The Gaetz And Hegseth Controversies Look Like They're Fading Away

What I'm beginning to notice about the dual Gaetz-Hegseth not-quite scandals so far is that, unlike the sort of allegations that go metastatic, these both seem to have stalled. It's beern roughly a week since news leaked of a memo written by an unnamed woman who claims to be a friend of another unnamed accuser that was sent to Trump's transition team.

That memo claimed Hegseth raped a 30-year-old conservative group staffer in a hotel room in Monterey in 2017, the [Washington] Post reported. Police investigated the incident but Hegseth never faced charges, the memo said.

And so far, we've basically had clarifying information regarding a non-disclosure agreement and Hegseth's version of events, which seems to have been confirmed by a subsequent police investigation. Let's contrast this with, say, the timeline of the Monica Lewinsky scandal:

Jan. 7: Lewinsky signed an affidavit stating that she never had a sexual relationship with Clinton, at the request of attorneys representing Paula Jones, who had accused Clinton of sexual harassment in 1994. . . . A conservative legal group that had volunteered to fund her lawsuit had gotten an anonymous tip about Lewinsky, so Jones’ lawyers subpoenaed Lewinsky in hopes of arguing that Clinton displayed a pattern of workplace harassment.

Jan. 12: Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr — who had been investigating Whitewater, a scandal-plagued Arkansas real-estate venture with which the Clintons had been involved — receives more than 20 hours of tapes of phone conversations that seem to contradict the affidavit. The tapes come from Linda Tripp. . . to whom Lewinsky had confided about President Clinton.

. . . Jan. 13: At the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City, Va., Lewinsky dishes more about the relationship to Tripp, who’s been secretly wired by FBI agents, per Starr’s orders.

Jan. 17: Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report reports that Newsweek had been tipped off about President Clinton’s affair with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky, but had yet to run a story about it. On the same day, Clinton denies the affair in a deposition in the Jones suit[.]

. . . Jan. 21: Drudge publishes allegations that Lewinsky had kept a “garment with Clinton’s dried semen.” Mainstream news outlets pick up his report over the course of the week.

What clearly made the scandal juicy at the time was the idea that something was actively being covered up by both the Clinton administration and the media, and independent journalists and the FBI were concurrently leaking details that contradicted the official version of events. The whole basic story emerged over a 14-day period, with a steady drumbeat of emerging figures like Linda Tripp and Matt Drudge that gave credibility to the initial allegations.

So far with the Hegseth controversy, we're halfway through the 14-day period of the Lewinsky blowup, but the big key ingredient is missing, that is, credible evidence that something has been covered up, at least, not by the Trump transition or the media. No Linda Tripp has emerged with dynamite confirmation, either. All we have is an anonymous memo by a friend of an anonymous woman who so far doesn't seem willing to become the latest metonymy for a cheating wife a la a Lewinsky.

The big problem we also have is that through the Stormy Daniels "hush money" trial, we've already learned what a non-disclosure agreement is, that media figures routinely obtain them to make troublesome litigants go away, that Trump himself did this, and attempts to put him on trial for it simply boosted has standing in the polls. And at this point, unlike with Stormy Daniels, whose reputation can't be damaged more than it's already been, the anonymous accuser here has a great deal to lose if she violates the NDA.

A similar thing seems to be happening with Matt Gaetz. The allegatioins against him

began during the first Trump Administration in late 2020 under Attorney General Bill Barr, and concerned allegations that Gaetz had engaged in a sex-trafficking scheme involving a 17-year-old girl.

The probe intensified following revelations about Gaetz’s ties to Joel Greenberg, a former Seminole County tax collector, who pleaded guilty to sex trafficking and other charges in 2021 and admitted to paying women for sex, including the minor in question, and introducing her to other men.

. . . Gaetz vehemently denies the allegations, calling them part of a politically motivated extortion attempt. His attorney insisted that no evidence connected him to the crimes, and in February 2023, the DOJ closed its investigation into him without filing charges. Prosecutors reportedly struggled with witness credibility, including Greenberg’s testimony.

The problem continues to be that there's nothing new. As of yesterday,

An unauthorized person gained access to a file containing confidential testimony from women who have made allegations about former Rep. Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s pick to become the next attorney general, a lawyer said Tuesday.

Attorneys involved in a civil case brought by a Gaetz associate were notified this week that an unauthorized person accessed a file shared between lawyers that included unredacted depositions from a woman who has said Gaetz had sex with her when she was 17, and a second woman who says she saw the encounter, according to attorney Joel Leppard.

Gaetz has denied all the allegations, and the Justice Department ended its sex trafficking investigation without any criminal charges against him.

. . . The files the person was able to access were part of a defamation case filed by a Gaetz associate against Gaetz’s onetime political ally Joel Greenberg, who pleaded guilty in 2021 to sex trafficking of a minor, and admitted that he had paid at least one underage girl to have sex with him and other men.

As with Hegseth, these allegations are old, they've been made by people with serious credibility issues, and they've already been thoroughly investigated by law enforcement with no charges issued. There are no new assertions by a new Linda Tripp-type figure of stains on blue dresses that would contradict the existing narrative. And it sounds like Gaetz's attorneys, possibly augmented by the Trump transition legal team, are frightening media away from the story:

Sunny Hostin looks like she’s about to rip the heart out of her producer as she’s forced to issue a correction on Matt Gaetz.

pic.twitter.com/DdGCKaCHG0

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) November 20, 2024

Mark Halperin probably has this right.

“Really smart people who understand Capitol Hill and politics and confirmation history say Gaetz is going to be confirmed,” says @MarkHalperin. “Kennedy is going to be confirmed. Because for one thing, every Republican senator has constituents, donors, staff, family members in… pic.twitter.com/gMxXuTdyjm

— 2WAY (@2waytvapp) November 15, 2024

It's all kabuki so far.

More Dribbles Out On An Affronted Ingenue

As I've been saying, the affronted ingenues who come out of the woodwork with steamy allegations against Trump and other Republican nominees soon enough turn out not to be ingenues, whatever else they may be. This is starting to look like it's the case with the as-yet unnamed woman who, through a friend, has passed allegations against Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth to the Trump transition team at Mar-a-Lago, which in turn have been leaked to the press.

It appears that the fullest accounts are in Vanity Fair, behind a paywall, and the Washington Post. The Post's version goes like this:

The alleged incident is said to have occurred when Hegseth attended a California Federation of Republican Women conference in Monterey, and allegedly took place between just before midnight on Oct. 7, 2017, and 7 a.m. the following morning at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa, according to the police statement, first reported by Vanity Fair. The allegation to police was made Oct. 12, 2017, the report said.

The police statement did not provide any other details beyond noting that the complainant had a bruise on her right thigh and that there was no weapon or property involved.

The Post could find no reference in court files to the matter. The police statement does not disclose the complainant’s name, citing her identity and age as “Confidential.” The Post also generally does not name alleged victims of sexual assault.

. . . Hegseth has been married three times, according to court records. He married his first wife, Meredith, in his early 20s and they divorced in 2009, according to Minnesota court filings. The couple agreed that the reasons for the split were an “irretrievable breakdown” of the marriage and Hegseth’s “infidelity,” according to a filing in their divorce case. She declined to comment.

He married his second wife, Samantha, in 2010. Hegseth fathered a child with another woman, Jennifer Rauchet, then a Fox News producer, in August 2017, during that marriage. According to court records, Samantha Hegseth, who did not respond to a request for comment, filed for divorce in September — a month after the child was born. Following his second divorce, Hegseth married Rauchet.

So at the time of the alleged incident, Hegseth was unmarried, although soon to marry his third wife. Another Post story, this one behind a paywall but quoted on X, gives more detail:

At some point in the evening, the complaint alleged, Jane Doe received a text from two women at the bar who told her that “Hegseth was getting pushy about his interest in taking them upstairs to his room.” Jane Doe, who was nearby, came over and talked to those two women, and after they left, she “remembered sensing that Hegseth was irritated,” the memo said. What happened next is in dispute.

According to the memo, Jane Doe “didn’t remember anything until she was in Hegseth’s hotel room and then stumbling to find her hotel room.” The memo said that her memory of six to nine hours “was very hazy,” and that her husband was searching for her and was relieved when she finally showed up.

The following day, the woman returned home and “had a moment of hazy memory of being raped the night before, and had a panic attack,” the memo said.

The woman then went to the emergency room, where she received a rape-kit examination that “was positive for semen,” the memo said. The woman gave county authorities a statement about what happened, according to the memo sent to the transition team.

This leaves open the problem that the woman was at the hotel with her husband and children, but according to the chronology in the police report, she was in Hegseth's room at the hotel from just before midnight to 7:00 the next morning. Various accounts say that her husband had been frantically looking for her throughout this time. NBC News quotes Hegseth's attorney:

[Timothy] Parlatore denied the allegation, saying, “This is a situation where a consensual encounter occurred and, unfortunately, the woman had to come up with a lie to explain why the woman had not come back to her husband’s room that night.”

“It wasn’t reported until days later until there was pressure from her husband. It was fully investigated by police and video surveillance as well as multiple eyewitness statements show that she was the aggressor,” he added.

According to the chronology we have, the incident took place over the night of October 7-8, but it wasn't reported until October 12. The New York Post adds further comment from Parlatore:

Parlatore alleged that the accuser was simply trying to save face with her husband.

“She woke up to a whole bunch of texts from her husband saying, ‘Why didn’t you come back to our room?’ Afterward, she had to come back and lie,” he added, citing a police report that is not publicly available.

Days after the encounter, the accuser filed a complaint to the police, who investigated the situation and ultimately, the local district attorney declined to pursue charges.

Two years later, in 2020, the accuser threatened to pursue Hegseth in court, which resulted in his settlement payment to her in exchange for the woman signing a non-disclosure agreement.

“If she were to come out and start repeating these false claims, or if this in any way derails the confirmation, then, yeah, we will probably be following a pretty massive lawsuit against her for defamation and civil and extortion,” Parlatore said.

Megyn Kelly refers to -- and appears to be reading from -- another source, possibly the separate Washington Post story, at about 4:50 in the YouTube below:

After the encounter, she "expressed concern because she had not gone back to her room where her husband and children were, and that Hegseth told the cops that she planned to tell her husband she had fallen asleep on the couch in another guest's room," according to the statement.

Well, some of us have been there; the idea that someone would concoct that sort of story isn't outside the bounds of possibility, and this has been the continuing problem with all the E Jean Carrolls, Stormy Danielses, and Christine Blasey Fords -- people have seen this sort of thing in their own experience. It's worth noting that jurors are selected in court cases on the basis that they're expected to bring their own life experience to deciding whether witnesses are credible.

The best we can conclude is that neither Hegseth nor the woman displayed good judgment, although the woman was by all accounts sober, while Hegseth's judgment was impaired. This doesn't excuse Hegseth in particular, but it doesn't make him guilty of a crime. Given the public's reaction to the variious allegations against Trump -- they tended only to improve his standing in the polls -- I have a feeling the public has plenty enough good sense to write this off.

They're Underestimating Trump

This morning's headline at The Hill: NFL stars celebrate big plays with dance moves inspired by Trump:

Players across the NFL celebrated big plays Sunday with dance moves inspired by President-elect Trump.

Raiders tight end Brock Bowers, Titans wide receiver Calvin Ridley and Lions defensive end Za’Darius Smith all followed San Francisco 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa in celebrating big plays with dances inspired by Trump.

After a 23-yard touchdown, Bowers shook his arms and hips in the end zone similar to how Trump famously dances.

Following the game, he told USA Today that he’s seen “everyone do it.”

“I watched the UFC fight [Saturday] night, and Jon Jones did it. I like watching UFC, so I saw it, and thought it was cool,” he said.

. . . College players have been doing the move for weeks, and now it’s gone international, the AP noted.

This confirms the words of General Patton:

When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players and the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost, and laughed.

Yet again, we're seeing Trump's instinctive understanding of subliminal cues. He's a winner of the sort General Patton commended to his troops. Big-league ball players and the toughest boxers are emulating someone they apparently now see as an even bigger winner. But in that context, also note a strange non-event reported at the UK Daily Mail: MAGA world outraged after now-deleted tweet reveals Mitch McConnell's secret plot to derail Trump's agenda in the Senate:

Donald Trump's MAGA faithful were outraged after it was leaked that Mitch McConnell hatched a plot to stall his Cabinet nominations in the Senate.

The backlash began after a now-deleted tweet from New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer claimed McConnell told colleagues 'there will be no recess appointments' for the president-elect's cabinet members.

'Message to Trump Team: "There will be no recess appointments" Sen. Mitch McConnell said tonight at a Washington gathering,' Mayer wrote on X at around 8 pm Sunday.

. . . Mayer has since deleted the tweet without explanation, but not before it caused commotion among Trump supporters, who suspected something was foul was afoot.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah reiterated that 'McConnell is no longer the Senate GOP leader' before asking: 'Remember that time when McConnell decided he wouldn’t be speaking for Senate Republicans anymore?'

But note that sopurces close to former Republican Leader McConnell have been leaking to Jane Mayer, a leftist writer for the New Yorker:

Her paternal great-great-grandfather was Emanuel Lehman, one of the founders of Lehman Brothers. Her maternal grandparents were Mary Fleming (Richardson) and Allan Nevins, a historian and John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s authorized biographer.

Mayer attended two private non-secondary schools: Fieldston, in the northwest area of the Bronx borough of New York City; and—as an exchange student in 1972-1973—Bedales, a boarding school in the village of Steep, Hampshire, England.

A 1977 magna cum laude graduate of Yale University, she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and served as senior editor of the Yale Daily News and as campus stringer for Time magazine

In other words, she's a generational member of the blueblood establishment. But beyond that, one of her books is an effort to rehabilitate Anita Hill's failed attempt to play the affronted ingenue card against Clarence Thomas:

Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas (1994) (co-authored with Jill Abramson), a study of the nomination and appointment of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court[.]

This precis summarizes her argument:

Anita Hill's accusation of sexual harassment by Thomas, and the attacks on her that were part of his high-placed supporters rebuttal, both shocked the nation and split it into two camps. One believed Hill was lying, the other believed that the man who ultimately took his place on the Supreme Court had committed perjury.

In this brilliant, often shocking book, Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, two of the nation's top investigative journalists, examine all aspects of this controversial case. They interview witnesses that the Judiciary Committee chose not to call and present documents never before made public. They detail the personal and professional pasts of both Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill and lay bare a campaign of lobbying, public relations, and character assassination fueled by conservative power at its most desperate. A gripping high-stakes drama, Strange Justice is not only a definitive account of the Clarence Thomas nomination hearings but is also a classic casebook of how the Washington game is played by those for whom winning is everything.

Winning was everything to both sides, of course, it still is, and Anita Hill lost. In fact, subsequent attempts to play the affronted ingenue card have all lost -- especially when they've gone after Trump.

So, why is Mitch McConnell playing footsie with an upper-class member of the anti-Republican left? Something tells me the anti-Trump members of the Senate, at least as of yesterday, were beginning to rally around the possibility that the House Ethics Committee report against Gaetz might be released with salacious allegations, as well as possibly calling the woman who threatened to sue Pete Hegseth as a witness. But I think saner heads prevailed; if Trump could weather tetimony from the likes of E Jean Carroll and Stormy Daniels, putting a couple of other phony ingenues in front of a Senate committee could well backfire.

I think it's slowly beginning to dawn on some of these people that, as General Patton understood, Americans love a winner, and one thing that makes Trump a winner is his instinctive mastery of subliminal cues. This is something Sen Fetterman understands better than other Democrats:

Fetterman said, “There are some [nominations] that I would be excited to vote for, like my colleague from Florida or the representative from New York, of course. Then there are others that are just absolute trolls, just like Gaetz and those things. That’s why, you know, Democrats, you know, like Trump, that gets the kind of thing that he wanted. You know, like the freakout and all of those things.”

He continued, “It’s still not even not even Thanksgiving yet. And if we’re having meltdowns, you know, every tweet or every appointment or all those things, I mean, it’s going to be four years.”

Fetterman added, “I’ve also claimed that Trump is the strongest, that he’s been in the three cycles here. And now things that were really unique that happened the assassination attempt that was in Butler, that’s 45 minutes from where we’re sitting right now.”

It looks like somebody leaned pretty hard on Jane Mayer to take that tweet down. I'll bet someone even leaned pretty hard on McConnell. General Patton would be proud.

The Ingenue Accuser Strategy

My point in yesterday's post was that Trump, having somehow gotten this way through successful careers in salesmanship, the management of wealth and influence, and entertainment, has a deep and instinctive insight into subliminal cues. It reminds me of discussions I've seen of artists like Shakespere or Michelangelo that point out that critics can take paragraphs to explain the effect of specific scenes or vignettes, but the decisions the artists made in creating them must have been nearly instant.

These sorts of insights operate below a conscious or rational level. But some sort of underlying intent is clearly behind Trump's nominations of Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, and Matt Gaetz, because the reactions from his oppenents have been so over-the-top on one hand and predictable on the other. Trump must have had some sense that this would be the case, and I've got to assume he also has an instinctive sense of how an end game will play out, even if it's obscure to everyone else.

I'm going to leave the reactions to Tulsi Gabbard aside for now -- that she's a Russian agent -- because they're a little too transparent and banal. But I want to focus on the accusations against Hegseth and Gaetz, which are also predictable and transparent, because they seem to fit something more like a dreamlike archetype, the ingenue accuser. So far, the ingenues who've been marshaled against Hegseth and Gaetz are anonymous and speaking through attorneys, and the details of their accusations haven't been fully revealed, but they're starting to fit an existing pattern.

Past ingenue figures -- and of course, I'm using the term very loosely -- have included Anita Hill against Clarence Thomas, Christine Blasey Ford against Brett Kavanaugh, Cassidy Huthinson against Donald Trump, Stormy Daniels against Donald Trump, and E Jean Carroll, yet again against Donald Trump. The problem with the ingenue archetype is that figures like Carroll, an octogenarian sex columnist, and Daniels, a porn actress, hardly qualify as ingenues, and the credibility of all of them has collapsed under scrutiny. They simply turn out not to be ingenues, their stories are phony, and the whole affair turns into something like the punchline of a dirty joke.

But more important, what we've seen is that all these seemingly tawdry affairs wind up working to the benefit of the nominee. Clarence Thomas was confirmed, as was Brett Kavanaugh. Cassidy Hutchinson, Stormy Daniels, and E Jean Carroll somehow served as subliminal cues that helped bring about Trump's unprecedented political comeback and reelection; in particular, the trials involving non-ingenues Carroll and Daniels did nothing but boost Trump's rise in the polls.

What we have at the moment against Gaetz boils down to this:

A woman told the House Ethics Committee that she saw Matt Gaetz, who is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for the U.S. attorney general, have sex with a minor, her lawyer said Friday.

“My client testified to the House Ethics Committee that she witnessed Rep. Gaetz having sex with a minor at a house party in Orlando in 2017,” Joel Leppard said.

This in itself raises puzzling questions. People normally have sex, underage or not, in private. How did this person find herself in a situation where she witnessed this act? Was it in some sort of orgy? How was she so sure the victim was 17 and not 18? What sort of substances had she ingested to wind up in this situation? If her judgment was so clouded simply as to be in the same room, how can her testimony not be impeachable? But the story goes on,

“Merrick Garland’s DOJ cleared Matt Gaetz and didn’t charge him. Are you alleging Garland is part of a cover-up?” a spokesperson for Gaetz said Friday.

Gaetz, 42, who represented Florida’s District 1 covering part of the Florida Panhandle, was investigated by the FBI on sex-trafficking allegations involving a 17-year-old and was not charged with any crime.

I suspect this story will fall apart pretty quickly as the witness turns out, like the others, not to be an ingenue. The same sort of narrative seems to be shaping up with Hegseth:

Trump Defense Secretary Nominee Pete Hegseth’s lawyer Tim Parlatore said in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Saturday that sexual assault allegations from seven years ago — in 2017 — were “completely investigated” at the time and that he is “completely and totally innocent.”

“He is completely and totally innocent. It was completely investigated. She was the aggressor,” Parlatore said in a phone interview, referring to the woman who claimed she was assaulted.

Parlatore said that in 2017, Hegseth, the host of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, was invited to speak at an event hosted by the California Federation of Republican Women conference in Monterey. After the event, he and event organizers were at a bar, where he had “too many drinks.”

The accuser, who was allegedly sober at the time, took him back to his room, Parlatore said.

“She took advantage of him. She led him. She was, by all accounts, both video and eyewitness, she was sober. He was drunk. She grabbed him. She took him to his room. She’s like walking arm in arm with him. And really putting it on, and she gets him into his room. And then the police honestly, when they looked at it, even though she was the one that reported it, when they looked at the video, they considered charging her,” he said.

Over the next several years, there were threats of lawsuits by both sides that eventually resulted in a settlement.

Parlatore said the settlement had confidentiality provisions that the accuser or others with knowledge of the case breached this week, when the allegations became public.

“The consequences for breaking it are essentially that the settlement is null and void, but beyond the settlement, obviously she’s going to owe us a little bit of money from that,” he said, adding that she did not get much in the first place.

“But now it opens her up to a lawsuit for defamation and because it’s in California, California has a simple extortion statute, so we could sue her for extortion, too,” he said.

If we look at the pattern here, all of the (not) ingenue accuser scenarios have played out in a consistent way, and it's been counterproductive to the intended effect. I can't imagine that Trump wasn't fully aware of the allegations against both Gaetz and Hegseth, and he fully factored them into his strategy when he nominated them, although, as with Shakespeare and Michelangelo, his decisons must have been nearly instant and inscrutable to the rest of us.

I don't know how they will play out, but I can only assume they're part of a strategy to render the RINO faction of the Republicans irrelevant, and so far, the RINO Republicans are acting as we might predict. If they're being predictable, this doesn't bode well for them at all.

"You Got What You Wanted, And Now You’re Still Blaming Biden."

Sen John Fetterman's words to Speaker Emerita Pelosi struck me with particular force when I read them this morning. They came in the middle of an interview he did with Politico:

After Joe’s Biden debate over the summer, you didn’t think he should drop out.

We can both agree that he had a rough debate.

People like [Nancy] Pelosi, she really tried to — what’s the word I’m looking for? — she embraced this “she’s the godmother, she’s the enforcer.” And now she’s blaming Biden. Well, you can’t have it both ways. You got what you wanted, and now you’re still blaming Biden.

I think it’s really ironic that you have a woman at age 84 and she is still hanging on. Why not give a younger generation an opportunity to occupy that seat?

One thing I've noticed about this year's campaign and the surrounding events has been their subliminal, even dreamlike quality. Not least among these images is Sen Fetterman's recovery from a severe stroke in May, 2022, about which the Babylon Bee reported:

In a bizarre coincidence, Senator John Fetterman has suddenly become more conservative after his brain resumed working.

Previously a die-hard liberal, Fetterman has stunned audiences by staking out a variety of conservative positions over the past several weeks, at the same time as his brain regained the ability to speak in sentences. With Fetterman's cognition continually improving, conservatives have sat dumbfounded as they found themselves nodding along with the Democrat.

In this case, Fetterman is speaking not just as a conservative, but as something of a family truthteller. And there can be no question that Pelosi has become the center of a family dispute.

The latest controversy was sparked by Pelosi telling The New York Times that had Biden dropped out sooner, the election may have turned out differently. Specifically, she cited the possibility of having a compressed primary instead of anointing Harris, which is what ultimately occurred.

Is she wrong? Not necessarily, but how do Democrats want to hear what they "should" have done from the person who so royally screwed things up that Donald Trump, the man they compare to Adolf Hitler, got re-elected? Pelosi flew too close to the sun. She believed herself to be above the will of her party's primary voters and executed a soft coup on the rightful nominee. The result was an abject disaster.

But this is just a part of the dreamlike campaign and post-election psychodrama. I've noted here the strange image of Kamala, who was the most liberal senator, to the left of Bernie Sanders, affecting the wardrobe and accoutrements of an upper-class white woman while speaking in a phony black accent.

Nor can we forget the dreamlike images over the past year of a frail, stammering, stumbling, shuffling President Biden -- but contrast that with the equally dreamlike image of Trump in Butler, back on his feet and raising his fist beneath an American flag. Of that image, Sen Fetterman commented at the link above,

“Immediately after that, when I was out, I saw people with custom shirts with that image,” he said, referring to the iconic photo of Trump raising his fist after being shot. “It’s like, ‘They tried everything. They impeached this man, they put him on trial. You know, the media. And now they tried to kill him, and he survived.’ And he had the presence of mind to even respond, and created that. What if that was [Barack] Obama? Can you imagine what that would have meant to Democrats?”

Now let's put this in the context of Trump's controversial cabinet nominations in the past week. Again, we're geting a dreamlike response:

Elizabeth Warren on Tulsi Gabbard: "Do you really want her to have all the secrets of the United States and our defense intelligence agencies when she has so clearly has been in Putin's pocket? That just has to be a hard no." pic.twitter.com/gOD7274ilI

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 14, 2024

A shrieking, schoolmarmish woman making hysterical McCarthyite accusations that Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian agent. Something's seriously out of joint.

Let's also look at the dreamlike context of Trump's nominating Gaetz as Attorney General. So far, it looks like Gaetz's Senate confirmation is going to center on unreleased -- and as far as anyone can tell, unsubstantiated -- allegations of sexual misconduct and whatever else, detailed in a confidential House Ethics Committee report. Doesn't this echo in a strange, subliminal way many of Trump's obstacles over the past eight years, the Russian hookers, the Zelensky phone call, the Mueller report, the impeachment attempts, the January 6 committee?

The odd thing is how insubstantial these things all turned out to be, a lot like waking up and suddely realizing it was all a dream. Now it looks like we're going to have an equivalent battle over nothing:

The House Ethics Committee was scheduled to meet Friday, three sources familiar with the meeting told NBC News, and one of those sources said that releasing the Gaetz report was expected to be among the topics on the agenda. Punchbowl News previously reported Wednesday that the Ethics panel had planned to release a "highly damaging" report about Gaetz on Friday, citing multiple sources familiar with the probe.

But Gaetz's resignation complicates things, and the meeting was canceled, according to a source with direct knowledge.

The link continues,

Trump's choice of Gaetz was a surprise to nearly everyone, including members of his own party and officials at the Justice Department — in part because of the Ethics investigation, his past legal problems and his reputation as a rabble-rouser in Congress.

A source familiar with the process told NBC News that Gaetz had been consulting Trump on who would be best to run the Justice Department. Gaetz did not ask for the role, that person said, but Trump asked him to take on the job Wednesday morning, just hours before the decision was made public.

This might look like it was an impulsive decision, but now that we know Trump better, I just don't think he's impulsive. On the other hand, he certainly is instinctive. One thing we've learned about Trump is his instinctive ability to manage subliminal cues. The battle over his controversial cabinet nominations is going to have plenty of subliminal cues. Right now, I have a sense that Trump is somehow ahead of the game.

I've Got To Assume There's A Plan

Some of the reasons why @RobertKennedyJr @mattgaetz @TulsiGabbard @PeteHegseth @KristiNoem *might* have a better chance to be confirmed than the Conventional Wisdom has it:

1. The media likes the “Perils of Pauline” framing for confirmation battles where everything is seen…

— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) November 15, 2024

According to the left-wing Bulwark, Donald Trump Is Dead Serious About Getting Matt Gaetz to DOJ:

Of all the lawyers Trump interviewed to be his next attorney general, the Florida congressman checked the most boxes. Gaetz is a loyal, longtime adviser, an acid-tongued debate champ, and—perhaps most important to the oft-investigated former and future president—an aggrieved target of the feds. Gaetz was the subject of a federal sex-crime probe that he survived and labeled a Deep State fix.

. . . The pick was so audacious that it prompted immediate speculation that Gaetz was actually playing the role of a sacrificial lamb—there to give Republican senators a nominee to tank so that they would have cover to vote yes on other cabinet selections, themselves a mix of respected lawmakers, television personalities, ideological apostates and political allies.

But those familiar with Trump’s thinking say he’s deadly serious about getting Gaetz in at DOJ.

Byron York chimes in with the conventional wisdom:

“I do think it was a terrible pick, and we don’t know the status of the House Ethics Committee investigation into alleged misconduct,” York said. “We do know the Justice Department investigated and didn’t charge him with anything, but the thing we really know, for a fact, is that Matt Gaetz played a hugely aggressive role in nearly destroying the House — the Republican Party in the House of Representatives, based mostly on a personal vendetta against Kevin McCarthy, who was then the speaker of the House.”

“He’s got enemies all over the place, and the reason he has those enemies was that the things he did were so damaging for no good reason,” York explained.

The president-elect’s nomination of Gaetz came as a surprise to many, as the Florida representative was not reported to be on the short list for the position.

Sen Fetterman's remarks indicate what I think is a slightly better, but still imperfect, appreciation of Trump's mindset:

Sen. John Fetterman says Donald Trump tapping Rep. Matt Gaetz for Attorney General is “god tier level trolling.” pic.twitter.com/O7RfrKBRbk

— Brennan Leach (@brennanleach) November 13, 2024

But we nevertheless have to recognize that, as The Bulwark concludes, Trump is serious. Gaetz isn't a sacrificial lamb. The biggest problem he faces is allegations of some type of sexual misconduct that have never been confirmed, first raised on March 30, 2021:

A group of New York Times reporters who won awards for their roles pushing the Russia collusion lie penned an anonymously sourced article with a devastating headline: “Matt Gaetz Is Said to Face Justice Dept. Inquiry Over Sex With an Underage Girl.” The story was sourced to “three people briefed on the matter,” none of them identified in any way. The story contained no evidence against Gaetz of sex crimes, but much guilt-by-association. Late in the story, the pack of reporters admitted that no charges had been filed and that the “extent of his criminal exposure is unclear.”

. . . On [September 23, 2022], 18 months after he was accused of being a pedophile and child sex trafficker, the Washington Post published another anonymously sourced report. “Career prosecutors recommend no charges for Matt Gaetz,” said the article, published quietly on a Friday. Not only was he never convicted of any of the crimes he was alleged to have committed, he wasn’t even charged. And, if you believe the anonymously sourced claims, he isn’t going to be.

The damage was already done by the initial report, written by reporters who regularly regurgitate political leaks from Department of Justice and FBI sources.

“Matt Gaetz’s days in politics are likely numbered,” one CNN reporter claimed days after the initial report, noting how few people had come to his defense.

Nevertheless, Gaetz has managed to survive so far, despite the predictions of his detractors:

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff Marc Short even accused Gaetz of being a child trafficker just this past July after the congressman said Pence was a “nice guy” but that he would never be president.

“I don’t know if Mike Pence will run for president in 2024, but I don’t think Matt Gaetz will have an impact on that,” Short said. “In fact, I’d be surprised if he’s still voting. It’s more likely he’ll be in prison for child trafficking by 2024.”

It hasn't happened yet, while Trump's return to power seemed equally improbable at the time that article was posted in 2022. Given the circumstances, especially the likely media hoax of the child-trafficking allegations, Trump must see a basic similarity between his own legal and media battles and Gaetz's, and he must envision a similar strategy for winning them, even if we don't know what it might be so far. But that strategy must involve the attorneys who argued his hush-money case in front of Judge Merchan in New York: Trump picks his New York hush money defense lawyers for top spots at DOJ.

President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday tapped the lawyers who represented him in the New York hush money criminal trial for the No. 2 and No. 3 spots at the Department of Justice.

Todd Blanche, a former federal prosecutor who defended Trump in his Manhattan criminal trial, which ended in Trump’s conviction on 34 counts, and his two federal criminal cases, will be deputy attorney general, the second-highest ranking post at DOJ and the person who runs its day-to-day operations, if confirmed. Emil Bove, who also represented the president-elect in the hush money trial and his two federal criminal cases, will serve as principal associate deputy attorney general.

All I can conclude for now is that the events of the past year have shown that it's unwise to underestimate Trump. He isn't just good; he's lucky, but the harder he works, the luckier he gets. It's a major mistake to impute motives like simple trolling, revenge, or childish impulsiveness to the guy. There's more behind the controversial nominations than just that, but we're going to have to wait to see how this all plays out.

Things Are Moving Quickly

I waas intrigued by this description of the trasnsition process at Mar-a-Lago, specifically the designation of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence:

I’m sorry folks, we are going to have to wait to understand the thinking behind this one. I have absolutely no idea. Mrs Gabbard has never led any organization of scale, nor held any position of intelligence review that I am aware of.

Other than being a campaign surrogate (via RFK Jr) and very close friend of Tucker Carlson, who I’m told is one of a small group organizing the cabinet appointments; together with Donald Trump Jr, Vivek Ramaswamy, Elon Musk and Robert F Kennedy Jr. (currently living in Mar-a-Lago); I’m not sure what would be the plan for Tulsi Gabbard (maybe with guidance from Ric Grenell?). Like everyone else, I’m puzzled.

Whoa, Bobby Jr is in residence at Mar-a-Lago? I did a web search for confirmation and came up with hints. I found this from Tuesday -- and thus it's probably already out of date -- at Politico:

People close to Trump say he has always sought input from a random assortment of advisers, ranging from captains of industry to the Las Vegas waitress who Trump said became the inspiration for his no-tax-on-tips proposal. But as he and his team plot out his next administration, the message being sent by the people he’s huddling with in Palm Beach is that he’s more welcoming than ever to Republican outsiders who want to shake up Washington.

. . . “There’s a lot of different factions. There’s a lot of people calling Trump. There’s a lot of people who thought one thing was set in stone and are finding out that’s not the case, and the chessboard is going to be shuffled a lot in the coming weeks,” said one person with knowledge of the transition.

. . . Those who have been in meetings with Trump and his team in recent days or have given input include not just his transition co-chairs Lutnick and Linda McMahon, but Musk, Vice President-elect JD Vance, his son Donald Trump Jr., Gabbard and Kennedy. There’s also a rotating cast of conservative influencers like Charlie Kirk and Vivek Ramaswamy, according to four people with knowledge of the meetings.

From the tone of the story, it wounds as though some or all of those influencers are in fact currently in residence at Mar-a-Lago, and Musk traveled with Trump to yesterday's meeting at the White House. This CNN report says,

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has essentially set up residency at the beach club, where members spot him or his enormous private security detail nearly every day. Former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is expected to stay in Palm Beach for most of the transition, was seen snapping photos with fans at the club last week.

Via the AP:

Indeed, Musk has sometimes appeared to be a member of the family. On election night, he was spotted giving his son a piggyback ride through a Mar-a-Lago ballroom and joined a family photo of the president-elect with his children and grandchildren.

Since then, he’s tried to put his imprint on every subject facing the new administration, according to people familiar with his efforts, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the dynamic.

This brings us to the latest unorthodox picks for Defense Secretary and Attorney General. The story continues,

While Trump’s 2016 election was a surprise, this time allies have spent four years pulling together personnel lists and policy proposals. Candidates are being represented by PR agencies and lobbyists. One potential Cabinet pick hired consultants to try to bolster his image.

While Trump had said he already had people in mind for various roles, Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team in charge of personnel, previously told The Associated Press that he hadn’t discussed any recommendations with Trump before his win because the president-elect is notoriously superstitious.

“What I do is I go and find the greatest candidates for the role. So each role will have, let’s say, eight amazing candidates — fully vetted, fully capable of Senate confirmation, OK?” he said. “Then he’ll start interviewing and he’ll start considering. That’s up to him, right? He’s the chooser.”

The problem of getting his controversial nominations confirmed by the Senate has come up in the process of electing the Senate majority leader. Article II, Section 2, Clause 3 of the US Constitution says,

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

ABC News says,

Any of Trump's appointees successfully installed during a recess would have the same legal authority and pay as a Senate-confirmed appointee. That said, a recess appointment is temporary -- expiring at the end of the Senate's "next session" (effectively almost two years).

According to Vox,

Though recess appointments have been used in the past by presidents of both parties, in recent years, the Senate has avoided going to extended recesses, blocking presidents from making any appointments in senators’ absence.

Sen Thune has agreed to allow recess appointments, as did his opponents in the just-concluded race for Majority Leader. How this will develop in the confirmation process for Trump's nominees remains to be seen, but so far, Trump's moves have been both fast and unpredictable. I suspect Thune is more on board with the Trump program than some may think:

BREAKING: Majority Leader John Thune was asked if he has any doubts on Trump's nominees - has just vowed to ram through his appointments "quickly" pic.twitter.com/uN5yrW1waU

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 13, 2024