We just quietly won two key battles against Donald Trump
The deck is now stacked against us, to put it mildly. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still fight and win some key battles. We’ve already managed to get rid of Donald Trump’s atrocious Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz, in a way that was humiliating for Trump and cost him political muscle. Now we’ve quietly scored two additional victories against Trump.
First, Trump has reached an agreement to let the FBI and DOJ run background checks on his nominees. Why is Trump caving on this, after previously having insisted that his nominees would be able to skip such background checks? Because the Democratic Party and voices like you pushed back loudly enough against it. Trump and his people saw that it was going to be a problem, didn’t want the ugly headlines about how he was afraid to let his nominees be checked out by the Feds, and decided to cave.
Where exactly will this get us? That’s not yet clear. But the background checks should end up in the hands of Senators from both parties, which means that if Republican Senators try to bury anything ugly, the Democrats should still be able to get it out through the media. We’ll see how it specifically plays out. But the point is that Trump is caving to us already. In spite of all the headlines and doomsday tweets, Trump does not have infinite power. We can fight and win some of these battles.
Our second victory came when Trump’s nominee to lead the DEA announced yesterday that he was withdrawing from consideration. Nothing has come out about why he chose to withdraw. But given that this news broke at roughly the same time as the background checks, well… you do the math.
The larger point is that we’ve already managed to get rid of two of Trump’s cabinet picks, and we’ve already managed to get Trump to cave on FBI background checks for the rest of his cabinet picks. The main front of the battle against Trump right now is with these cabinet picks. It’s how we weaken Trump right out of the gate. And it’s happening.
