Donald Trump’s approach to governance mirrors his life in construction: ruled by ego and loyalty demands akin to a mafia boss. His cabinet nominees—ranging from the scandal-prone to the wildly unqualified—test Senate Republicans’ independence. The Senate faces a crucial moment: uphold democracy or bend to Trump’s will.
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By RW Johnson  ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
When Donald Trump was running against Hillary Clinton in 2016 she complained after one TV debate that Trump might be running for President but actually he talked as if he was going to be the King – and America had got rid of kings in 1776. This captured an important truth. Apart from having an extremely egotistical and narcissistic personality, Trump has also spent a lifetime in the construction and property business in which he, as a very rich man and the business owner could rule unchallenged. Like a mafia boss, he insists that his underlings have an undying loyalty to him, while he has no such loyalty to them.
These traits have been on display since his election victory. He has named many of his cabinet picks and other appointees as if to demonstrate that he can choose the most outrageous nominees and people will be forced to bow down and accept them. And so many of his selections are indeed outrageous that one is pretty much spoiled for choice.
Thus, for example, Linda McMahon, the nominee for Secretary of Education. She is 76 and, with her husband, has built World Wrestling Entertainment into a huge business – she says she has always been happy in “a high testosterone environment”. When the so-called “ring boys scandal” erupted there were accusations of sexual abuse and sex trafficking but she seems to have ridden over that. She was a major fund-raiser for Trump and like Trump her ambition is to close down the Department of Education completely, leaving education to the states. (Trump says the Department is “full of radicals, zealots and Marxists”.) But so egregious are a number of other nominees that McMahon seems almost uncontroversial by comparison and is likely to get Senate approval.
The Senate is, of course, the crux of the matter. When Kennedy was running for President he was photographed carrying Allen Drury’s fine novel, Advise and Consent, all about a huge struggle over the nomination of a Secretary of State. The book remains a good introduction to Washington politics, though Trump clearly hasn’t read it. (It’s not clear that he reads books at all.)
The current drama began when the Republicans, having just won a 53-47 majority, needed to elect a new Majority Leader – a highly influential post, previously held by Mitch McConnell. The leading candidates were John Cornyn III (Texas) and John Thune (South Dakota) but Trump and his acolytes were pushing hard for Rick Scott (Florida). (Far too many of Trump’s picks hail from Florida simply because it’s been easier for them to drop in at Mar-a-Lago to flatter Trump’s ego.)
Scott, a former Governor of Florida, has the problem that when he used to run the Columbia/HCA hospital group with over 350 hospitals, he was found guilty of defrauding Medicare, Medicaid, filing false reports and paying kickbacks to doctors who recommended his company. During his deposition he was forced to plead the Fifth 75 times (“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that my answer might incriminate me”), which even Michael Corleone would have found excessive. Nonetheless, he had to plead guilty to 14 felonies and was fined $600 million. All told Columbia/HCA had to pay $2 billion in fines – then the largest fraud settlement in US history. Columbia/HCA’s board of directors forced Scott to resign as chairman and CEO, making it clear that they regarded him as principally responsible for the fraud. Miraculously, Scott somehow avoided jail time but at every subsequent election this case gets re-hashed because, quite clearly, Scott was a very crooked man. Nonetheless his vast wealth and the fact that Florida leans Republican has helped him stay afloat.
Trump’s backing of Scott confirmed that he sees even vast cases of fraud as simply accidents anyone can have while making money, but word quickly came back that the Senate did not regard Scott as a “serious” candidate. For the Senate takes itself very seriously as both a dignified and effective part of the Constitution and its amour propre alone forbids the election of someone with Scott’s background to its leading position. Sure enough Scott failed to get beyond the first round of voting and ultimately John Thune emerged as Majority Leader.
Thune is an Evangelical Christian and former star athlete. He still competes in running events and is tanned, fit and handsome. He is an immensely popular man in South Dakota. He got elected to the Senate in 2004 by defeating Tom Daschle, the Democratic Minority Leader. This was the first time since 1952 that anyone had defeated a party floor leader, an extraordinary achievement. When he ran again in 2010 no one opposed him in a primary or even in the general election.
But Thune is a straight guy and has had his problems with Trump. During Trump’s first term he spoke strongly against tariffs and pointed out that South Dakota’s farmers needed free trade – and that Chinese retaliation for Trump’s tariffs had cost them dear. Then after the 2020 election he denounced Trump’s “false claims” that the election had been rigged and he voted to certify the results and Biden’s victory. This was too much for Trump who tried to persuade Kristie Noem, South Dakota’s Governor, to run against Thune but she wisely declined: in South Dakota he is probably unbeatable.
However, the key thing about the Majority Leader’s election is that it’s done on a secret ballot whereas all the voting for or against Trump’s cabinet picks will be open, which maximises Trump’s bullying pressure on Republican Senators who might reject any of his nominees. Already the arch-Trumpite, Tommy Tuberville (Alabama) has made the threat plain: “If you wanna get in the way, fine. But we’re gonna try to get you out of the Senate”. Other Trumpists claim that any Republican who dares to vote against a Trump nominee will face a tough primary with their opponent amply funded by Elon Musk. This sort of threatening pressure is unprecedented and deeply offends the Senate’s sense of its crucial Constitutional position. It’s Trump the mafia boss again.
Already Trump’s pick for Attorney-General, Matt Gaetz, has backed out after spending fruitless days trying to canvass support from GOP Senators. Everyone knew that Gaetz was notorious for his sexual boasting – he even brought film of himself having sex with young girls to show other Congressmen, and claimed he had worked out a drug concoction which enabled him “to go all night”. Moreover the Congressional Ethics Committee report on him was already leaking and there were reports of sex trafficking of under-age girls. The idea of him in charge of the American justice system was just too much.
This leaves three highly controversial nominees: Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, Pete Hegseth as Secretary for Defense and Robert Kennedy Jr. as Secretary for Health.
The main charge against Gabbard is that she is wacky and weird. She went from strongly supporting the Socialist Bernie Sanders – the first Congresswoman to do so – to becoming a loyal Trumpist in only a few years. A strong Hindu, she is against all US military intervention despite her own extensive military career. She takes Putin’s side in the Ukraine war and Hillary Clinton refers to her as simply “a Russian asset”. Her Presidential campaign in 2020 was endorsed by Richard B. Spender and David Duke – both neo-Nazis and anti-semites. Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the KKK while Spencer advocates the re-enslavement of Haitians. Nikki Haley has angrily pointed out that Gabbard opposed the Iran nuclear deal, voted against sanction on Iran, and has defended Russia, China, Iran and Syria.
It goes on. Gabbard still supports the Green New Deal, which Trump hates. She has accused Congressman Adam Schiff of being a “domestic terrorist”. She says media freedom in Russia (there isn’t any) is “not so different” from the USA. She warns against a “re-militarised Japan” and campaigns against “the US neo-liberal/conservative war machine”. She wants to legalise all drugs. And she has accused Netflix of funding the child sex trafficking trade. All of which seems pretty inconsistent with being Director of National Intelligence, especially since she has had zero experience of the intelligence world.
Pete Hegseth was a relatively junior officer and has no experience of senior military command, strategy or any of the other normal requirements for a Secretary of Defense. In addition, he seems a fairly wild character. He is already on his third marriage and during his second marriage had a child with another woman. He says the Russian invasion of Ukraine “pales in comparison” with wokeness and crime as threats to the US. He thinks Israel should be allowed to annex the West Bank. He is an Islamophobe and a Christian Nationalist. He has repeatedly persuaded Trump to pardon war criminals.
In 2017 he was accused of rape by a 30 year old conservative woman at the California Federation of Republican Women. She says he tampered with her drink and then kept her prisoner in his room, confiscating her phone. Two other women at the same conference said he sexually harassed them. The hotel staff who were hosting the event said he was “very intoxicated”. Hegseth insists it was a consensual sexual encounter but later paid his accuser an undisclosed sum in order to get her to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which is seen by many as an admission of guilt.
Trump has a bitter vendetta against the former head of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, because Milley refused an order by Trump to use the army against civilian demonstrators, pointing out that the Army owes allegiance to the Constitution – which allows for peaceful protest. Trump believes all generals should be personally loyal to him and has vowed revenge against Milley and any of his friends or associates. This lends an even more sinister tinge to Hegseth’s determination to sack the current head of the Joint Chiefs, General Charles Q. Brown Jr,. Hegseth also says he wants to purge all generals or admirals who have conducted Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programmes. That could mean a lot of officers.
This is dangerous territory. Many Republicans will be horrified by the idea of a political purge of the armed forces. It is worth remembering that the anti-Communist wild man, Joe McCarthy, terrorised many sections of the US government by holding investigative hearings into them and finding Reds under the bed. Finally he decided to do the same with the US Army. That brought an abrupt end to his career. The US armed forces are an extremely powerful entity and they were not willing to have anti-Communist spies planted in every officers’ mess. McCarthy was condemned by the Senate and spent the rest of his career as a lonely, powerless alcoholic. He drank himself to death at age 48.
Finally, there is RFK Jr. nominated as Secretary for Health, in charge of 25% of government spending. An anti-vaccine activist, he is also the author of various public health conspiracy theories. A liberal Democrat for most of his life, Kennedy has espoused many causes that Trump despises – and he is also pro-abortion. He refers to the Ukraine war as “a US war against Russia”. He believes that Ukraine should be forbidden NATO membership but that Russia might be allowed to join NATO.
Kennedy has campaigned against vaccines, fluoridation of drinking water, paracetamol and wireless communication, blaming them for a wide variety of ailments including autism, food allergies, cancer, auto-immune diseases, hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder – though scientists say there is no merit in such claims. Members of the Kennedy family have frequently said that he purveys “dangerous misinformation”. Typically, when his claims that vaccines cause autism are denied by government health officers, Kennedy insists there is a vast government conspiracy to cover up the truth.
Kennedy denies that HIV causes Aids and during the Covid-19 pandemic he fought against anti-Covid vaccines and accused Anthony Fauci and Bill and Melinda Gates of trying to profit from the vaccines. He also regards Bill Gates as a main villain behind 5G which he blames for various health disorders. He accused Fauci and Gates of conspiring to prolong the Covid pandemic. Fauci met with him and described him as “a very disturbed individual”. Kennedy claimed that Covid-19 was “targeted” to attack Caucasians and Blacks in particular but mysteriously to spare Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews, a statement widely condemned as Sinophobic and anti-semitic..
Kennedy, though a devout Catholic, has been twice divorced. His second wife committed suicide after discovering Kennedy’s personal journal for 2001, detailing sexual encounters with 37 different women. Kennedy suffers from severe memory loss, something he attributes to a worm that got into his brain, ate a portion of it and then died. Some doctors have suggested that a more probable cause is that Kennedy was a heroin addict for fourteen years. As his presidential bid petered out earlier this year, he approached both the Harris and the Trump campaigns, demanding a cabinet position in return for his endorsement. Harris turned him down but Trump made the deal, although Kennedy has no experience of health administration.
Republican Senators have plentiful grounds for turning down these nominees but the question is whether they are willing to risk Trump’s wrath. If they bend the knee to Trump in this regard it will be a very public and dishonourable stain on the Senate’s reputation. As it is Trump is trying to ignore the Constitution by trying to get the Senate to forego its “advise and consent” role and by his nominees not signing any of the normal transition papers including the ethics requirements forbidding conflicts of interest.
This not only jeopardises the transition but opens the gates to wholesale corruption. Trump illegitimately refused to put his assets into a blind trust during his first term and benefited greatly as he pushed a great deal of government business towards his Trump hotel chain, but this time his entire administration seems likely to ignore the usual ethical limits. In addition, Trump is getting secret private donors to fund the transition – another wide open invitation to corruption.
It is essential that enough Republican senators stand up to Trump to maintain the Senate’s role as the country’s senior political institution, maintain its independence and insist on at least minimal respect for the Constitution. The battle over his nominees is just an opening skirmish, though a vital one. Four years loom of outright lawlessness, disrespect for the Constitution and probable corruption. Congress cannot be relied upon and nor can the Supreme Court. So, much depends on John Thune and a small group of moderate Senate Republicans.
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