Like Nipper, the terrier depicted in the old RCA Victor logo, Mitch McConnell, the soon to be displaced Senate Republican leader, has over the years heeded “his master’s voice,” those nails-on-a-chalkboard tones belched by President-Elect Donald J. Trump.
McConnell served as Trump’s spear-carrier during the latter’s first go-round in the White House, from 2017 to 2021, faithfully like a dog, to extend the canine imagery, championing his policy initiatives even though he privately thought the Lord of Mar-a-Lago was as unrepentantly stupid as, well, a dog. And his distaste didn’t stop him from extending an endorsement to the once and future king.
Now, in the category of things that came way too late, the 82-year-old McConnell, of Louisville, might be girding his loins to face down the global menace that is Trump over the issue of presidential appointments.
Trump, as one might expect from a professional grifter and convicted felon, is going about the business of reassuming his role as world leader by fulfilling his campaign promise to rip the federal government, which has served Americans reasonably well over the past 250 years, asunder, replacing it with an authoritarian system that might be called Trumpism but reminds a lot of astute people of fascism.
To achieve his stated goal, Trump is looking to appoint a bilious bunch of yahoos to high positions within his administration whose very incompetence, it seems, will assure that the walls will, indeed, come tumbling down, to the neverending sorrow of James Madison. The boobery sure to be exhibited by these obviously dull boys and girls will enable the Trumpster to enact his master plan of wreaking revenge against his political foes, placing more dollars in the pockets of the filthy rich, including his own, and bullying those who find themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder, most particularly undocumented immigrants, folks who the president-elect would like, if he could, to sic the German shepherds on, ala Bull Connor in Birmingham back in the day.
The problem is many of the folks he wishes to nominate for high governmental positions are so unbelievably wretched that even Senate Republicans, who share with the chamber’s Democrats the responsibility of providing advice and consent for such appointments, might not have the stomach for it.
And, wow, given the fealty GOP lawmakers have provided Donnie boy, that’s saying something.
One of Trump’s chosen was so hideously abominable that he took the hint and withdrew from consideration on Thursday. Former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz announced he no longer wished to be considered for attorney general – yes, the nation’s highest law enforcement position – because “my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition.”
The “distraction” may involve a report from the House Ethics Committee, still unreleased, regarding allegations about sexual misconduct and illicit drug use on Gaetz’s behalf.
It seems, to be fair, Gaetz may have departed the process too abruptly. Who cares about sexual misconduct these days? After all, a civil jury in New York determined that Trump himself raped a woman in a Bergdorf-Goodman department store dressing room and the good people of the United States just made him president.
Go figure.
(Brief personal interlude: I will never understand how almost 77 million Americans can ever consider voting for an adjudicated rapist who instigated an insurrection against the country he is now elected to lead. I understand inflation and immigration are legitimate issues, but a New York court found he raped a woman and individuals died in the riot to overturn the 2020 election results. I’ll never understand.)
Anyway, Gaetz’s farewell carries us from the Four Marx Brothers to the Three Stooges. Consider these jamokes.
Trump wants to install anti-vax activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Human Services. Kennedy, who reportedly has some weird worm floating around in his skull, has over the past 20 years or so championed a lot of weird things involving public health, including removal of fluoride from the water supply. While he likely couldn’t ban vaccines, he could cause a lot of mischief in that area.
A lot of folks, even Republicans, were perplexed about Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth to serve as defense secretary, a position the GOP often values above all others. Hegseth’s primary credential for the job seems to be he served as a weekend host on a Fox News program.
Yeah, that’s about it, although he did serve several years in the National Guard. Oh, and like Gaetz and Trump, he appears to have a zipper problem. In a complaint filed with police, a woman claimed Hegseth sexually assaulted her in a California hotel room in 2017. Hegseth denied it but paid the woman a bunch of dough to get out of it.
But the real beaut might be former Democratic congresswomen turned Republican Tulsi Gabbard who Trump wants to ensconce out in Langley as the nation’s top spy. The problem here is Tulsi has a history of playing kissy face with the Russians, with whom, you may recall, we do not have a particularly fond relationship. She has been known to spread Kremlin propaganda disguised as talking points on foreign policy. And she has no experience in intelligence work.
To put it nicely, her credentials don’t seem to correspond with the job as director of national intelligence.
None of this seems to bug Trump but it seemingly has suddenly hit him that pushing these dopes across the finish line into jobs that will upend the governmental apple cart might not be a sure thing, even with a 53-47 Republican edge in the Senate. Only four GOP renegades are needed to topple Trump’s plans.
And Mitch might be one of them. After taking it on the chin all these years, after being figuratively paddled like Kevin Bacon in the fraternity induction scene in Animal House and responding, “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”, McConnell may be on the verge of doing something new – the right thing.
It seems Trump doesn’t want the Senate to vote on his cabinet nominees, fearing, with good reason, that some might not make it through, thus undermining his efforts to, well, undermine the federal government and waylay his desire for authoritarian rule.
So he wants to make what are called recess appointments. If the Senate, after Trump’s inauguration, decides to take a break, Trump can make recess appointments, installing his minions without benefit of confirmation hearings or Senate votes until the end of the next session of Congress, a period that can last as long as two years. The Senate can avoid that fate by, instead of going into recess, voting to enter pro forma sessions, which keeps the floor open even when lawmakers are away.
Recess appointments were included in the Constitution in a time when communications were virtually non-existent and travel to Washington from the 13 colonies took days if not weeks. That is no longer an issue. So any attempt to avoid Senate advice and consent is an abuse of the system.
That, of course, doesn’t bother Trump in the least.
McConnell reportedly wants to nix the idea, Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, one of the nation’s most respected journalists, reported in a tweet on X that McConnell, attending a private gathering in Washington, said, “There will be no recess appointments.”
That message has since been deleted without explanation, understandably creating confusion, but without a retraction. It’s also been noted that when the next Congress meets in January McConnell will no longer be the Republican leader, meaning he will not have a final say on recess decisions. But Punchbowl News subsequently reported that McConnell made his position known at the get together.
If if what has been written is true and McConnell prevails, Trump may very likely pull a fast one and implement a rarely used constitutional provision that provides the president with the authority to recess the chambers if there exists a “Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment.” So, if the House adjourns – and those jackasses are in his hip pocket — he may declare a disagreement and force the Senate to recess.
It would be dirty pool. But we’re talking about Trump, the most contemptible figure in the nation’s political history.