Trump trolls GOP with Cabinet picks: The point is to bring Republicans to heel — but it may backfire

In these dark times, it's more important than ever to nurse tendrils of joy. So it is a great pleasure to watch all the Republican leaders who repeatedly intervened to protect Donald Trump from himself now reap their reward: a big ol' contempt loogie in their eyes. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. and his allies turned their nose up at the chance to bar Trump from ever running for office again after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot . In turn, Trump has worked to humiliate them by nominating the worst possible people for high-level federal appointments.

Trump's loyalty tests of congressional Republicans have escalated quickly from "walk naked through the streets" levels to "eat puke" levels. First, it was the nomination of Fox News host Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary, even though he admitted the Army "spit me out" after "members of my own unit in leadership deemed that I was an extremist or a white nationalist because of a tattoo." (It's multiple tattoos that are understood this way by Christian and white nationalists themselves.) Then Trump escalated to nominating substitute Fox News host Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence , despite her affection for dictators like Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin, which then-Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill. deemed "traitorous. " Then the topper: Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to be the attorney general.

Typically, someone in Gaetz's situation would keep his current role in Congress until he was confirmed in the new job, but despite the GOP's razor-thin margins in the House, he resigned immediately. Politico then reported that the resignation prevents the otherwise imminent release of "an Ethics Committee report investigating several allegations including that Gaetz engaged in sex with a minor." The Justice Department that Gaetz wishes to lead never charged him after a lengthy investigation , but Gaetz's good friend pled guilty, getting 11 years in prison for his role. Greenberg wrote a letter accusing Gaetz of "sexual activities" with an underage girl. In a text message to Trump associate Roger Stone, Greenberg wrote that "MG" and "I both had sex with the girl who was underage."

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The good news is that much of the political media understands that, these trollish picks are a loyalty test for Republicans in Congress . It's their first big reminder that, as much as Trump brags about his non-existent powers at "deal-making," his only true theory of power is to rule through fear. After admitting he thinks Gaetz is not fit for the role, one Republican House member complained to a reporter , "But hell, you'll print that and now I'm going to be investigated." No doubt that reaction would tickle Trump, who shuns coalition-building out of the belief that arm-twisting is a superior way to control his caucus.

But, not to wallow in too much hopium, Trump is wrong in this view. It's the Achilles heel of authoritarians throughout time. They relish conflict, but conflict drives away potential allies, sows chaos, and can often grind the gears of their agenda. We've seen this play out in the GOP-controlled House, which has been reduced to dysfunction and inaction , felled by in-fighting. Much of that was driven by Gaetz's multi-year vendetta over the House ethics probe, which appears to be his motive for kick-starting the eventually successful effort to oust then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

In an episode of "Pod Save America" released before the Gaetz announcement, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein predicted a second Trump term will feature "much more factional in-fighting than people are prepared for." The Gaetz pick immediately proved him right. As Politico Playbook reported , the "Gaetz-for-AG plan came together yesterday, just hours before it was announced," hatched by some of the more erratic hangers-on — likely including Gaetz — "while incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles was in a different, adjacent room on the plane, apparently unaware."

This half-baked scheme to force congressional Republicans to eat Trump's poop while praising its taste and texture looks like it may not be working how Trump and Gaetz hoped. Investigative journalist Julie K. Brown posted , "Sources for Miami Herald/McClatchy confirm that the Ethics Report is 'highly damaging' — the report could be leaked today." Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex., invited the House Ethics Committee to release the report as relevant information to a Gaetz confirmation hearing. If Gaetz's goal was burying the findings, he may have just ensured that they get much wider hearing than they would have if he had just kept quiet.

In the wake of Trump's disastrous win, it's welcome news that he's focusing his love of chaos and division directly on his own caucus. It was only Tuesday night that the architects of Project 2025 were having their coming-out party, free now that Trump won to admit that Democrats were right: they were always the villainous puppeteers planning to pull Trump's strings in the White House. But their extensive schemes will require organization and buy-in from GOP leaders. That's a lot harder to pull off when Dear Leader is putting his energies towards encouraging everyone in the party to claw each others' eyes out.

To be certain, things are still very bleak in America. Trump will still be able to inflict a lot of harm, even getting in his own way, as he seems intent on doing. And while incompetence is better than competence in his appointees, there are downsides. We saw that during his last administration, when the federal COVID-19 pandemic was hamstrung by Trump's inability to lead anything other than a criminal conspiracy. But still, we should look to silver linings where we see them. It's good if Trump's energies are focused far more on settling scores with other Republicans than working through the Project 2025 checklist.

As Klein posted on Twitter, "Demanding Senate Republicans back Gaetz as attorney general and Hegseth as Defense Secretary is the 2024 version of forcing Sean Spicer to say it was the largest inauguration crowd ever."

But it's worth remembering what happened to Spicer, Trump's first press secretary. He burned out and was pushed out. He now spends his time writing op-eds no one cares about and desperately begging for relevance. The reward for playing along and the reward for resistance are the same. Trump throws allies out as swiftly as his enemies. Republicans who think they're safe because they play along are fooling themselves.

Trump's contempt for congressional Republicans was already manifesting in his vampiric posture towards their slim majority. He's already pulled Gaetz and Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York out of Congress and into his employ, shrinking the razor-thing margin further . Speaker Mike Johnson even went on Fox News to ask his boss to "give me some relief" to "maintain this majority." But Trump always cared about having his ego regularly fluffed over boring matters of governance, and this tendency appears to have worsened with age. If members of Congress please him with sufficient flattery, that will likely matter more than a future where Republicans get to focus on their legislative priorities.

Trump talked a big game but, thankfully, got very little done in his first term. His refusal to persuade anyone meant he couldn't even get the Affordable Care Act repealed, as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., offered the decisive vote against Trump. Trump learned the wrong lesson from that, which is that he's not focused enough on purging the party. He has spent the years since chewing over his vendetta against McCain, long after the senator passed away, putting him well beyond any effort to return to the fold. Trump did sign a massive tax cut in his first year in office, but after that, he barely even bothered to pretend he had a legislative agenda. If it weren't for getting three Supreme Court justices, the damage he did would be relatively small compared to his destructive yearnings. He also had extremely high staff turnover, due to the eternal principle that the more a person gets to know Trump, the more they hate him.

It's possible Gaetz gets confirmed by quisling Republicans who want to avoid the wrath of Trump. It's also possible that, as McCarthy told Bloomberg Television Wednesday , "Gaetz won't get confirmed" and "everybody" knows it. Either way, Trump will have sown resentment throughout the GOP before he even gets inaugurated. The ideal situation is that Gaetz loses and spends the next four years encouraging Trump to drive out more members of the party, depleting their already thinned-out ranks. But even if he gets confirmed, Gaetz will probably use the DOJ powers to harass fellow Republicans for the perceived sin of not being cool with that stuff about an underage girl. That will not win over hearts and minds.

Hey, maybe I'm wrong and Trump is some kind of savant who knows that the best way to retain power is to reduce your numbers, alienate potential allies, and make the rest wish their leader would disappear from their lives entirely. But, if his first term is any indication, Trump's sociopathic tactics, while alarmingly charming to a lot of voters, tend to backfire in the art of the deal on Capitol Hill. Since all he wants to do is bad, it's good if his biggest obstacle to his agenda is his own terrible instincts.