any semblance of a conservative agenda. I’d be willing to wager that it would also mean another impeachment at some point.
Keeping Trump on course and out of trouble won’t be easy, and the Republicans who do it won’t be appreciated, Trump views anything less than full-throated Nehls-level adoration as a betrayal. That’s true even if Trump is being constrained for his own good. This is a man who thinks presidents can do “whatever I want.” And that was before the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.
There is already no chance that Trump’s second tenure will be the conservative utopia that some Republicans expect. Trump is already well on the way to turning his second term into a flaming train wreck, and left to his own devices, that’s exactly what he will do. The only chance of avoiding a disaster is for Republicans to stand up to Trump and keep him from wandering off into lawlessness and vengeance.
The problem with this strategy is that the next time Republicans hold Trump accountable will be the first.
Brace yourself.
Does anyone look at a pawn like Mike Johnson and think he is capable of setting the tone on anything? That guy looks like the type of person that pays sticker price at a car dealership.
I suppose any real check from the right would come from Thune but color me skeptical. He’s a dinosaur, not someone that’s going to out maneuver Trump the way McConnell did consistently during Trump 1. The next 2 years are going to be some combination of disaster and farce and the best we can hope for is that it’s more the latter than the former.Report
Nope, I imagine they’re maybe gonna knife Gatz because even the GOP in DC despises him but otherwise Trump’ll get whomever he wants.Report
The big mistake that Harris made on The View was her answer when she was asked “what would you do differently than Biden?” and she couldn’t think of anything.
What *SHOULD* Trump do differently than Biden?
If you can’t think of anything, then I’d say that we’re in a place where we don’t understand why Trump won.
Again.Report
Maybe one thing we should take from this is that Republicans can run on “I’m Not That Guy” but Democrats can’t.Report
Mittler ran on “I’m Not That Guy” as did McCain von Ribbentropp and Bushitler II definitely did. Dolebbles is the only one who didn’t really.
And say what you will about Trump, he ran on a lot more than “I Ain’t Biden”.Report
Romney and McCain didn’t need to run on I’m Not That Guy, because it was obvious on visual inspection.Report
McCain had to walk a tightrope of “I’m not that guy and I’m not that guy but I’m kinda like both of them, just better”.Report
“I’m not Donald Trump” was the cornerstone strategy of Biden getting elected in 2020.Report
That’s interesting. What do you think Trump *SHOULD* do differently than Biden? Not what will he do, but what should he do?
Considering the hand Biden has left him the only thing that a theoretically sane and sensible Trump (I know, it’s VERY theoretical) should do on the economy, at least, would be not a lot other than switching from yelling about how everything is burning down to crowing about how he fixed everything. Given that most of the dour mood on the economy was rooted in Republican opinion which was automatically negative (Dems also have this predilection but to a much lesser degree) because a Democrat was in the White House it’s technically a solved problem.
On the border he could… well… mostly stand pat and pass the bill he previously opportunistically tanked along with, again, switching his blathering from doom to triumph.
On trade Trump’s biggest perils lie because if he does what he campaigned on doing then he’s going to reap a whirlwind. Especially if he pairs it with the massive tax cuts for the wealthy he’s planning on.
Frankly I’m struggling to think of a President since W who’s been left a better hand by their predecessor.Report
Well, for what Trump should do differently than Biden:
1) On Immigration, he should pull a Martha’s Vineyard. Out of all of the immigrants who jumped the border, he should kick most of the undocumented visitors out but keep 5-10% for domestic help.
2) The DEI/CRT thing that the feds have quietly (and not so quietly) adopted over the past few years should be rolled back to a more “Oh, I don’t see color or gender” stance.
3) On the economy: DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING MY GOD NO NOT TAX CUTS EITHER. You can raise taxes on Mark Cuban but that’s it.
4) DECLASSIFY EVERYTHING. Seriously. I want to know about the JFK suicide in 1963 and how he made it look like an assassination. I want to know about the Covid lab leak. I want to know about UFOs. I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE ARK OF THE COVENANT.
5) Tell universities that any student loans forgiveness will be predicated on going 50/50 on it. If they don’t want to go in halvsies, they should stop giving money to kids who won’t be able to pay it back.
That’s off the top of my head.Report
1) So massively boost inflationary pressures, also I’d note he’ll have to change the laws to do that and I don’t think he’s going to find a filibuster proof majority in the Senate eager to do that after the stunt he pulled in ’24.
2) Yep they could probably do that, but probably will be too inept and busy stealing everything not nailed down to actually make is happen in a systematic way- also they need those issues to rile up their voters.
3) So on the issue the voters overwhelmingly care the most about you agree Biden did a spectacular job.
4) Uh sure. The truth is out there.
5) Well that’s not a Republican constituency so they can kick them as much as Biden tried (foolishly) to indulge them. Probably won’t be effective. I’m guessing they’d need to change the laws either which way.Report
1) How did Martha’s Vineyard handle the deflationary pressure?
2) There is no “they”. There is Trump. I don’t think that he’s likely to run for a 3rd term…
3) I think that where Biden screwed up was in having awful messaging and instead of saying “yes, we’re experiencing inflation, but we’ll get through it”, we got stuff like “inflation is transitory”, “your grocery bill only went up 30%, it didn’t double”, and “recessions aren’t two consecutive quarters of negative growth”.
The area where Biden did the best involved a lot of disagreeing with people who said that they were experiencing pain.
4) For the covid lab leak? I do wonder what information is classified. What harm could be done by releasing the info now?
5) It’s not one but as a Democratically-leaning one, it can certainly be punished. Get civil rights enforcement involved. Find dirty laundry. Display it.Report
Trump is way too corrupt and venal to do it but he probably does have an opportunity to ‘solve’ immigration in a Nixon goes to China kind of way. Ramp up interior enforcement and be really aggressive about it. Have some big show of force at the border involving the military. Send people trudging back into Mexico at gun point and crow about not giving a damn about the wailing of people who had established themselves but never got legal being sent back to wherever. Make everyone at the ACLU, and the immigration lawyers, and the remnant of left twitter/x cry bitter tears about the injustice and fascism of it all.
Then, as soon as it starts encroaching on whatever strategic sector, be it agriculture or whatever else, declare victory. Say I did it! I got rid of the criminals and drug runners and rapists and set things up so they’re never coming back! And after that when no one is really paying attention you do a big reform bill with major security investments at the border, mandate e-verify, and amnesty everyone without a felony still in the country illegally.
It’ll never happen but it would at least be constructive.Report
That’s probably possible… I don’t know if it’s likely, though. For one thing, I understand that “remigration” has already begun in earnest.
A couple of folks have made big noises about being a Sanctuary State and Trump could do something really funny by nudging all of the (unnecessary) migrants to go to the sanctuaries.
George Gascon lost to a Repub-wait-I-mean-Independent in LA. San Francisco is equally uninterested in pretending to be virtuous.
Harm was done to a lot of virtuous veneers over the last few years. Trump’s hammer seems to just be getting started.Report
Oh I put odds of that happening at under 5%. Maybe even under 1%.
More likely is a bunch of ham fisted stunts and executive actions caught up in the courts while the Republicans in Congress flail around until muscle memory kicks in and they pass a tax cut.Report
Cosign; though I’d also note that, ironically, this is also one of the best case scenarios.Report
Yup, my fingers are crossed that the whole thing is a repeat of the boobery we had from 2016-2018. Lot of incompetence, lot of chaos, ultimately nothing big or lasting happens. It all sucks but isn’t the end of the republic. America plays Russian roulette again and survives. Then again maybe we won’t be so lucky this time.Report
he has a lot more yes people around him this time, who all read as willing to smash whatever he wants smashed.Report
This is largely what happened during the “Wetback” actions of 1954-55.Report
1) Martha’s Vineyard had all the workers they were willing to pay for which is why most of the immigrants that got shipped/stranded there promptly went elsewhere. The entire United fishin States is a different matter as you know perfectly well and all that immigration the righties insincerely yelp about is a major reason why inflation got whupped so readily here.
2) Yeah Trumps going to golf cart around the entire federal government rooting out instances of CEI and CRT, honestly Jay. There is Trump and there’s a Trump administration. Trump by himself can’t do squat on a Federal scale- nor can any President.
3) I agree that messaging/political spin is an area that Bidens’ admin was lacking in (which, between Obama and Biden makes two admins in a row where the political and messaging element was mismanaged). I doubt it’d have made a much difference for the election outcome since electorates threw out the Administrations that were in charge when inflation bit regardless of messaging, spin or even culpability. But we don’t agree on the fundamental point which is that Biden managed the economy very well and actually engineered a soft landing.
4) The lab leak? You declassify everything and will probably find the same thing we already know. It was most likely natural but we can’t rule out a lab leak thing definitively until/unless the Chinese implode and declassify all their info.
5) Sure I suppose, that still wouldn’t likely change any laws and I very much doubt there’s much dirty laundry in the student loan stuff.Report
I think that there are a lot of places that don’t want to pay for more immigrants than they need. The stories about immigration in recent years includes stuff like “straining services” and the like.
We’re likely to go down to a position where services are no longer strained.
Sure, we’ll keep around the labor. We need that. We don’t need the immigrants that strain services, though.
Root it out? We have a large number of snitches now. He just has to say “Get rid of X” and if a sub-department still does X, it’ll show up on Twitter the next day. I imagine that it might, at best, go underground for four years but that will also be seen as a small victory.
As for Obama’s messaging, I remember it as being pretty good. It’s just that his handiwork led to Trump instead of Clinton.
Robert Redfield is calling for the declassification as well. What’s the worst that could come out? That it was a lab leak and discussion of whether it was a lab leak was deliberately squashed?
Well, we moved from whether or not the university was a constituent or not back to loan stuff specifically. I think that the fact that the university is not a constituent gives a lot of leeway. What are they going to do? Hire even fewer conservatives? Let even more students take over the administrative building?Report
I’d note that even if your lab leak conspiracy was correct that would have been happening under Trumps administration, not Bidens’.
Obama was a fantastic inspirational speaker but he very much disdained both retail politicking and political messaging as being beneath his soaring rhetoric. It cost him dearly.
As for immigration, what you’re just saying is the immigration status will remain the same but Trump will overtly kick them around more so they stay “in their place.” and then the right will wheel them out again the next time they lose an election. I think you’d be right about that.Report
Hrm. So maybe a reluctance to release the covid info would be trying to hide something harmful to Trump…
I hope you join me in calling for the release of the information.
It’ll hurt Trump, right? Demand transparency!Report
Let’s assume for a moment that the (accidental) Lab Leak hypothesis is true, then what? What would have changed?
We had the virus genome quite fast once people (in Wuhan) started getting sick and dying. From there on, I very much doubt anything would have been different, but I’m open to being corrected.
So assuming you can demonstrate it was an accidental leaking (also quite difficult to prove), at most you’ll get the moral high ground of yelling at the Chinese “You, ninconpoops”.
To me all the speculation about the lab leak hypothesis is a waste of time, but for some reason it seems to entertain Jaybird.Report
The fact that discussing it was censored makes it of interest to me.
If, indeed, it *WAS* a lab leak, we’d have yet another case of something being called “a conspiracy theory” that ended up being true shows up.
I kinda like the idea of being able to discuss the possibility of true things being true.
I even think that discussing true things being true is good.
And if that information is out there, I want to know it and I want you to know it.
If someone doesn’t want to know it, that’s no skin off my nose but if someone doesn’t want me to know it? That’s irritating.Report
I’m entirely indifferent because, as I noted, the overwhelming likelihood is any classified report on the lab leak hypothesis sums up as “We can’t prove it didn’t happen but it’s most likely it came from the wet markets.”Report
Sounds like stuff has been overclassified, then.
Best to get the info out where everybody can see it.Report
Sure, why not. But my main point in observing that the Covid lab leak imbroglio happened under Trumps administration is that if there is a smoking gun in those docs that proves the lab leak was real then Trump would never ever want it released. So, overwhelming odds are the classified docs are as big a shrug as the non classified ones are- and if they say otherwise you’ll never see those ones released.Report
I am curious what gives someone the qualification to run any one of these departments?
The Anti-cabinet that President Trump has selected is designed to to do what he said he would do. Attack the swamp in the government. You say it is making his own “Swamp”, yet Trump learned his lesson from the last presidency where people that had any ties to the current system, stabbed him in the back. So I can understand why he made these picks.
Still, a couple of these pick are bad enough I would be okay with them not getting confirmed. Gaetz being the top of that list.
You mention big gains by Dems in the off election, yet that is historically the case the vast majority of the time. Seem to me Trump is better off going full throttle while he can then.
I am looking forward to the fireworks of the anti-cabinet and to see what it can drain. Finger’s crossed.Report
Normal Presidents don’t seem to have much trouble finding people generally regarded as qualified.Report
I think many of the selections are operating as a loyalty test Trump is giving Senate Republicans.Report
Well, yes. That’s why I said “Normal Presidents.”Report
I think he is also scrapping the bottom of the barrel. Qualified people are telling him no thank you. Reading between the lines of a TruthSocial rant, it looks like he asked Dimon to be Treasury Secretary and Dimon reufsedReport
Probably also true. You have to be a truly desperate and undignified creature to serve Trump. I can’t think of a more disloyal or thankless person.Report
Agreed, they don’t because they pick from inside the swamp.Report
I’m sorry, I thought I was dealing with an adult.Report
Lol! Worthy come back.Report
I had a longer comment that I must not have posted, but here’s the summary.
The Constitution doesn’t spell out any qualifications, which means the prez can nominate whoever he wants. I’d think a minimum qualification would be managerial experience at or near the level of the department the nominee is being asked to head.Report
Experience at the size of the dept., that is.Report
This is a much better answer.
For the department of Education this is not bad as they have 4.4k employees. You could find someone like that.
How do you do that with the even larger departments like Energy? Over 100k people (When adding contractors)?
Or the department of Defense who has over a million people (including military)?Report
The absurdity is the point partially. Trump is trying to humiliate and show he is boss and seeing how much he can get away with without pushback. He is also surrounded by fanatics who want to go for a maximalist breakneck approach.Report
That’s a really good question.
I think Trump has a great opportunity to reimagine government. I had to look up what the DoE even does. The DoD is a greater problem. It’s been documented that it’s many headed hydra would be impossible to rein in due to the outsized portion of our national economy that it occupies.
Plus, in the near term it’s either Pax Americana or Pax Sinica. Given the isolationist bent of DJT and his electorate, we’re inadvertently liable to end up with the former.
I also think Trump is going to squander that opportunity through graft and vengeance seeking. He just doesn’t know any other way. And, at first glance, it seems as though he’s stocking his cabinet with people who’ll be really good at those 2 instead of the reimagining part.Report
“That’s a really good question.
I think Trump has a great opportunity to reimagine government. I had to look up what the DoE even does. The DoD is a greater problem. It’s been documented that it’s many headed hydra would be impossible to rein in due to the outsized portion of our national economy that it occupies.”
Why do people impute these things onto Trump as things he is capable of doing?Report
I’m living on Earth 2, where DJT isn’t a venal, thin-skinned narcissist.Report
You are right the DoE has a very broad reach. You will not find someone with good knowledge on everything they do. You mention a PhD, but I think it is more that you want someone that has knowledge of an area of energy and then you need people around you for the areas you do not know much about.
Wright has knowledge of the oil side of energy. Now we will see what he does to have people for the other sides of the DoE.
I get that you are negative on Trump so you see vengeance. I see a guy willing to tear down the the far left bureaucracy in place at the DoE and make policy that roles back the E mandates and green energy requirements. While I am for the US getting off fossil fuels. Green tech is not at the level to replace and keep the same or better costs. Once it is, then lets talk again about it.
With that said the Gaetz and Hegseth picks are two that do feel like vengeance to me.Report
Oops, you were not the one mentioning a PhD.Report
For the record, DoE doesn’t have as much of the oil and gas portfolio as Interior – where BOEM, BSSE and USGS have the bulk of the work.Report
If you mean the direct management of oil and gas. I concede the point.
But they do deal with overall policy how much federal land is used for oil and gas, regulations on the production of oil, gas, and renewables. Plus the funding to increase/decrease all of that.Report
A lot of what the DO Energy does – the vast majority of it, actually – is maintain and upgrade the nuclear stockpile and fund the National Laboratories – Sandia, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and several more. Also the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden CO. I wonder why this role of the department is never, ever discussed?Report
Energy is a very good example. All of the national labs fall under DOE, doing everything from nuclear weapons to exotic materials science to math. The traditional appointee is a PhD in some hard science with a bunch of experience administering other PhDs. Recall Rick Perry expressing public surprise when he discovered that he would be responsible for development and maintenance of the entire nuclear arsenal. Wright has apparently been in graduate school, but has no graduate degrees. He’s going to be responsible for a lot of the early decisions in the $1.5T program to upgrade all of the US nuclear warheads and delivery systems.Report
This actually makes my point. No one can have all the knowledge on what the DoE does. Wright runs a company with around 5k people in the fracking business. He has knowledge of that side of energy.
He will need people with the other areas that are covered by the DoE.Report
With the small problem that Dept of Energy has f*ck-all to do with fracking. Environmental regulations for oil and gas production? EPA, not Energy. Leases of federal land on which to drill? Various parts of Interior, not Energy. Markets and such? FERC, not Energy.
The Department of Energy is nuclear weapons and a whole bunch of R&D (not all energy related). Not to pick on Rick Perry too much, but early on he announced the Dept of Energy would be issuing rules that greatly favored new power plants that were dispatchable and could store six months of fuel on site (ie, coal and nuclear). That lasted about a week until FERC held a press conference to say rules like that were FERC’s remit and the Secretary should stick to subjects where he actually had authority.Report
Seriously?
One of the DoE’s main jobs is energy policy and supply and while you might not like it, that is still largely oil and natural gas. Hopefully Wright has a handle on that aspect.
And while I do not know for certain, I highly suspect that is the side of the DoE President Trump brought him on for.
I acknowledge that the other areas he does not have experience in:
• Nuclear infrastructure
• Environmental cleanup
• Scientific research
• Criminal investigations
• International affairs
Yet I doubt those are as big a concern for Trump as the policy side. And, as mentioned above, no one will have full knowledge of all areas. That is why you hire other people.Report
I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in.Report
It is amazing how much people still talk about this like we are still in a politics as normal situation. We very much aren’t. Is it copium? An overriding psychological thought that appearing as a chicken little is the worst thing someone can be? “How uncool, someone saw me express a bit of anxiety?” Wanting to seem cool and savvy like you can outfox Trump and Co. like this is a Bugs Bunny cartoon and all you need to do is “It’s duck season”
Trump and Co. are basically proceeding at maximalist speed like a bunch of Bolsheviks:
1. Almost every nomination he has given so far would be beyond the pale for any other President-elect? Tulsi for director of national intelligence? The one Russian media describes as “the girlfriend?” As far as I can tell, Rubio and Stefanik are the only in the realms of normal appointments so far.
2. We are already hearing gonzo plans for doing things like adjourning Congress using Article II, Section iii and/or declaring martial law for mass deportations.
There is a chance that Trump and Co. are getting ahead of their skies and things fall apart quickly. There is also a chance that we are flying blind in completely uncharted territory and things can get very chaotic and very bad. But the overwhelming sentiment of OT is that showing any alarm is the worst thing in the world apparently, so uncool.
Trump has already ritually humiliated RFK Jr by making him eat McDonald’s. In the same photo, was Elon, Johnson, Trump, and Trump Jr. Who wasn’t around Vance and Thune?
I wouldn’t be surprised if they think they can get away with trying to adjourn the Senate.Report
I am not playing it cool. I am quite convinced it’s going to be an absolute disaster for the country. It’s going to be very bad indeed, but running around like a headless chicken won’t make anything better
I am also quite convinced no one in the Republican party (inside or outside of Congress) is going to do zilch to stop or ameliorate the disaster. They are facing a collective prisoner’s dilemma: any particular Republican that stands up against Trump will be rolled over (metaphorically, via primaries, or really). As someone else said it somewhere, most Republican senator’s plan involves keeping a low profile all the way to the 2028 election.
Democrats in Congress can’t do anything, and shouldn’t. They should just vote present and not provide their votes to oppose Trump and save the Republicans from themselves. Democratic governors and state legislatures are in a different situation.
This is going to be a catastrophe, and it should be the Republican catastrophe. My heart bleeds for the country, which will likely won’t be the same.
I’m a foreign born, albeit naturalized, gay man with a funny accent, so it’s not that I’m above it all. On the plus (for me) side, I’m white, blue eyed, close to retirement, without children, and with a healthy balanced portfolio. My chances are better than most.Report
Fair to an extent but everyone here seems to be treating this like a normal situation where Trump can be guided into being mitigated/salvaged or they are committing variants of the armchair pundit’s fantasy and imputing what they would do as possible thinks Trump can do.
This is absurd. His very nominees should show you what kind of admin we are going to get and there is a weird copium that imagines the infighting and potential incompetence will stop the damage as opposed to producing the more Kafkaesque, unpredictable damage, unpredictable in terms of timing and extent. It will be completely erratic.Report
Yeah, it’s weird, after months of being told that he’s like Hitler and Democracy itself is on the ballot, people are just treating this like just another presidency and we’ll get him next time.Report
What’s the alternative? Take up arms? I think best we can do now is hope we muddle through the stupidity and craziness to come.Report
Not being blase about the craziness or thinking that there are ways to work with Trump would be a start. Not having wishful thinking either.Report
Dramatic responses from Dems and the left would require dramatic violations by Trump and Co. Trump’s only actions so far have been to unambiguously win the election. Bidens’ and his party’s responses have been appropriate. I have seen some say Biden shouldn’t have pledged a smooth transition or done the White House norm. I don’t agree. Biden is reinforcing the norms. It has no cost and potentially has a benefit.
Also, I think at this point it’s safe to say that all the righties saying Trumps election would lead to riots or equivalent misbehavior by the Dems or the Left are now proven entirely and completely wrong and they should be expected to cop to that.Report
I agree partially. I think Biden was trapped in a paradox of liberal democracy but it is hard to state “Trump is an existential threat to democracy” for months and then turn around and pretend he is Mitt Romney without causing disillusion so I understand why people are upset.
I also think it is mainly up to blue states to resist Trump at this point and time.
But still, Democrats don’t have to help and they don’t have to pretend Trump is a normal politician that can be worked with despite any overriding issues or passions.
His choices for cabinet positions are absurd or worse. At the very least, no one is going to share intelligence with us for 4 years. Who knows what damage Kennedy and others will do?
I’m not stating anyone should state “to arms citizens” but I am shocked by the number of people who think it is possible to work with Trump and co. somehow and not getting burned.
But there seems to be something about having a pet cause or passion project that thinks “Wait a minute, there is something I can work with here” instead of realizing that we are dealing with Bolshevik-maximalists and/or cranks.
I pointed out a version below of someone who doesn’t quite seem to get Hegseth’s unsavory past is a feature, not a bug. There was another op-ed last week in the Times on a similar theme but for RFK Jr.
I take Trump and Co. seriously and literally and I don’t see why this is wrong except people think it is cringe and not cool because it is not savvy or something.Report
Sure, but your beef there is more with the media. Democratic politicians have an obligation to their constituents to try and mitigate Trumps damage. He’s a notoriously swayable character. I agree they shouldn’t cooperate to make him pass things he’d otherwise fail to pass but talking nice is a strategy and one they’d be unwise to abandon until it’s necessary to do so.Report
I don’t know how swayable he actually is. Again, it feels like everyone thinks they can be Bugs Bunny to his Daffy Duck and I am not sure that is the case.
So far he has made three normalish nominations: Burgum at Interior, Rubio at State, and Stefanik as U.N. rep. Burgum is horrible in the way most Republicans would be horrible at Interior. Rubio and Stefanik are not exactly known for their backbones but on a substantive level, they are normal picks.
Everyone else is not and there is either scrapping the bottom of the barrel because everyone normal said no thank you and/or some flexes going on and showing of maximalist damage.
Trump is capable of learning and he is showing he doesn’t want anyone with a spine to tell him no this time.
And Project 2025 is basically run by ideologues who are going for a shock and awe approach. Could it backfire and be less damaging that I fear? Yeah. Could it cause massive amounts of social, economic, and other damage even if administered incompletely? Also yes.
Trump is also a someone who is bent on revenge. Yes there were plenty of unhinged rants during his first admin at 4:00 a.m. but I see no reason to be dismissive.
Markwayne Mullin apparently went from discussing how they have evidence of Gaetz bragging about crushing up ED pills and chasing it with energy drinks to now stating he is okay with Trump’s pick.
The only way to win with Trump is not to play. I think that has been proven numerous times but it still seems like a lot of people with pet issues have overrides that make it impossible for them to accept this fact.
So far Newsom and Pritzker and some other Western Democrats seem to be the only ones that get this.
The only way to win with Trump is not to play, otherwise you just become a dignity wraith who will be thrown under the bus eventually.Report
Sure, I’m not suggesting that the Dems provide votes on nominations or legislation. But the transition stuff and the politely congratulating him on winning as if he’s a normal GOP politician (and note that he now is the normal GOP politician) provides the potential of some benefit and imposes no material costs.Report
all the righties saying Trumps election would lead to riots or equivalent misbehavior by the Dems or the Left are now proven entirely and completely wrong and they should be expected to cop to that.
Expected by whom, and on what basis?Report
All of us and on the basis that they made some pretty concrete predictions with firmly definable time windows and none of them came to pass (so far, arguably they have until the end of January but the odds of something like that seem remote considering the reaction so far).Report
I’m sorry. I was unclear. You’re quite right on factual and moral grounds that they should cop to it. But what basis was there for expecting them to cop to it?Report
They probably thought the people screaming about Hitler and Democracy being on the ballot were somewhere in the ballpark of sincere.Report
They who? And what does that have to do with those who predicted anti-Trump disorder not copping to what actually happened — or didn’t happen?Report
“They who?” The people who you feel should cop to it.
Here’s the copping to it they might cop: “I thought they were serious.”Report
North brought it up, not me. As it happens, I agree with him that a number of folks thought there would be anti-Trump disorder if Trump won. Unlike him, I am completely unsurprised that none of the people who said they thought that would happen will acknowledge “I was wrong about that.” They won’t even try to Jaybird move of blaming the people they made wrong predictions about for their making wrong predictions about them.Report
I’m pretty sure that I can point to a non-zero number of people who said “I was wrong about that.”
But if *I* was going to be surprised about a lack of mostly peaceful responses to Trump’s victory, it’d be because I thought that the people who were calling Trump a threat to society meant it.Report
“Non-zero” isn’t much of a standard, especially since we already have Derek S.
And we already know that it is always someone else’s fault if you’re wrong.Report
Do you remember saying I am completely unsurprised that none of the people who said they thought that would happen will acknowledge “I was wrong about that.”?
Because I remember you saying that.Report
Yes. So is there someone you have in mind who both: (a) predicted disorder and (b) said “I was wrong?” Derek S. matches (2), but not (1).Report
Golly, is there anyone on the board who fits (a) at all?Report
As near as I could tell, the only people who thought there’d be riots in the streets if Trump won were right wing Twitter engagement farmers, and the bots that invariably sound off under the tweets.Report
If you’re suggesting that anyone who thought that was a loon, I agree with you.Report
Nail on the head.Report
I’ll cop to it. I have been pleasantly surprised.Report
Trump apparently wants to do court martials: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-transition-team-compiling-list-current-former-us-military-office-rcna180489
So tell me, how are Senate Republicans going to save his presidency?Report
Biden really should have held the military accountable for the poor performance of the withdrawal. Some careers should have publicly ended.
Not sure what the statute of limitations are in the UCMJ, but the incident with the Drone should certainly be reviewed again… it had all the appearance of a whitewash at the time.
The article is, of course, focusing on the most sensational aspect of their anonymous source (treason), but it does have one or two more lucid moments:
“It is not clear the Trump administration would pursue treason charges, and instead it could focus on lesser charges that highlight the officers’ involvement. “They want to set an example,” said the person with knowledge of the plan.”
Again, Biden *should* have done this (and more)… I’m not wild about the next administration doing it, but setting aside the fantasy of treason, if commanders need to have their careers ended publicly 4 yrs after the fact… that’s good, actually. The Officer Corps really does have a tradition of accountability — for Majors and below — it needs some reviving for Sr. Officers.Report
Do you think those officers would have faired any better – that the withdrawal would have gone more smoothly somehow – in a second consecutive Trump term? He was the President who – checks notes – negotiated the conditions under which it was executed.Report
Did I say anything that resembled that?
This has nothing to do with Trump… I said at the time that Biden should have done this.
I favored Biden’s decision to withdraw; he owed it to himself as President to hold the Sr. Officers who executed the military withdrawal in the way that they did accountable.
I have my doubts that Team Trump will handle this matter well, but I’m saving my powder to fire on Trump’s failings when they are actual failings.Report
Why should Biden hold the generals to standards that Trump didn’t – especially when Biden doing it wouldn’t have changed any outcomes.Report
What?
Biden was CiC during the Evacuation; he’s the one who had primary responsibility for oversight for that specific operation. He ordered it, the Generals and their Staffs planned and executed it. It is his role to see to it that operational failures are reviewed and accountability maintained.
The outcome is accountability in the US Military; it’s genuinely an important outcome that Sr. Officers in charge of Military operations are held accountable for the success or failure of missions. It’s also a bedrock principle of the Officer Corps itself.
One could, perhaps, make a broader argument that the Flag Officers in all branches have increasingly been exempted from this level of accountability; and that this represents a sort of regulatory capture of DoD, and I’d certainly be sympathetic to that… but that just means that Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump should acknowledge this ‘problem’ and take more and more timely corrective actions.
Afghanistan was particularly egregious; and, Biden didn’t do his duty. Ironically, he ended up taking all the heat for it, and that moment was the start of the precipitous decline in his approvals.
I’d even go so far as to say, it would have been to his advantage to own the decision to withdraw, but acknowledge that the operation was botched, and hold the Sr. Staff accountable. It would have demonstrated his own competence and leadership, plus make sure that the Civilian Commander in Chief takes responsibility for the order, but the military takes responsibility for the execution.Report
The Republicans can’t even bring themselves to releasing the Gatez report or are in full thrall of Trump’s cult of personality. They ain’t going to do jack to make it better.Report
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/18/opinion/trump-cabinet-hegseth-defense-secretary.html
“Mr. Hegseth, the former Fox News host and veteran Mr. Trump nominated to lead the Department of Defense, lacks the necessary leadership experience. His antediluvian views on women in the armed forces, his advocacy for soldiers accused of war crimes and his past remarks on racial issues alone should be disqualifying in a confirmation process. (The news last week that he was investigated in 2017 after being accused of sexual assault won’t help his cause.) But his apparent disenchantment with American military engagement abroad and his skepticism of nation-building by armed forces and endless wars should not.
Mr. Hegseth, despite his heavy baggage, represents something that needs to be acknowledged: the deep bipartisan dissatisfaction with a military leadership that has presided over 20 years of failed wars and incalculable costs to America’s veterans and their families. If Mr. Trump could find a nominee for secretary of defense who holds similar views, but without his obvious shortcomings, his choice would be justified.”
The heavy baggage is the point!!! It is the only point!! How hard is it for people to understand this?Report
Dear God these people think we are idiots:
As ordered to do by successive Presidents of both parties, no doubt egged on by the military industrial complex. The Grey Lady is SO amazingly interested in finding scape goats it is no longer funny.Report
During the first Trump term, I recall someone, I can’t remember who, maybe Kevin Drum, maybe Matt Y noting that Trump treats all problems as if they are Manhattan Real Estate. I.e., everything really is a zero-sum game and he who acquires most and first wins. He doesn’t comprehend things like Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage.
This seems to be true for everything but there is something about having a passion or pet issue that causes people to think “Wait a minute, maybe I can work with something here” instead of realizing that the only way to win with Trump is not to play.”
Plus I think people think they can outsmart him like Bugs Bunny outsmarted Daffy Duck.Report
Let’s obey at the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/18/style/jon-jones-trump-dance-bowers-bosa.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShareReport
You forgot to say “in advance.” How will people know that you’re a good person if you don’t say the whole catchphrase?Report
What is the difference between obeying in advance and a preference cascade?Report
So every single Republican in the House’sEthics Committee voted to keep the Gaetz Report secret.
That saving is t going on to a good start.
Oh, sorry, my mistake. Every single Republican in the Ethics Committee scrambled to save himself, in the hopes that, by December 5th, someone else did something to save the GOP from AG Gaetz
And in December 5th, they will all vote again to save themselves from the wrath of Trump. And, come January 22, from the wrath of AG Gaetz, who will be confirmed with the votes of every Republican senatorReport