In January 2017, shortly after taking office for the first time, President Donald Trump had already issued 19 executive actions, and this paper dubbed him DON NONSTOP.
To which second-term Trump says: “Hold my Diet Coke.”
The MSNBC hosts had barely dried their tears before the president-elect was nominating almost his entire cabinet.
He rightly sees his thumping victory in both the Electoral College and popular vote as a mandate — make that a plea — from the people to reverse the disastrous four years of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration.
His choice of Tom Homan as border czar shows he’s serious about stopping the dangerous, out-of-control migrant crisis.
He’ll have a steady hand at the tiller with chief of staff Susie Wiles, and smart operators in Marco Rubio as secretary of state and Doug Burgum as energy czar.
Rumor has it that Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management, is a possibility for Treasury, but others in the mix sound good, too — at least they won’t pursue the free-money, high-inflation, no-growth policies of the Biden years.
And three cheers for the Department of Government Efficiency.
The bloated federal government needs outsiders like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to pop open the hood and see what can be fixed, streamlined or chucked.
And if they give New York Times opinion writers the vapors, even better!
Lasting impact
It’s a strong team, and one that, for the most part, the Senate will have no issue confirming.
Which is why Trump shouldn’t be so insistent that recess appointments be used to install his choices.
The recess loophole was introduced at a time before airplanes and telephones, a necessity for making sure the government didn’t grind to a halt because the Senate was scattered across our fledgling nation.
It was not meant to bypass the constitutional balance of powers — or prevent the Senate from saving a president from himself.
A mass recess appointment won’t save much time, and creates a dangerous precedent.
What will happen when an incoming Democratic president wants to install Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as secretary of the Treasury?
It’s bad enough we had Alejandro Mayorkas as Biden’s gormless Homeland Security secretary. What happens when all guardrails are removed?
We can predict what Trump’s answer might be: Someone else’s problem.
But he should consider how the needless battles of today can impact him — and his legacy — tomorrow.
Rethink these picks
Which brings us to the reason Trump is pushing so hard for recess appointments: Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard.
While most of the cabinet picks have been excellent, and some of them risky but promising, Gaetz and Gabbard are dreadful.
We plead that he rethink them.
They’re distracting chaos agents who won’t accomplish what Trump wants them to, and will most likely backfire on his agenda.
Start with Gabbard, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence.
We can see the affinity — Trump opposed the Iraq war and wants to limit our foreign escapades, as does she.
But Trump also understands Teddy Roosevelt’s maxim of speaking softly while carrying a big stick.
He pulled out of the toothless Iran nuclear deal, then killed Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian agent who was fomenting terrorism through the region.
Gabbard backed the Iran deal, and said the Soleimani killing undermined our national security.
She’s been sympathetic to dictators in Syria and Russia, instead blaming the victims of violence like Ukraine and Israel.
She’s speaking softly and carrying no stick.
There’s a real fear that Gabbard won’t provide Trump with the intelligence he needs, but rather downplay threats with the intention of isolationism.
Trump has shown that he can balance the demands of a threatening world while working to avoid dragging America into another unnecessary war.
He can only do that if he’s given frank assessments by a dispassionate intelligence officer.
Tulsi Gabbard is not that person.
Gaetz must go
But even worse is Matt Gaetz, Trump’s nominee for attorney general.
After years of Russia, Russia, Russia, no one has more reason to dislike the Department of Justice than Trump.
We can understand him wanting to throw a hand grenade into a system that investigated parents at school board meetings but turned a blind eye to migrant gangs.
But we don’t want him to be blown up by his own grenade.
Gaetz may provide the disruption, but he has neither the ethics nor the discipline to rebuild a proper system that will pursue fair prosecutions.
The congressman may have convinced Trump that he is the subject of “lawfare,” but it’s obvious all he wants is an escape hatch.
And Gaetz’s own run-in with the law diminishes how the Dems relentlessly hounded Trump.
He resigned from Congress before the release of an ethics report that reportedly accuses him of having sex with underage girls at drug-fueled parties.
His own colleagues say he’s a sleaze.
Neither Gabbard nor Gaetz are singular figures for what Trump wants to accomplish.
There are plenty of people who can cast a jaundiced eye at our intelligence services and purge the Department of Justice of bias — and do so without a bus full of baggage.
Both represent a bigger problem than their own faults reflect.
Trump is wasting important political capital pushing two mediocre nominees out of stubbornness, not necessity.
If time is of the essence, why waste it with this?
The Senate is ready and willing to quickly confirm almost every member of the cabinet.
There’s no need to go to the mattresses over Matt Gaetz.
Furthermore, if Gaetz is truly loyal to the prez-elect and his agenda, he would pull out of the process himself.
Moreover, Democrats are despondent after Trump’s massive win.
Why throw them a lifeline by sparking an internecine battle among Republicans?
Ammunition for 2026
Not only will Trump’s opponents use this to argue that he can’t govern, but it will provide ammunition for the 2026 midterms.
Which is why the battles today aren’t someone else’s problem tomorrow.
No matter how much Trump might accomplish in the next two years, if the Democrats can take the House and the Senate because of voter backlash, the entire agenda grinds to a halt.
Does Trump want to spend his last two years in the White House how he spent most of his first four, fending off investigations and hearings from deranged House Democrats?
Cutting Gaetz and Gabbard now shows a willingness to work with allies in the Senate, and it saves countless headaches in the future.
Then it’s back to Don Nonstop.
