The Perverse Logic of Trump’s Nomination Circus

A month after his election in 2016, Donald Trump chose Andrew Puzder, a longtime fast-food-company CEO, to be his secretary of labor. Most of Trump’s Cabinet picks moved smoothly through the confirmation process, but Puzder’s nomination languished amid allegations of wage theft, sexual harassment, and spousal abuse, as well as his acknowledgment that he had hired an undocumented immigrant as a nanny and not paid her taxes. By February 2017, he gave up and withdrew his nomination.

Being a president’s most troubled or scandal-ridden nominee is dangerous—like being the weakest or sickest member of the herd when predators start to circle. Republican senators probably calculated that if they rejected Puzder, Trump would send a pick with less baggage and higher qualifications, which is exactly what he did: Alex Acosta, the eventual selection, had a long government résumé and easily won confirmation.

Something very different is happening with Trump’s Cabinet picks this time. Less than two weeks have passed since the election, but the president-elect has already put forward a batch of nominees so aberrant by historical standards that any one of them would have been a gigantic story in the past. (Hello, Attorney General–designate Matt Gaetz.) Each one barely holds the media’s attention for an hour or two before the next nomination eclipses them. (Whoops, I didn’t see you there, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.)

If Senate Republicans reject one of these unqualified nominees, how can they justify saying yes to any? And yet, how could they reject the whole slate of nominees by a president from their own party, who is so popular among their own voters? Perversely, the sheer quantity of individually troubling nominees might actually make it harder for the Senate to block any of them.

[Elaine Godfrey: Either way, Matt Gaetz wins]

The list of wild picks also includes Tulsi Gabbard, the walking embodiment of horseshoe theory and Trump’s nominee to be director of national intelligence; Pete Hegseth, a square-jawed Fox News host tapped by Trump to lead the Pentagon; and Kristi Noem, a governor with no national-security experience, selected to head the Department of Homeland Security. By the time anyone gets around to noting that Trump is appointing his personal lawyers (who defended him in his several criminal trials) to top legal posts in the government, who will have the energy to be shocked?

We don’t know yet if the Senate will confirm any or all of these nominees, but weariness is apparent in the voices of Republican senators, who face a choice between approving Trump’s nominees and allowing Trump to use a dubious constitutional work-around to appoint them without requiring a Senate vote. Many have gasped or raised pained questions about Gaetz, and some have even predicted that his nomination will fail, but none has publicly pledged to vote against him.

Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana is a medical doctor who has shown a willingness to buck Trump and even voted to convict him during Trump’s second impeachment; he’s the incoming chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Yet Cassidy responded to the preposterous HHS nomination by posting on X that Kennedy “has championed issues like healthy foods and the need for greater transparency in our public health infrastructure. I look forward to learning more about his other policy positions and how they will support a conservative, pro-American agenda.”

This isn’t how things used to work. In 1989, President George H. W. Bush nominated former Senator John Tower to be secretary of defense. Few could question Tower’s credentials. A World War II veteran, he’d served nearly 20 years on the Armed Services Committee; he later investigated the Iran-Contra affair. But allegations of womanizing and alcohol abuse led the Senate to reject his nomination, even though the body tends to give former and current members an easy ride. Hegseth, by comparison, is a veteran but has no government experience, has a history of infidelity and was in 2017 accused of sexual assault, and has expressed various extreme views, including lobbying Trump to pardon American soldiers accused of murdering prisoners and unarmed civilians. (Trump granted the pardons.)

Or consider Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader, whom President Barack Obama nominated to lead HHS in 2009. Daschle was forced to withdraw his nomination over $140,000 in unpaid back taxes. That was a serious lapse, yet it feels quaint compared to Kennedy’s or Gaetz’s dubious résumé.

[Franklin Foer: Why the Gaetz announcement is already destroying the government]

A clear sign of how much things have changed may come from Puzder, whom Trump is reportedly considering nominating as labor secretary again. If Senate Republicans are willing to approve the same guy they rejected eight years ago, the advice-and-consent guardrails will be well and truly gone.

The circuslike bombardment of freakishly unqualified personnel picks calls to mind Steve Bannon’s notorious insight that the press can handle only so much information, real or fake, without being overloaded. Uncovering, verifying, debunking, and explaining information takes time and resources. “The real opposition is the media,” Bannon told the journalist Michael Lewis in 2018. “And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” Something similar might apply to U.S. senators who might otherwise be tempted to show some independence.

Ascribing too much strategic intent to Trump is always a risk. The president-elect works from impulse and intuition. Trump selected Gaetz on a whim during a two-hour flight, according to The New York Times; Politico has reported that Susie Wiles, Trump’s campaign manager and incoming chief of staff, was on the plane but was unaware of the Gaetz pick. Even if Trump is not consciously following Bannon’s directive, however, the effect is the same. Intentionally or otherwise, the shit level is high and rising.