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For almost two years, J.D. Vance’s arrival at the Capitol was an unremarkable affair. A first-term Senator from Ohio, the Republican finance bro-turned-best-selling author-turned-NeverTrumper-turned-ForeverTrumper typically drew few looks and little attention. But this week, his trips to the Hill have cast a bright, harsh spotlight on the 40-year-old Vice President-elect, as he spent Wednesday trying to convince Senators to look past the very serious concerns about one of Trump’s embattled Cabinet picks, and then returned Thursday to make the same arguments for a different contender.
Vance’s mission of necessity was to save the nominations of former Rep. Matt Gaetz as Trump’s Attorney General and Fox and Friends’ weekend host Pete Hegseth to take over the Pentagon. Both choices were among multiple picks for Trump Cabinet-in-waiting who are beset with allegations of sexual misconduct and then some, as well as backgrounds that, in the pre-Trump era, would have made their nominations dead-on-arrival.
So far, Vance is 1-for-2. Despite what Trump’s team described as productive and encouraging meetings with Senators, the headwinds facing Gaetz proved too strong. On Thursday, Gaetz announced he was withdrawing his nomination—a sign that Trump’s resolve may have a limit, and that perhaps Senators will only bend so far in service of the President-elect’s aggressive embrace of unfit nominees. Gaetz’s failure to even get a hearing signals that he may be just the first of Trump’s initial slate to fall short, as Senators make clear their humoring of Trumpism is not without bounds.
The Gaetz nomination to be the nation’s top law enforcement official was as obviously doomed as it was Trump blessed. Gaetz remains under investigation by his former House colleagues for allegations that involve sex, drugs, money, and minors. In an apparent effort to shut down that ethics panel probe, the Florida congressman resigned his office days before an expected release of a report. Lawmakers are still debating how to handle their findings. (The ethics panel met on Wednesday as Gaetz was afoot but failed to reach a final decision on what to do with what they knew; they’ll try again in December, although the matter may have less urgency now that his nomination is tanked.) The Department of Justice, which he could have helmed, also investigated Gaetz on similar grounds but did not charge him. Separately, even some of his fellow Republicans in Congress questioned if Gaetz, with his reputation as a pro-Trump troll with seemingly zero experience running a massive organization, might have been a disaster as the nation’s top cop.
Still, that thumb-in-the-eye posture seems to be part of Trump’s checklist for picks to run his second administration. Long a critic of traditional credentials, Trump is using his return to power to thrash norms and prove he will not be constrained. For Trump, nothing is disqualifying, at least until it is.
To wit:
- Hegseth, who served almost two decades as an Army National Guard in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gitmo, has acknowledged paying a woman who accused of sexual assault—specifically rape—during a 2017 meeting of the California Federation of Republican Women in Monterey, Calif. A police report reveals the accuser feared she might have been drugged, according to The Washington Post. Hegseth has denied the allegations and was never criminally charged. Separately, the retired Major faces severe skepticism that he can command the largest institution in the world with 3 million military and civilian employees. Oh, and then there are tattoos that critics say suggest he has ties to white Christian nationalism and his successful advocacy for the pardoning of service members accused of war crimes. Those are not helping, either.
- Former professional wrestling executive Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick for Education Secretary, is part of a civil lawsuit brought against her and husband Vince McMahon that their WWE machine did not do enough to protect teenaged “ring boys” from sexual abuse. The charges, which the McMahons have denied, date back to the 1970s and into the early 1990s. Linda McMahon, who is separated from her husband, is not implicated in a separate criminal investigation about allegations that he used the ring to commit and cover-up sexual abuse and trafficking. Yet lawmakers have plenty of questions for her about what qualifies her to lead the U.S. Department of Education, which Trump has vowed to shut down. Of note: McMahon in 2009 incorrectly claimed to have a degree in education; she does not but rather has a teaching certificate.
- Political scion Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is on deck to head the Department of Health and Human services, a position that gives him tremendous power over public health despite a long history of undermining the proven science behind vaccines, endorsing a wide range of conspiracy theories and fringe beliefs that put him more aligned with the manosphere than the Mayo Clinic. Kennedy was also accused of sexually assaulting the family nanny in the 1990s. Kennedy told the nanny he had no recollection of that, but apologized in a text message. “I said in my announcement speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world,” Kennedy said over the summer. He also is said to have more recently carried on an affair with a journalist.
Then there’s the last, most complicated one: the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, the subject of our latest TIME cover story. Although he has no official role inside the government teed up to take power on Jan. 20 of next year, he seems to be an omnipresent figure in Trump’s ever-changing orbit of loyalists. Still, he has a trail of his own allegations, from wrongful terminations over alleged hostile work environments to offering a horse in exchange for an erotic massage. Reports of sexual interactions between Musk and his subordinates are plentiful.
That’s not to say the rest of the Cabinet-in-waiting is significantly more qualified; they’re just less mired in personal thicket. For instance, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a former Army Reservist, has left intelligence professionals stunned that Trump wants her to serve as his top spy adviser. Her record of sympathetic statements about Russia and Syria have raised questions about her judgment, and even Hillary Clinton and her orbit previously accused her of being a Moscow puppet. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, a Republican who served in Trump’s first administration, on Wednesday called her a “Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer.”
And Dr. Mehmet Oz is on deck to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a massive bureaucracy that handles not just the costly entitlement programs but also tasks like nursing home inspections, disease prevention, and children’s health programs. The former TV doc and personality, Mehmet unsuccessfully ran for Senate in 2022 but has zero experience managing a huge operation like CMS. He’s also seen a once-sterling medical reputation decimated after years of pushing products and advice that critics repeatedly argued was not backed by evidence. But, like every other personality on this list can sell a product when put in front of a camera. Just go back and watch his made-for-TV “physical” of Trump in 2016.
As a raft, this crew seems uniquely ill-suited to help Trump keep focus on a narrow governing majority in Washington. The GOP-controlled House may come down to a handful of seats. The Senate looks like Republicans have just four votes to spare on any given nominations; on major legislation requiring 60 votes, GOP lawmakers will have to peel off seven lawmakers who caucus with Democrats under normal procedures. Sending an accused sexual assault perpetrator, alleged rapist, perceived predator, or indifferent ideologue is not exactly a recipe for winning over stubborn lawmakers—whether it be a President or his lieutenants.
All of which feels familiar. In 2018, Trump successfully nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and set in motion an all-consuming fight in Washington in the immediate wake of the #MeToo Movement. Faced with allegations of high school sexual assault, the Senate by a 50-48 margin still gave him to a lifetime appointment. The conflict laid bare just how little had changed in the country in that time, and how small of a price some men paid for allegations of mistreating women.
Yet, it could be lost on no one that the President who set in motion Kavanaugh’s nomination, and refused to back down from it, was the same man who was elected to the office on the heels of a published tape where he bragged about sexual assaults of his own.
Now, six years later, Trump is again set to return to power, this time as the first inbound White House chief with criminal felony convictions, found liable for sexual abuse in a civil case, and under indictment in other cases. And alongside him, he wants to see a little bit of himself: great on TV, iffy on facts, at ease with dismissing their own checked histories. In that, Vance’s pals at the Capitol these days might be great proxies for Trump’s desires. They may just not be what’s best for fellow Republicans, and the end of Gaetz’s nomination shows they might be getting wise to that reality.
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