President-elect Donald Trump is rolling out his cabinet picks at warp speed, except this time there almost certainly won’t be any vaccines involved. His selections range from the incompetent to the outrageous to the criminally implicated.
Some are so outlandish that even Trump himself doesn’t seem to believe they will be confirmed, which is why he’s pushing for recess appointments instead. (These would install his picks for a year without the Senate’s consent.) Or, perhaps, he’s trying to see just how far he can force Republicans to bend to his will?
Moderates, liberals, and even some conservatives who would prefer not to see their country fall to shambles are hoping that Congress will do its job and reject patently unqualified nominees. Those hopes seem to hang largely on two of the Senate’s more independent-minded Republicans: Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
That’s bad news. These women are not coming to save the Republic.
To reject one of Trump’s nominees, at least four Republican senators will have to vote against them, assuming all Democrats do the same—and with conservative Independent Joe Manchin in the Senate, even that isn’t guaranteed. Reasonable people everywhere seem to be hoping Collins and Murkowski will be the start of a snowball effect: If these two women can say no to some of Trump’s picks, then other Republicans will join in!
Both women have failed in the past to do almost this exact task: To reject a Trump appointee to an important office. During Trump’s first term, he nominated three right-wing Supreme Court justices; both voted to confirm two of them: Murkowski for Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett; Collins for Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Both women have said they support protecting abortion rights, and yet voted for the justices despite clear evidence they would almost surely go on to restrict abortion. All three subsequently voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
And neither Collins nor Murkowski have owned their mistakes.
It is possible that Collins and Murkowski will stand against some of Trump’s more extreme picks; both had expressed skepticism about the selection of Matt Gaetz for Attorney General for example, before the former Florida congressman’s decision Thursday to pull his own nomination. Gaetz has never worked at the Department of Justice, by the way. or done much lawyering at all beyond a stint at a corporate law firm. (Same here, and I am happy to admit that I am radically unqualified to be AG). Collins has also voiced her opposition to recess appointments—the very minimum one would expect.
Beyond Gaetz, another “longshot” seems likely to be Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services— Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist with a literal brain worm who has spread Covid-19 conspiracy theories and who has abused a troubling number of animal corpses. (To be clear, any number is troubling when it comes to the abuse of animal corpses.)
And there’s Pete Hegseth, Trump’s choice for Defense Secretary, who has been accused of sexual assault—and paid off the accuser, though he denies the allegations. Though a veteran (and a veteran Fox News host), Hegseth is hardly the kind of top-tier military officer or civil servant usually nominated for such an important role.
In no universe should a partisan talking-head run the defense department or should Kennedy be in charge of anyone’s health (including, probably, his own). The problem, though, is that there are a series of totally unqualified or even dangerous Trump picks in his potential cabinet, from Kremlin parrot Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence to World Wrestling Entertainment cofounder Linda McMahon for Education Secretary; from cable TV personality Mehmet Oz to run Medicare and Medicaid to, wait for it, another Fox News personality, Sean Duffy, for the Department of Transportation.
This is an effective bit of manipulation on Trump’s part: Nominating the truly crazy and wholly unqualified makes the mostly-crazy and largely unqualified look normal by comparison.
A similar dynamic has emerged within the Republican Party. Trump is so extreme, and his MAGA acolytes so outrageous, that even very conservative Republicans have been portrayed as normal or principled by comparison. Certainly, if Collins or Murkowski vote against any of Trump’s nominees, they’ll be buoyed by mainstream media coverage labeling them “principled” and “centrist,” even. But they won’t have deserved any such platitudes unless they consistently refuse to consent to the appointment of any Trump nominees who don’t pass basic muster. That will be a lot of “no” votes.
It is perhaps not a coincidence that the two Republican senators so many of us are looking to save us are women. Trump won thanks largely to male voters, and benefitted from a significant gender gap with men favoring him across every racial demographic. There is, it seems, a built-in assumption that women are more likely to be appalled by the president-elect.
But both had the chance to push back during his first term, and they failed so spectacularly that pregnant women are now bleeding out in bathrooms and hospital parking lots because they can’t get medically necessary abortions.
For the self-interested and craven, nearly every incentive runs in the direction of supporting most of Trump’s picks: Avoiding MAGA blowback, pleasing conservative constituencies, playing nice with an incoming president hell-bent known for his unhinged personal attacks on opponents.
The incentives that run against supporting Trump’s cabinet nominations? Principle, professional obligation and personal integrity. But those have been in precious short supply among Republicans ever since Trump took over their party.
