Trump's clown car cabinet goes to John Thune

When Republican members of the Senate gathered in Washington this week to name their leadership to run the chamber next year, there were initial rumblings about the need to get rid of establishment types and hire some fiery MAGA personalities. The main candidate was Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who challenged front-runners John Thune and John Cornyn for the post being vacated by longtime Trump foe Mitch McConnell.

As voting began Wednesday morning, it quickly became clear that the Scott insurrection movement, backed by a constellation of online MAGA stars including Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, did not have the strength to win. In the first round of voting, Scott came third with 13 votes, behind Thune with 23 and Cornyn with 15. In the second round, Thune won the gig with 29 votes to 23. He may want to request a recount.

Even as Thune won his leadership election, the president-elect named an increasingly alarming list of unqualified and/or extremist candidates for Senate-confirmed positions. The first big screamer was Fox News personality Pete Hesketh as Defense Secretary. Then Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat and bitter opponent of the bipartisan national security establishment, was proposed. But the biggest resistance was Trump's announcement that he would nominate Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, the man who personally defended Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker, as America's top law enforcement official as attorney general. Aside from his reputation as a bomb-thrower in the House of Representatives, Gaetz has been under investigation for a while by the same Justice Department (and more recently by the House Ethics Committee) for possible sex trafficking charges, as ABC News noted in announcing this upset nomination:

The investigation into Gaetz grew out of an investigation into the Florida congressman's former friend, former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, who was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison in 2022 after pleading guilty to multiple charges, including sex trafficking with minors and human trafficking of minors to other “adult men”.

Since the Justice Department declined to charge Gaetz following its investigation, the Florida congressman has faced an ongoing investigation by the House Ethics Committee over the same allegations.

Although Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing, he remains obscure and is widely considered one of the MAGA movement's baddest bad boys. Aside from his longstanding alliance with Trump himself (and other ultra-MAGA types like his colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene), Gaetz is also friends with Susie Wiles, the former Trump campaign chief and new White House chief of staff.

So with the majority of Cabinet and other Senate-confirmed positions still unfilled (and RFK Jr., among others, still impatiently awaiting their rewards), Trump is already sending a flood of problematic nominations toward Thune's faction. Will he kneel in gratitude for the president-elect's decision not to oust him in favor of Scott? Will he pick one or two of the worst candidates to block and hope the boss settles for half a loaf of craziness? Or will he stand up for Senate independence against a newly elected chief executive who has dominated his party like a medieval warlord? This last possibility seems unlikely.

In this feverish atmosphere, there is even a rumor circulating that Trump has a plan to bypass the Senate entirely:

As unlikely as it may seem, this scenario would help explain why Trump suddenly began demanding recess appointment powers from candidates for majority leadership over the weekend.

In any case, this is probably not what Thune expected in his long-planned rise to the top of the Senate. Now he may have to hope that his new powers don't prove fatal to Trump's race toward the day-one dictatorship that the once-and-future president once “jokingly” promised.