Is Trump Playing 4-D Chess w/ Surprise Selection of Gaetz for DOJ?
(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Experience has taught me that those who underestimate or question the capabilities of President-elect Donald Trump do so at their peril.
Trump’s resolve to fight, fight, fight has now been supercharged by his unequivocal mandate from the American electorate to correct the course on which the nation currently finds itself.
With that in mind, it is highly possible that Trump now has the political clout to railroad his Cabinet picks through the Senate confirmation process—despite the opposition of RINO senators like Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Both women spoke out following the announcement Wednesday that Trump hoped to make former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., the next attorney general.
Such a move almost certainly would result in a major reckoning among those who have succeeded in weaponizing the deep state against Trump and his allies.
But it likely faces a considerable degree of intra-party resistance from within the RINO ranks, where some may fear accusations that Trump is simply retaliating in kind for the campaign of prosecutorial abuse waged against him by Biden appointee Merrick Garland.
“I don’t think it is a serious nomination for the attorney general,” Murkowski said in response to Gaetz’s nomination, according to the Daily Beast.
“We need to have a serious attorney general, and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to consider somebody that is serious,” added the NeverTrumper. “This one was not on my bingo card.”
STRATEGIC SUPPORT?
Trump would still have two Senate votes to spare, even if Collins and Murkoski were to oppose and all remaining Democrats voted lockstep in opposition.
It is possible, of course, that moderately minded figures on the Left—like Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa.—might just read the room after the Keystone State recently voted to oust the state’s senior Democrat senator, Bob Casey, in the 2024 election.
One might likewise expect breakneck pivots from Democrat Sens. Jon Ossoff of Georgia and Gary Peters of Michigan—both of whom will be up for election in 2026, in states that Trump won.
If Trump’s agenda flourishes over the next two years, they can share the credit for supporting him on a bipartisan basis.
If, on the other hand, selections such as Gaetz prove catastrophic, all the better for Democrats who gave him a chance—and thus can make their own case for reclaiming congressional majorities to correct Trump’s overcorrection.
On-again/off-again Trump “ally” Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the presumptive incoming chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, may already have been looking at the 2026 political map and forecasting his reelection prospects when he promptly switched his tune within the course of just a few hours on Wednesday from one of ambivalence (“I don’t know yet, I’ll have to think about that one,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju) to strongly supporting Gaetz.
“To every Republican, give Matt a chance,” Graham said on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.
He went on to warn Democrats that “elections have consequences whether you like it or not.”
UNITED SWAMP OF AMERICA
In a world where Trump Derangement Syndrome was simpy fantasy, a show of bipartisanship in support of the new leader would be the norm.
Unfortunately, when the administration poses an existential threat to Washington, D.C.’s permanent unelected bureaucracy, ushering a new era of accountability back into politics, any “bipartisanship” is likely to go the other direction.
Prior to his resignation from the House on Wednesday, Gaetz was facing the release of a House Ethics Committee report stemming from a Justice Department probe that sought to link him to baseless allegations of soliciting sex from an underage girl via an online dating app.
Although the DOJ probe was dropped without charges, the House was due to disclose its findings on Friday, undoubtedly inflicting some measure of political damage, regardless of Gaetz’s actual culpability.
Gaetz’s House departure now renders those findings moot, and the report from the GOP-led committee would thus be unlikely to see the light of day.
Nonetheless, RINO Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, fresh off losing his bid to become Senate majority leader in the new Congress, said he “absolutely” wanted to see its findings, according to Reuters.
“I don’t want there to be any limitation at all on what the Senate could consider,” said Cornyn—who, like Graham, has a high-ranking seat on the Judiciary Committee and is also up for re-election in a deep-red state next cycle.
GAETZ’S GATEKEEPERS
Cornyn, along with Collins (who is also up for re-election in 2026), Murkowski and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La.—the last of the notorious seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment—may be the four senatorial spoilers needed to derail a Gaetz appointment to the top DOJ post.
Leftist media, meanwhile, having learned nothing from the humiliating electoral defeat last week of their declared candidate, began trotting out Trump-haters such as former Ambassador John Bolton and former Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., to spew words of reassurance and validation to their oblivious audiences—or what remains of them.
“This is a gobsmackingly bad nomination,” Dent told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
“I’d be less surprised, in the words of Chevy Chase, if my face was stapled to the floor,” he continued. “This is really a bad nomination.”
According to?Newsweek, Dent went on to predict that the GOP senators would revolt en masse against their leader, setting an acrimonious tone for the incoming administration that, for many, may evoke memories of the Russia-collution hoax in 2017.
“I can’t imagine any circumstance under which Matt Gaetz would be confirmed,” Dent said. “I suspect that Donald Trump will have to withdraw this nomination.”
Yet, there are at least two other possibilities in Trump-world that may already have anticipated a measure of resistance from within the GOP ranks.
RECESS APPOINTMENTS
The most obvious pathway for Trump to have all his Cabinet selections approved would be to pressure incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to clear the way for recess appointments.
Such appointments were a common, constitutionally prescribed practice until just before Trump’s first term, when a 2014 Supreme Court ruling sided against then-President Barack Obama’s attempt to completely circumvent the GOP-led Senate’s advice and consent.
The SCOTUS decision said the legislature could continue holding “pro forma” sessions and avoid technically going into recess, even when most senators were gone. COVID-era policies that loosened proxy-voting prohibitions in Congress might further facilitate the Senate’s ability to remain perpetually in session.
Prior to Thune’s election this week, Trump secured his informal pledge that he would keep “all options … on the table” for greenlighting the new president’s nominations.
Even so, Trump’s surprising choices—Gaetz being foremost among them—will surely test the resolve of Mitch McConnell’s longtime lieutenant.
In that case, Trump may secretly have been planning yet another legal workaround.
With House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., considerably more loyal to Trump than Thune, the once and future president may use a never-before-tested constitutional provision to forcibly adjourn Congress.
“Under Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, the President has the authority to adjourn Congress in the case of a disagreement between the House and Senate over the time of adjournment,” wrote conservative influencer Alex Muse in an X post. “It’s a power that has never been used, and its scope remains relatively untested.”
The downside to this strategy, without having the support of Thune and other senators, would be to create an adversarial relationship with those whom Trump is counting upon to support his ambitious legislative agenda.
Democrats would quickly pounce on any disunity in the GOP to regroup their resistance movement, and Trump—as well as Gaetz and other appointees—could find themselves mired in congressional subpoenas.
But perhaps Trump has in mind something else entirely.
THE DECOY EFFECT
The businessman who once penned?The Art of the Deal may be using a variation on a well-known marketing principle to get all his Cabinet picks in place and strengthen the Senate at the same time.
Put simply, the “decoy effect” creates a less appealing option that, when juxtaposed with the alternatives, psychologically manipulates consumers into justifying something they might otherwise have resisted.
By floating Gaetz as a decoy, forcing his opponents to expend their political capital in opposition, Trump may be holding the DOJ spot for a less controversial—yet equally loyal—attack dog who will help him drain the swamp at its epicenter.
It is worth paying close attention to some of Trump’s remaining selections, including his choice for FBI head, if he decides to announce one in the near future, and perhaps his choice to oversee the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
If the FBI post goes to Kash Patel, then Trump will have already slotted one of the best-equipped individuals for rooting out the swamp-rot. That isn’t to say Trump couldn’t still find a strong loyalist for the DOJ who lacked Gaetz’s baggage, but it might make it less likely that floating Gaetz’s name was a strategic decision.
As for HUD secretary—the role previously held by Dr. Ben Carson—there is another strong, up-and-coming conservative whose inner-city roots would add perspective to the role: Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla.
Donalds was among the individuals on Trump’s vice-presidential shortlist, and he would likely be easy to vet and confirm with little ado.
That, in turn, would free up Gaetz as the favorite to replace Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who was tapped to be Trump’s secretary of State on Wednesday.
Rubio’s selection was as much a surprise to some Trump-watchers as the Gaetz selection—not because Rubio is a hardline radical but because he is too much of a lightweight.
With bold choices such as Ric Grenell in contention to be the top diplomat, it isn’t entirely obvious what “Little Marco” had to offer—apart from his role on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which currently affords him access to highly sensitive “Gang of Eight” intelligence briefings.
Trump, however, prefers to handle diplomacy by himself, which largely sidelined former State Secretary Mike Pompeo to the role of lead hostage negotiator.
With Donalds already accounted for, Gaetz could readily step into Rubio’s Senate role with an appointment from Gov. Ron DeSantis, and he would be well equipped to win his next election outright in the increasingly red state.
If past is prologue, Gaetz might even lead the charge to vacate Thune as the majority leader, should he prove to be as unreliable as former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
This brilliant, multi-pronged 4-D chess maneuver would then pave the way for Trump to advance his true attorney general pick: Hulk Hogan.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.