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A new betting pool emerged on the Hill at the tail-end of this week: who will get fewer votes in his confirmation hearing? Matt Gaetz or Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?
So far, most of President-elect Donald Trump’s staffing announcements have prompted either jubilation or downright astonishment — and that’s only among his supporters. When Matt Gaetz was announced, some suspected a typo: surely Trump had meant to tap his former attorney general, Matt Whitaker?
One top Judiciary Committee staffer compared Gaetz’s bid to helm the DoJ to that of Neera Tanden to helm the Biden administration’s Office of Management and Budget: an effort that was doomed from the start but meant to reward a Twitter-happy loyalist of the new president. If Gaetz goes down, some believe he’ll turn around and immediately run for Senate or governor in Florida, because his nomination is far from hurdle-free.
“Gaetz needed the hearing yesterday, because today he’s damaged goods following this ethics report,” one Republican staffer said. While Gaetz may or may not ever assume office as AG — and given Trump’s recent affinity for recess appointments, this could still happen — the rumors are that he timed his resignation to avoid the release of a damning ethics report that could detail his transgressions that reportedly involve teenagers and narcotics.
Kennedy, who could appear more palatable in the wake of Gaetz, may struggle to make it out of his Senate hearing, however. Both Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski sit on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; they were a pair of thorns in Trump’s side during his first term.
The Kennedy scion could be in for a tough task at the department. “God I hated it there,” a top Trump HHS staffer told Cockburn. “By the end, I would have drunk all the fluoride he wants to take out of the water.”
While Trump is already demonstrating his affinity for keeping his fellow Republicans on their toes with these picks, he also has a proven ability to destroy the careers of his intra- and extra-party opponents — so senators may not prove eager to line up to ax any of his nominees, even if they’d like to.
Fall balls
Taking his cue from Colin Farrell, Cockburn is spending the fall donning his penguin suit, bouncing from gala to gala.
On Wednesday night, he watched his Spectator colleagues go down in flames, as their urban crime cover package from the April edition of the magazine — by Patrick Hauf, Matt McDonald and Tim Rice — was a beaten finalist at the National Journalism Center’s Dao Awards, hosted at the National Press Club. Instead Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics scored the top prize of $100,000 for her reporting about the US Secret Service’s failures in the light of the first Trump assassination attempt. The Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky and Anna Giaritelli each won a runners-up spot. Other Spectator contributors nominated: Ben Domenech, Amber Duke and Aidan McLaughlin. Cockburn’s entry — this gossip column as a reporting series, for breaking such scoops as “the Senate gay sex scandal” and “what’s on this congressman’s daughter’s OnlyFans?” — cruelly did not make the shortlist. Prudes.
Crabtree told Cockburn: “I’m still on cloud nine over receiving this award at the end of my thirtieth year in journalism. I’m overwhelmed with gratitude that Dao Feng He and his wife Angela have so generously funded this award, giving it real heft and incentivizing young journalists to stay on the job and receive the recognition they deserve. I moved to my native California a few years ago and have been grappling with the sky-high post-Covid cost of living there. I’m so grateful to be able to devote these funds to sending my daughter to a private Christian school — likely for the duration of her elementary and secondary education.
“What’s next for the Secret Service? Despite several overlapping investigations in Congress and another by a bipartisan blue-ribbon commission, there are still untold stories about the failures that led to two assassination attempts this year and some of the tactics the agency is using to prevent other truths from being exposed. The reporting wouldn’t be possible if not for the courageous whistleblowers, many of whom risked their promotions and personal financial security to expose the gross mismanagement of the Secret Service.”
Kaminsky was not in attendance as he was covering a disinformation conference in Lisbon. “Though Ricky Bobby tells us, ‘If you ain’t first, you’re last,” it’s truly an honor and privilege to accept this award from NJC,” he told Cockburn from across the Atlantic. “Congratulations to the other finalists, including my colleague and runner-up Anna, as well as Susan, for both of their excellent reporting.”
Spotted at the shindig: Spencer Brown, Josh Christenson, Miranda Devine, Amber and Jonathan Duke, Matthew Foldi and Olivia Coleman, John Gizzi, Patrick Hauf, Emily Jashinsky and Phil Wegmann, Anna Laudiero, Madeline Leesman, Spencer Lindquist, Tiana Lowe Doescher, Matt McDonald, Larry and Meredith O’Connor, Mary Margaret Olohan, Katie Pavlich, Marisela Ramirez, Tim and Char Rice, Brent Scher, Sean Spicer, Joe Simonson, Matt Taibbi and Governor Scott Walker.
The night before, Cockburn rocked up to the National Building Museum for the annual AEI gala, where Senator Mitch McConnell was honored with the Irving Kristol Award. “The power to block bad ideas is every bit as powerful as the power to advance good ones,” the outgoing Senate majority leader said in his remarks. He also offered a classic Mitchism: “I have managed to achieve an unpopular level unprecedented in American politics.” McConnell was honored with a video featuring Senate colleagues past and present. Amusingly, one senator not present in the clip was Rick Scott — whose attempt to claim McConnell’s mantle the following day failed in the first round of voting.
In attendance: Seth and Bethany Mandel, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Senator Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao, Britt McHenry, Jason Russell, Paul Ryan, Carrie Sheffield and Robby Soave.
Hegseth on defense
During the AEI shindig, a pregnant pause met the news that Pete Hegseth was President-elect Trump’s pick to be defense secretary. The forty-four-year-old veteran is best known as a cohost of Fox and Friends Weekend, making him another of Trump’s more, uh, unorthodox selections. He was reportedly under consideration to head the Department of Veterans Affairs in the first Trump administration, but is now set to be the civilian in control of the military. A number of Trump’s more eyebrow-raising cabinet picks appear set to run roughshod over the departments to which they have been assigned; Trump appears to be borrowing from the Hezbollah playbook, firing off a series of controversial picks at the same time in the hope that some of the more contentious ones squeak past the Senate’s defenses unnoticed. Cockburn wonders what impact a Secretary Hegseth would have on the Department of Defense: perhaps he might look to roll back some of the DoD’s more outdated rules, such as court-martialing soldiers who commit adultery…
Sly brands Trump ‘second George Washington’
The 2024 election was cast by the media as a “battle of the sexes” — with Kamala’s scorned Handmaids and “childless cat ladies” being steamrollered by Trump’s “alpha male” energy. This was particularly present at July’s Republican National Convention, where the GOP candidate repeatedly made UFC-style “entrances” to the arena and was endorsed by Dana White and WWE icon Hulk Hogan on the final night.
Well, now more macho Eighties legends are vocalizing their support for the president-elect. At the America First Policy Institute gala at Mar-a-Lago, Rocky and Rambo star Sylvester Stallone described Trump as a “really mythical character,” saying, “Nobody in the world could have pulled off what he pulled off. So I’m in awe.”
“When George Washington defended his country, he had no idea that he was going to change the world because without him you could imagine what the world would look like,” Stallone continued. “Guess what? We got the second George Washington.”
Stallone’s comparison has caught the attention of sticklers for accuracy. “George Washington actually rather famously didn’t defend his country and sort of did the opposite,” notes Ben Dreyfuss. “The one time George Washington ‘defended’ his country was the French and Indian War when he was fighting for the British and he infamously oversaw a massacre and then sort of shit the bed and surrendered to the French in an event that haunted him for the rest of his life.”
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