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SOME GUARDRAILS HOLD  
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Robert Kuttner
December 4, 2024
The American Prospect
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_ More Trump screwball nominations are going down, and he belatedly
agrees to let the FBI vet nominees—meaning that still more will
fall. _

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be defense
secretary, makes his way to a meeting with Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC),
December 3, 2024, on Capitol Hill in Washington., Tom Williams/AP

 

If Trump were a little less reckless, vindictive, and vain, our
republic would be in even more trouble. But Trump is Trump. And some
of his bizarre nominees to high office seem calculated less to achieve
his own goals than to outrage liberals. However, even in today’s
Trumpified Republican Senate, there are limits.

First, Matt Gaetz went down as Trump’s nominee for attorney general.
JD Vance was hastily dispatched to line up Senate support. Vance has
his own deficiencies, but he can count. Gaetz abruptly withdrew,
saying that he had become a distraction. (Funny, that never stopped
him before.)

Yesterday, Chad Chronister, Trump’s nominee for chief of the Drug
Enforcement Administration, an obscure Florida sheriff, withdrew after
less than a day, after complaints by Republicans that he had arrested
a local preacher for defying COVID lockdown orders. Given Trump’s
obsession with reducing fentanyl smuggling, you might think he’d
want someone competent at DEA.

Why Chronister? His father-in-law, Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., former San
Francisco 49ers owner, whom Trump pardoned in 2020 for a gambling
payoff conviction
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been a major Trump donor.

Speaking of Florida, it now appears that the nomination of Pete
Hegseth is also going to be pulled
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possibly to be replaced as defense secretary-designate by Florida Gov.
Ron DeSantis. Jane Mayer in _The New Yorker_ broke the story
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the latest Hegseth mess, in which he was fired from his jobs heading
two nonprofit veterans organizations after repeated staff complaints
of drunkenness, womanizing, and financial mismanagement. This followed
the disclosure of a letter from Hegseth’s own mother telling him,
“You are an abuser of women
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There is a pattern here beyond the sheer lunacy of the nominations.
All of this backpedaling reflects opposition from key Republican
senators, who have warned Trump that several of his nominees can’t
be confirmed. They are also the likely sources of the leaks to that
effect to the press. And there will be more.

As Yogi Berra once reportedly said, never make predictions, especially
about the future. But my prediction is that at least four more will
almost surely be pulled: RFK Jr. as HHS secretary, Tulsi Gabbard as
director of national intelligence, Mehmet Oz as head of Medicare and
Medicaid, and Kash Patel as FBI director.

Notably, the Trump camp, under pressure from Senate Republicans, has
also caved on the issue of FBI vetting of prospective nominees
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Had the FBI investigated Gaetz and Hegseth, the nominations would
never have seen the light of day.

The Tuesday announcement by Trump’s transition operation left itself
some wiggle room. The agreement with the Justice Department allows FBI
background checks of nominees but does not explicitly require them.
Expect more Senate pushback on that.

So here’s where we are: Trump’s original ploy of demanding recess
appointments is dead. Some of his nominees have gone down before they
even got to the hearing stage, and several more will not survive FBI
background investigations and hearings.

It’s too soon to conclude that non-MAGA Republican senators have
recovered their souls, but some have recovered their wits. Trump’s
staggering overreach has reminded about a dozen GOP senators that
there is more to their political success than just kowtowing to Dear
Leader.

There are still immense Trump threats to American democracy, but
it’s a start.

_Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect,
and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School._

_Used with the permission © The American Prospect, Prospect.org
[[link removed]], 2024. All rights reserved. _

_Read the original article at
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