Trump's nominees are testing the GOP's guardrails

President-elect Donald Trump has heard a word from Senate Republicans that few expected him to hear. That word is “no.” And now, the president-elect and his MAGA allies are determined to never hear it again. Their aim is to usurp the powerful and independent “advice and consent” role of the upper chamber by threatening retribution against senators who balk at Trump’s cabinet picks. This is a worrisome, if predictable, development. It is also a departure from the role the Mitch McConnell-led Senate played in Trump’s first administration.

After defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in an election that also gave Republicans control of the Senate and (barely) the House, Trump quickly went to work announcing new executive branch appointees. He thought the Republican Senate would be unquestionably compliant in providing its consent for all of his wishes. Initially, things didn’t go according to the president-elect’s plan.

In several crucial instances, the Senate delivered early and unexpected defeats to Trump, suggesting that there might be some guardrails to Trump 2.0. This was a hopeful early sign - but called into question Trump’s grip on his party. MAGA die-hards are now rushing to defend his most embattled pick, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s unqualified choice to lead the Pentagon.

The former Fox News weekend anchor and Iraq war veteran is a uniquely bad nominee, a classic case of failing upward. After overseeing financial mismanagement at one veterans charity, he was hired to lead another, where the same pattern ensued. He’s been accused of public drunkenness and serial infidelity, as well as sexual assault, which he has denied. He has blamed the media for smearing him. Maybe most damning was a 2018 letter from his mother who accused her son of “dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling” women, according to the New York Times. In an appearance on Fox, his mother, Penelope Hegseth, said that her son was a changed man and pleaded with women in the Senate to see him for who is now, not who he was then.

Still, Trump stood by him, only to watch people like South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump stalwart, call the allegations “very disturbing.” Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, promised to give Hegseth “a thorough vetting” and seemed to be a possible “no” vote. Ernst is the first female combat veteran in the upper chamber and a sexual assault survivor. After threats of a primary challenge, she sounds more supportive of Hegseth. Graham, a human weathervane, has also changed course.

If Republicans had tanked Hegseth’s nomination before confirmation hearings, it would have been Trump’s third big loss since he won the election. First, Trump wanted the malleable Florida Senator Rick Scott to become the new Senate majority leader. The Senate defied him and went with South Dakota Senator John Thune, an institutionalist (and an acolyte of former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell).

Then Trump wanted former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general. At least four Republican senators were “implacably opposed,” including Utah Senator John Curtis.

If Hegseth were swatted down, too, Trump would look weak and the Senate would look strong, possibly paving the way to object to other nominees. While Hegseth has taken up most of the media’s attention, there’s also Tulsi Gabbard, a Vladimir Putin apologist, who has been tapped to be the director of national intelligence, a choice that has been criticized by scores of former national security officials. Gabbard has been praised recently on Russian state TV as “totally wonderful.”

The Russians are also excited about the president-elect’s choice of Kash Patel, a QAnon favorite, to lead the FBI. Patel has an enemies list of 60 people dubbed the “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State” that could be targeted as part of a Trump revenge tour should Senate Republicans confirm Patel. In Trump’s first term, when the president wanted to tap Patel to be the deputy FBI director, then-Attorney General Bill Barr blocked the move, telling the White House chief of staff “over my dead body.” Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper accused Patel in his memoir of lying during the attempted rescue of a kidnapped American who was being held in Nigeria, potentially endangering the mission and putting lives at risk. Trump also tried to name Patel to be the deputy director of the CIA, but Vice President Mike Pence intervened and CIA Director Gina Haspel threatened to resign.

And then there is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead Health and Human Services, who has trafficked in debunked and dangerous conspiracy theories linking vaccines to autism. He wrongly believes that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS and has pushed for raw milk and eradicating fluoride from drinking water.

Gabbard and Kennedy are said to be the nominees that Trump is “prepared to go to war for,” according to the Bulwark. That playbook has already been set in motion with Hegseth. Both Gabbard and Patel met with GOP senators early this week and the meetings have reportedly gone favorably. Intraparty war might not even be required.

For his part, New York Senator Chuck Schumer, the leader of the incoming Democratic minority, has decided to stay strategically mum about Trump’s picks, hoping that a few Republicans would tank the nominees all on their own. That footing will change next month when Republicans take over the Senate and hearings start.

Trump expected that the Senate would fall in line and unilaterally support him, allowing recess appointments and forgoing FBI checks. And most Senate Republicans have publicly supported his picks. Many will take the position of Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville and simply be a rubber stamp for Trump.

But with their slim majority, it only takes four Republicans to serve as a check on Trump. That they have shown some sliver of a spine thus far is a good sign, but it’s not good enough. It seems increasingly likely that they will fall in line and confirm even Trump’s most patently unqualified nominees. The threat of the MAGA mob can’t be discounted. Ideally, though, some of the damage will be contained by a small handful of Senate Republicans who can imagine a post-Trump era and want to retain the Senate as the “cooling body” imagined by the founders.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Nia-Malika Henderson is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former senior political reporter for CNN and the Washington Post, she has covered politics and campaigns for almost two decades.