Trump’s first defeat – the Atlantic

Well, that was quick.

Last Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump shocked even his allies by nominating Representative Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General. Today, Gaetz withdrew from consideration, a day after meeting with senators on Capitol Hill.

“It is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction from the critical work of the Trump/Vance transition,” The Florida man signed X. “There is no time to waste on an unnecessarily protracted Washington battle, and so I will withdraw my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump’s DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1.”

It is very common for at least one presidential candidate to withdraw at some point in the process. What is unusual is how quickly Gaetz’s nomination fell apart. Eight days isn’t the record, but it’s close. (Remember that White House physician Ronny Jackson’s nomination to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs took almost a month to collapse.) Just two days agoTrump insisted he had no thoughts of picking Gaetz.

Listen: What Pete Hegseth’s nomination is all about

The reason Gaetz resigned is no secret and no surprise. He has been shadowed for years by accusations of sex trafficking, payment for sex, drug use and sex with an underage girl. Trump does not appear to have bothered to vet Gaetz in any serious way before nominating him, but all this was known. The Justice Department investigated Gaetz for years, but in 2023 decided not to press charges; The House Ethics Committee was still investigating him. Gaetz himself denies any wrongdoing. The fact that Gaetz, like Trump, has a personal vendetta against the Justice Department appeared to be his main credential for the job.

When Gaetz was nominated, he also resigned from Congress. It froze the House Ethics Committee investigation because he was no longer a member. Speaker Mike Johnson, a Gaetz ally, albeit primarily conservative, where Gaetz is a libertarian, opposed releasing the committee’s work, and the committee went into a deadlocked vote. But Gaetz’s victory was hardly complete. His nomination removed a lot of damaging new information, including testimony about him twice having sex with a 17-year-old, although witnesses believed Gaetz did not know she was a minor. A lawyer for two women said the witnesses to the house that Gaetz had paid them for sex. New York Times published an impossibly elaborate diagram outlining payment arrangements. Gaetz fooled around and the public found out; by accepting the scrutiny that comes with a nomination, he too fooled around and figured it out.

But don’t cry too much for Gaetz, and not just because of his record as a rogue. (He is loathed by House colleagues, and many reports suggest he shared nude videos of paramours on the House floor.) His infamy has not hindered his rise so far, and he is believed to be planning to run for governor of Florida, as Ron DeSantis’ term expires.

The question is what this defeat portends for the rest of Trump’s list of outrageous nominees. The president-elect likes to gamble, even if he sometimes loses, but as I argued last week, the presence of so many unqualified choices may perversely make it easier for some of them to get through—after all, the The Senate’ did not reject them all, right?

Read: The perverse logic of Trump’s nomination circus

Gaetz’s quick exit shows that Senate Republicans are unwilling to accept literally anyone Trump throws their way, and the fact that they were able to send that message so quickly suggests how deep their reservations ran . If the rejection is a sign of weakness for Trump, it is also one for his vice president, Sen. JD Vance. Vance was given the hard work yesterday of dragging Gaetz around the Senate offices for support, which obviously did not go well.

The Gaetz failure doesn’t mean senators will reject other picks, but with Gaetz out of the way, the troubled nomination of Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon could get more attention. A police report alleging sexual assault against Hegseth from 2017 was released today, and it is gut-wrenching reading. Alternatively, Gaetz could end up looking like a sacrificial pick to save the others, or as a stalking horse for Trump to appoint someone else to the DOJ. It seems unlikely that Trump intended any of this — he doesn’t usually play to lose — but that could be the effect.

Before Trump selected Gaetz, he reportedly concluded that other candidates simply did not have what he wanted in an attorney general, according to New York Times. Now he’ll have to go back through his lists to pick someone who has one thing Gaetz conspicuously lacked: the ability to be vindicated.