Trump's man Gaetz passes one simple test — personal loyalty
Then-President Donald Trump, right, and Rep. Matt Gaetz, of Florida, at Game 5 of the World Series baseball game between the Houston Astros and the Washington Nationals in Washington in October 2019. Credit: AP/Andrew Harnik
The news that President-elect Donald Trump will nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general — to get the Justice Department under the presidential thumb — signals the degree to which obedience will be paramount in this administration.
Never mind that Gaetz remains the subject of an ongoing House Ethics Committee investigation into whether he engaged in sexual misconduct or illicit drug use with which, he says, he isn’t cooperating.
And never mind that the DOJ probed Gaetz for sex-trafficking and then didn’t charge him. The Floridian’s biggest qualification for the job seems to be that he screamed loud and long against the DOJ probe and prosecution of Trump, now doomed.
Compare Gaetz to Trump’s first attorney general, former Sen. Jeff Sessions, who decided in 2017 that because of his involvement in the Trump campaign, he’d stay clear of whatever probe there would be of Russian influence in the election. That’s how the Mueller commission was formed, and although Trump wasn’t charged, he repeatedly pilloried, raged at, and finally fired Sessions for failing to squash the investigation.
If the choice of Gaetz marks a spiteful gesture, so does Trump’s selection of ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. Dan Coats was Trump’s hire for that job in 2017; he later stepped down after he provided what were described as unwelcome assessments on Russia and North Korea. Given her public remarks about the Russia-Ukraine war, Gabbard is most unlikely to do any such thing.
On the stump, Suffolk County’s ex-Rep. Lee Zeldin has adhered loyally to MAGA and Trump for years, and he ran well for governor in 2022, surprising many. Like Gaetz, he voted against certifying 2020 election results. Now he’s been chosen for Environmental Protection Agency administrator.
Trump’s first first-term EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, was a clear climate-change denier, but it was for other reasons that the former Oklahoma attorney general had to quit the following year. In July 2018, he resigned under the cloud of ethics investigations involving lobbyists, airplane flights, a 24-hour security detail, and other matters.
A smaller but equally vivid profile in fealty: real estate developer Steve Witkoff, a frequent golf partner and personal friend of Trump raised in Baldwin Harbor and Old Westbury, who will be special envoy to the Middle East. For the first two years of Trump’s last term, the post belonged to Jason Greenblatt, who’d been a Trump Organization lawyer and executive.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee becomes ambassador to Israel, a nation he has, as an evangelical Christian, stridently supported for many years. He has a different style from former bankruptcy attorney David M. Friedman, from North Woodmere, who held the job in Trump's first term.
Some candidates, announced earlier, seemed not only loyal but competent, such as Sen. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state pick, once targeted for humiliation by Trump during the 2016 primaries.
The personal and political circumstances under which Trump now chooses his Cabinet have changed considerably from his first turn eight years ago. He arrives at the White House this time after winning not just the Electoral College but the popular vote. He’s 78 now, and can’t run again, and need not fear blowback.
He has managed in recent years to crush all meaningful dissent among Republicans, who will command both congressional houses. Trump's position was never more powerful. It may be up to Senate confirmations under a new Republican majority leader, John Thune, to check the next president's worst nominees.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.