Matt Gaetz withdraws from Attorney General nomination in a major body blow for Donald Trump
Matt Gaetz has announced that he’s withdrawing from his nomination for Attorney General, stating that he was worried about his nomination becoming a distraction. It’s not immediately clear if this was Gaetz’s decision, or if Donald Trump and his team decided to give up on Gaetz and they’re merely allowing him to portray it as being his own decision. Either way, it’s a body blow – not just for Gaetz but also for Trump.
Matt Gaetz is now out of politics entirely. He’s already resigned from the House. Even if he tries to get his seat back, his reentry into the House would prompt the House Ethics Committee to release its report about him.
So what prompted this? Yesterday the Democratic Party-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee formally requested a copy of the report from the House Ethics Committee. This appears to have been the final straw. It meant the report was likely about to surface one way or the other, and Gaetz’s withdrawal is the only thing that could keep it from surfacing.
While this is super ugly for Matt Gaetz, the real story here is how ugly it is for Donald Trump. We’re about to hear all kinds of contrarian hot takes about how Trump’s secret evil genius plan was to nominate Gaetz as a distraction so that he could withdraw. But that’s nonsense. It’s a body blow for an incoming President-elect to have a failed high profile nomination right out of the gate. This fiasco makes Trump looks like an idiot in the eyes of the people in the middle who just elected him, and it helps ensure that Trump will enter office with a low approval rating.
Trump and his band of fools are blowing it already. This is also proof that we can push back and win at least some of these battles. So much for the notion that Trump is simply going to get everything he wants. We’ve already defeated his closely allied pick for Attorney General. We can and will win other battles as well.
