Why The Gaetz Defeat Really Matters

The first step of defiance is the hardest. Senate Republicans just took it.

Earlier this week, we reported on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2020 dalliance with the “plandemic” conspiracy theory. Turns out that dalliance goes, uh, deeper than we previously knew. The social media account Patriot Takes unearthed an old clip of Kennedy seemingly bragging about producing and funding the Plandemic documentary:

We also have a film platform. We have a film division at Children’s Health Defense. We’ve produced two films. One of them is VAX 2, which was, you know, a huge success. And then Plandemic, which we financed, which is now by some metrics the most successful documentary in history. I think it’s had 25 million views. Even though they threw us off all the social media, we were able to still get a lot of people to see that film.

Did Kennedy’s organization actually finance the documentary, or was he just randomly claiming they did? We don’t know, and a spokesperson for Kennedy declined to respond. Either way, not great! Happy Friday.

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Rep. Matt Gaetz leaves the room. (Photo by Kent Nishimura / Getty Images.)

Gaetz Overboard

by William Kristol

It was heartening to learn yesterday afternoon that Matt Gaetz had withdrawn as the nominee for attorney general. For a brief, shining moment in the era of Donald Trump, one felt that the arc of the moral universe bent toward justice.

The news was particularly cheering because it was a forced withdrawal. Gaetz is gone because Trump told him to be gone. As Marc Caputo reported in The Bulwark, Trump phoned Gaetz Thursday morning to tell him, “You don’t have the votes.”

“Gaetz had repeatedly told others he would stay in the hunt for the nomination unless Trump signaled it had become a distraction,” Marc wrote. “That signal came Thursday.”

Trump didn’t exactly toss Gaetz overboard. But he instructed Gaetz to jump. And Gaetz did.

Why did Trump tell him to jump? The New York Times reported that four Republican senators were hard Nos on Gaetz—Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and incoming Utah Sen. John Curtis—and that others were ready to join them.

In other words, it was Republican senators who forced Trump to dump Gaetz.

Let us pause on that simple statement: Republican senators discovered they have agency! They can stand up to Trump! They can resist! They can prevail!

Amazing. Will wonders never cease? Have they suddenly begun reading fortifying poetry like W.E. Henley’s Invictus, which I’ve quoted before in Morning Shots?

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

Whether or not it was Invictus that did the trick, the good thing is, when you’ve decided to become captain of your soul once, you can do it again. Gaetz is gone. Others can be made to go, too. Why shouldn’t deplorable and dangerous nominees like Pete Hegseth for Defense and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services be next? Couldn’t Trump be forced to toss them overboard as well? He could, if senators take a stand and stand their ground.

Perhaps we could even get some serious reflection on whether Trump’s choice to replace Gaetz, former Florida attorney general and Qatar lobbyist Pam Bondi, should be approved. Might not some Republican senators have reservations about voting to confirm our first ever election-denying, Big Lie-promoting attorney general? It was important four years ago that the leaders of the Justice Department were not willing to further Trump’s coup effort. Would Bondi resist next time?

And what of Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pro-Assad, pro-Putin, anti-American-intelligence-community pick for director of national intelligence?

As Andrew Desiderio reports this morning in Punchbowl News, there is resistance:

Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee . . . are already indicating they’ll be interested in probing Gabbard’s controversial and often outright hostile posture toward the very intelligence apparatus she’d run if confirmed. . . . Republican senators have privately discussed their interest in viewing Gabbard’s FBI file.

Desiderio also reports this comment from Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), an Intelligence Committee member: “I start out saying, OK, this is an individual the president wants on his team. But now let’s talk about information that maybe the president didn’t have, or information that comes up, and at that stage do we advise the president to look elsewhere or do we offer our consent?” Other Republican members of the Intelligence Committee like Collins and John Cornyn of Texas also sound doubtful.

Gaetz’s forced withdrawal is encouraging. But it needs to be the beginning, not the end, of the story. That should be a story of recovery by some Republicans of a sense of political agency and constitutional responsibility. To do this, Republican senators don’t really need to read Victorian poetry—though it never hurts! They simply need to take seriously their oath, that they “will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” That would be, in the age of Trump, real progress.

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Paper Tiger?

by Andrew Egger

I join in Bill’s cheer over the pleasant sight of Matt Gaetz’s attorney-general ambitions blowing up on the launch pad. To his thoughts, I’d just add one brief point.

That serious lawmakers would blanch at confirming him was obvious from the minute his name was announced, but Donald Trump honestly seemed to think he could simply bludgeon the Senate into submission. (And who could blame him, given their track record of acquiescence?) And he sure acted like he was gearing up to bludgeon them. Yesterday morning, before Gaetz pulled out, a senior Trump adviser told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl the message they were hitting in their conversations with GOP Senate recalcitrants:

If you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary. That’s all. And there’s a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it . . . the president gets to decide his cabinet, no one else.

That’s a posture of maximum conflict and pain. It telegraphs an unshakable resolve to grind even a doomed Gaetz nomination through to the point of revelation.

To this message, a small but critical mass of Republicans responded with some version of: Well, I’m sorry you feel that way, but my mind’s made up. And then: Poof! Trump calls Gaetz to give him the bad news. No moment of reckoning. No future-killing vote. Just a pulling of the plug.

Now look. Obviously the takeaway here is not that Trump is losing his perch as by far the most powerful and influential voice in the Republican party. He can still snap his fingers and summon primary challengers for any who displease him, and likely turn them into dangerous candidates by that action alone. Even moderates like Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, and even personal enemies like Sen. Mitch McConnell, have incentives to try and avoid Trump’s crosshairs.

But what this episode did demonstrate—for now—were the limits of Trump’s ability to impose his absolute will on such senators. After all, there’s only one true nuclear-option pressure point Trump can reach for in such a circumstance: Cross me here and your career is over.¹ But as soon as he’s deployed that once, it loses almost all of its utility. Would a senator crossing him on Gaetz and Gabbard result in them being primaried twice as hard? Even Trump appeared to realize it would be imprudent to exhaust his most potent weapon just to help Gaetz, of all people. He talked a big game, he still didn’t have the votes, and he dropped it.

It will be interesting to see what comes of this. GOP senators would do well to realize that the hardest step to take is the first.

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Quick Hits

WILL THE HOUSE BAR GAETZ?: With Matt Gaetz out of the running as attorney general, an interesting question arises: Can he sail back into Congress as though nothing has changed? After all, Gaetz made the highly unusual move, after his nomination was announced, of resigning his seat immediately—an apparent stratagem to short-circuit a looming Ethics Committee report into his alleged misconduct. He also announced in advance his *intent* not to be sworn in as a member of the new Congress in January.

There’s an argument to be made that House rules would block Gaetz from reneging on that pre-resignation, as some procedure experts² have argued. But it’s a gray area, and as Marc Caputo notes, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has not yet called a special election for the seat. Should Gaetz limp back into Congress, the Ethics Committee report may be there waiting for him—though questions remain about whether a report from one Congress can be dragged into in the next one.

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THE HOUSE BATHROOM FIGHT: In the wake of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s announcement yesterday restricting House bathrooms to members of their “biological sex”—a policy aimed squarely at transgender Rep.-elect Sarah McBride—Democrats were curiously muted in their response. A handful of LGBT lawmakers denounced the move, with Congressional Equality Caucus Chair Mark Pocan calling it a “holier-than-thou decree” that was “cruel and unnecessary.” And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused Johnson and Rep. Nancy Mace of “endangering all women and girls.”

For the most part, though, Democrats have remained quiet. That goes for McBride too, who said in a statement: “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families. Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them.”

This statement drew heat from some trans activists: “How are you supposed to fight for your constituents when you won’t even stand up for yourself?” posted attorney Alejandra Caraballo on BlueSky.

We see this posture as a bit odd: Putting constituent work over personal slights and irritations arguably speaks well of McBride as a representative. But it’s even odder that more other Democrats aren’t coming to McBride’s defense. The widely shared sentiment that Republicans effectively wielded the trans issue against Democrats in this year’s election likely has something to do with it; Democrats are more apprehensive about engaging than they otherwise would be.

But that apprehension may misread the room. To the extent trans activism has hurt Democrats, it’s been in areas where they’ve been perceived by voters to support truly radical positions: taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries for prisoners, or operations on minors, or male participation in girls’ sports. When Republicans are the ones perceived to be the obsessive busybodies about trans issues—for instance, when they’re getting really intense about policing the behavior of adults who are just trying to pee at work in peace—it’s far less clear the public is on their side.

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Cheap Shots

Has a guy ever needed more desperately to log off? It might behoove Elon Musk to start leaving his phone downstairs to charge overnight.

1. Although maybe this is a failure of imagination? He could always sic a violent mob on them—though this also might fail to soften them up on his policy priorities.

2. If you’re unfamiliar with Ringwiss, do yourself a favor and read up on one of the most unusual wonks currently operating.