Former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s short-lived nomination for attorney general is serving as a reality check to a handful of Cabinet nominees who could have trouble getting through the Senate.
Not a single Senate Republican came out against Gaetz publicly in the eight days he lasted as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee, but his decision to withdraw on Thursday was a tacit acknowledgment that he would not have the votes to be confirmed.
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Of all Trump’s nominees, Gaetz was the hardest for Republicans to swallow. He was the subject of a House Ethics investigation into whether he had sex with a minor, while his temperament as a partisan firebrand gave senators pause.
But Senate Republicans have serious reservations with at least three others. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, is dealing with sexual misconduct allegations himself. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, and Tulsi Gabbard, an anti-war firebrand, have also caused heartburn with their nomination to Cabinet-level posts.
Both Gaetz and Hegseth have denied the misconduct allegations against them.
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Republicans were caught off-guard by how quickly Gaetz withdrew. Only a day earlier, he visited Capitol Hill to plead his case to members of the Judiciary Committee.
But the outcome was not surprising in terms of Senate math. Republicans barely veiled their discomfort with him, even if they remained officially noncommittal on how they would vote.
“Well, obviously I was not going to make a final decision until after the hearing, because you never know what’s going to come out. But certainly, there were a lot of red flags,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said on Thursday.
Others, like Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-SD), dropped their posture of neutrality, expressing relief that he had withdrawn.
Gaetz’s short-lived nomination marks a political setback for Trump. He signaled a desire to play hardball with his nominees, including a demand for recess appointments if Gaetz and others faced resistance in the Senate.
But in the final calculus, Trump proved himself open to nixing those who could not make it through the confirmation process. Republicans maintain that it was Gaetz who decided to withdraw.
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Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said there were other Republicans who could be a “disruptor” as Trump had envisioned but who lacked the political baggage of Gaetz. Within hours of his withdrawal, Trump nominated Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, in Gaetz’s place.
“The president has the right to make the nominations that he sees fit, but the Senate also has a responsibility for advice and consent, and in this particular case, I think there was advice offered rather than consent,” Rounds said of Gaetz.
The question now turns to whether others will bow out, or if the transition team decides to keep its head down until January, when the Senate will hold confirmation hearings for his nominees.
Ultimately, Gaetz’s reasoning was that he did not want to be a “distraction” to Trump’s agenda. His withdrawal also increases the odds that a House Ethics report on him will no longer be released.
Hegseth has a far deeper well of support than Gaetz, a House rabble-rouser who alienated his colleagues with the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
On Thursday, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), soon to be the Senate majority whip, expressed his support for Hegseth after meeting with him at the Capitol.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the incoming chairman of the Armed Services Committee, projected confidence in his nomination after a separate meeting.
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“I think he’s going to be in pretty good shape,” Wicker said.
Still, Trump can only afford to lose three votes for each of his nominees, given Republicans’ 53-seat Senate majority next year. That means centrist voices like Collins, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), or even Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the outgoing minority leader, can almost single-handedly torpedo any nominee they dislike.
Their votes could matter, in particular, for Gabbard, Trump’s pick to lead the intelligence agencies. Defense hawks have concerns over what they claim are her sympathetic views toward U.S. adversaries including Russia and Iran.
For Kennedy, tapped to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Republicans have expressed concern over his conspiratorial leanings. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the likely chairman of the Senate’s health committee, is still publicly undecided.
Democrats were quick to predict that Gaetz is just the first “domino” to fall.
“There will be others to withdraw, make no mistake,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a member of the Judiciary Committee. “Lack of vetting, background checks, no qualifications. They need to look in the mirror, all of these nominees, because it only gets worse for them when more of the truth comes out.”
Meanwhile, Democrats are doing what they can to vet his nominees while they still maintain their Senate majority. On Wednesday, Judiciary Democrats sent a letter to the FBI asking for its file on Gaetz, whom it investigated but declined to prosecute as part of a separate sex trafficking investigation.
Many of Trump’s nominees will receive bipartisan support, among them Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), his pick for secretary of state. House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY), his choice for ambassador to the United Nations, is another noncontroversial pick.
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“I think the vast majority of them are going to be confirmed,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), a Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “There’s really just a handful that are the more controversial ones.”
As for Trump’s latest choice for attorney general, Bondi has credentials in law enforcement that Gaetz did not, but she is still viewed as a loyalist. Bondi served as one of the defense lawyers in Trump’s first impeachment.
Samantha-Jo Roth contributed to this report.