The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Trump 2.0: ‘Siri, What Is Payback?’

Posted on | November 14, 2024 | No Comments

Donald Trump has apparently decided to settle all family business, and his enemies have good reason to fear his retribution. Like nearly everybody else on the planet, I was shocked by the choice of Matt Gaetz as Attorney General, which Trump ally Thomas Massie says will be done by recess appointment, bypassing the need for Senate confirmation.

All day Wednesday, my office TV was tuned to MSNBC (I watch, so you don’t have to) and they were howling over Trump’s pick of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, which choice is perfectly defensible, given Hegseth’s combat record as an infantry officer with two bronze stars, and never mind his degrees from Princeton and Harvard. If the MSNBC talking heads were howling over Hegseth, however, their reaction to the news of Gaetz as Attorney General could best be desribed as autistic screeching, as the kids say. Their brains completely melted.

Well, first let’s get the news from Associated Press:

President-elect Donald Trump chose Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida to serve as his attorney general on Wednesday, bypassing more experienced options in favor of a loyalist who has built a national reputation as a disruptor and whom Trump has tasked with dramatically overhauling the Justice Department.
Trump also announced that he had tapped Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida as his nominee for secretary of state. And he selected Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress and presidential candidate, to serve as his director of national intelligence.
The choices continued a pattern of Trump stocking his Cabinet with those he believes he can trust to execute his agenda rather than longtime officials with experience in their fields. Gaetz’s selection, in particular, was seen as a shock. The Florida lawmaker was not among the more established attorneys who had been mentioned as contenders for the job, and even his colleagues in Congress appeared stunned by the news. . . .
[Gaetz] irked fellow GOP members in early 2023 when he filed the resolution that successfully ousted former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy then helped fund a primary challenge to Gaetz that included commercials alleging that he paid for sex with a 17-year-old, an allegation that had been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee — though that probe effectively ended Wednesday when Gaetz resigned from Congress. Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing and the Justice Department ended its own sex trafficking investigation without bringing charges against him.

In case you forgot, Gaetz’s friend “Joel Greenberg pleaded guilty [in 2021] to six charges, including sex trafficking of a minor, identity theft, stalking, wire fraud and conspiracy to bribe a public official, and agreed to cooperate with federal investigators as part of his plea agreement.” Gaetz’s friendship with Greenberg was the subject of all kinds of stories at the time — one might use the adjective sordid to characterize the allegations — and I have no way of knowing what was true or false in any of that. Certainly, it was damaging to Gaetz’s reputation, but he has been reelected to Congress twice since then, so at least two-thirds of voters in the 1st District of Florida didn’t mind. The AP article makes much of Gaetz’s status as a “Trump loyalist,” but it seems to me much more relevant that Gaetz has a motive for revenge against the feds, when you consider that the Justice Department sent his buddy Greenberg to prison in what may have been a prosecution whose real target was Gaetz.

Anyway, while I’m not a member of the Matt Gaetz Fan Club, his selection as Trump’s Attorney General makes sense in the context of Trump desiring to get revenge for Merrick Garland’s politically motivated targeting of Republicans. It’s not just the Mar-a-Lago raid, Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg and the other prosecutions aimed at Trump personally, but also Garland’s use of the FBI and DOJ as a weapon against Republicans quite generally. Gaetz’s job is to expose everyone responsible for those abuses, and to ensure they face some serious consequences. It’s medieval justice — the victorious army has seized the besieged fortress, and the heads of the king’s enemies are going to be hoisted on pikes.

Payback is a bitch, and Gaetz’s job is to deliver payback.



 

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Category: Donald Trump

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