Skip to content

Will the Senate confirm Tulsi Gabbard?

Matt Gaetz is getting all the attention as the Trump appointee most likely to be turned down by the Senate, but what about Tulsi Gabbard? Fair or not, she's widely considered to be practically a Russian asset. Will the Senate seriously consider her for the nation's top intelligence job even so?

And who's next in Trump's parade of freaks and geeks? Marjorie Taylor Greene? General Mike Flynn? Kash Patel? Mike Lindell? Tucker Carlson? Alina Habba? Lee Greenwood? Laura Loomer? David Rem? Donald Jr.?

Probably none of them. I never would have guessed Hegseth, Gaetz, or Gabbard, and I imagine his upcoming appointments will be completely out of left field too.

UPDATE: Oh come on:

I didn't even mention RFK Jr. in my list because it seemed too ridiculous. More ridiculous than Mike Flynn! This is just God level trolling from Trump. I suppose he's figuring that even if they grow a spine, Senate Republicans can't vote down all his picks.

93 thoughts on “Will the Senate confirm Tulsi Gabbard?

  1. different_name

    I expect he'll nominate loyal freaks until he's broken the (R) Senate's will, which shouldn't take long at all.

    With possible exceptions, I don't think he gives a shit about any of them in particular; he'll likely replace most of them several times anyway as they become less useful or fun to torment.

    The point is breaking the government until it does what he wants.

    1. aldoushickman

      Again, we need to stop ascribing plans and feints and hidden agendas to Trump. Trump is a moron who values obeisance and doesn't give a shit about institutions, so he of course will nominate morons who show him obeisance and reflect not giving a shit about institutions.

      Concluding that this is some sort of dominance display calibrated to bring the Senate to heel would mean that he's picking nominations to serve at least two goals, which is more complicated thinking than is in evidence that he's capable of.

      Trump is a beligerent dummy. Let's not pump him up by ascribing strategy to the beligerent and dumb things that he does.

      1. Doctor Jay

        I don't think this is wrong. However, there's another thing he's looking for: Drama. Theater that says he's "fighting hard" to keep his promises, and fighting "the establishment". Fighting for the MAGAs. MAGAs do not much care for institutional Republicans. Not at all.

      2. Josef

        Trump is only as dangerous as the people around him are. Trump is a belligerent dummy. They are not dummies. They are just as belligerent though.

      3. Yehouda

        " Trump is a moron..."

        That is just infantile.
        A man will not get elected twice to president of the US if he is a moron, and even less so when he is also a POS.

        1. Doctor Jay

          I agree that Trump is not stupid. As you say, how could he be. The thing with Trump is that "he thinks he knows things that he doesn't know" as Bob Woodward put it. That makes him more of a fool than a moron. And a lazy fool. There's a whole bunch of stuff he takes no interest in because he can just hire someone if he ever needs to. But he probably won't need to.

          I would compare Trump to a shark. Sharks are very, very old as a species. They are simple creatures. They swim fast, they are good at detecting prey, and they have lots of teeth. It's a model that has been effective for a long, long time.

          They don't need the complex behavioral/social patterns that primates need to survive. They just need to detect prey, swim fast, and have lots of teeth.

          This is how Trump works. His approach to life is strongly influenced by his circumstance of wealth, which he has never not had available. He could always pay someone who actually did the homework to tell him how to best do the thing he wanted to do.

          Detect prey. Swim fast. Have lots of teeth.

          1. FrankM

            I think you've got it right. Trump may be dumb as a post, but his feral instincts are sharp.

            But one thing I haven't seen discussed is that this is his way of breaking the Senate. He's daring them to not confirm his picks. It's a loyalty test. The absurdity is the whole point of the exercise. Once they've rolled over, he owns them. This is how he thinks. He understands dominance and that's what he's after.

          2. aldoushickman

            I agree with this take. I've likened him to a raccoon or a rat for the same reason. Not "smart" in any objective sense of the word, but with a clever knack and unrelenting drive to get into places he doesn't belong and make a mess of them, such that you really can't turn your back on him.

        2. aldoushickman

          He does moronic things, he sounds like an idiot when he talks, he demonstrates a failure to grasp basic concepts, is incompetent at achieving his own stated goals (be they wall-building or Obamacare repealing), and many, many of his former associates describe him as stupid. That's a lot of weight on the "yup, he's dumb" side of the scale.

          On the other side of the scale, he won the presidency twice. But that ain't an IQ test--it's a test of charisma, and is subject to the statistics of small numbers.* So very, very few people ever run for president, let alone win, that it's not a big enough data set to use as conclusive evidence (esp. in face of all the evidence to the contrary) that Trump is a clever dude.
          _____
          *Example: the Republicans, after it took forever Romney to get a winning number of delegates in the 2012 primaries, changed some of the rules so that the candidate that got a plurality of the votes in a primary would receive more delegates, so as to minimize the impact of a crowded field diluting away delegates from the plurality favorite in early contests. But that ended up helping Trump sweep up delegates earlier in 2016; absent that, maybe a different candidate would have ended up prevailing. And that has nothing to do with Trump's mental horsepower one way or the other.

          1. Yehouda

            "is incompetent at achieving his own stated goals (be they wall-building or Obamacare repealing)"

            If you really think building the wall was ever his goal, then he succeeded to bamboozle you too. The Wall was always an election gimmick.

            Obamacare repeal was a genuine failure. That doesn't show he is a moron.

            The former asscoiates that call him stupid are infantile too.

            He is bloviating a lot, but that is part of his show, and it works for him.

            He didn't only won the presidency twice. He also took total control on one the main parties in the US.

            1. aldoushickman

              I mean, I guess if we take your approach, and assume that there must be a secret plan, and that every dumb thing that Trump does is secretly a Secret Move to disguise the secret plan, and it's all just plots and misdirections all the way down, sure, I guess Trump would have to be very clever to pull that off.

              I prefer to judge the man by his actions. So I think he's a dumb chaos muppet who is nominating people would would be very, very bad at the jobs they'd be nominated for (even from a basic competency perspective) because he doesn't care about or understand what those jobs are supposed to do, and instead just values fealty and flattery.

              YMMV.

              1. Yehouda

                "dumb chaos muppet"

                That is not "wrong", but you also have to realize that he is a master in bamboozling large number of people, and togather with being a POS, that makes him very dangerous.

                The frequent pretention of being dumb is part of the bamboozling process.

        3. lawnorder

          You are WAY over-optimistic about the good sense of the average American voter. Trump is demonstrably a criminal, a pathological liar, and an adjudicated (not convicted) sex offender, and probably senile. "Moron" is just a cherry on top.

      4. different_name

        You seem to think Don Trump is the only relevant player. That is a disastrously false assumption, for multiple reasons.

        But you do you. None of us can expect to agree with everyone on team sanity; most of us are going to get something wrong at some point.

        1. aldoushickman

          Ugh, this again. The idea that nominating lightweights and weirdos like RFKJR and Gaetz and a fox news weekend host is some sort of secret plan by unnamed smarties around Trump to accomplish some sort of mysterious goal is just as silly as assuming that it's all part of Trump's secret master plan. You'd have to explain why incompetent sycophants operating the machinery of government is a better way to achieve objectives than having competent sycophants would be.

          To be very clear, I am in no way disputing that there are terrible people with terrible plans around Trump. Project 2025 is was written by some of them, and it's full of terrible plans. But accomplishing horrible goals requires competency, which isn't on dispay in these nominations.

          1. jeffreycmcmahon

            Because _they don't care about competency_, the functioning of the government is irrelevant, creating chaos is the order of the day, and these are moves in that direction.

            1. aldoushickman

              If the plan is just chaos for chaos's sake, then sure, they are executing it perfectly. I just think that that's indistinguishable from Trump nominating weirdo sycophants that he personally likes, so I tend to think that's what's going on.

      5. Crissa

        It can be both/and here.

        Being a moron, selfish, etc doesn't cancel out the goal being to show his dominance and the nominees are just discardable when they fail to carry out his unreasonable demands.

    2. bebopman

      This is weird and kinda funny. I swear I read this same conversation about Trump’s “thinking”, almost word for word, 8 years ago. Forget trump. Why are the *American people* this way, even after what happened before?
      … (The surge in google searches for “why is Biden not running “ around Election Day and “how can I change my vote” during the past week should tell us something unpleasant.)

    3. painedumonde

      This is the plan. He's literally destroying it all as he recedes to his final years. The wet dream of the Big Boy that got made fun of by that Kenyan.

    1. FrankM

      A better question is if we can find 4 Republicans with an intact spine:

      Lisa Murkowski - probably
      John Barasso - maybe
      Vance replacement - ???
      Rand Paul - don't laugh, he won't be happy with these shenanigans
      Susan Collins - sure

      HaHa. That last one was a joke. We all know how that's going to turn out.

    1. Josef

      I think it'll be the Constitution, then Trump. At first. It'll take time for him to convince people that he and the Constitution are one and the same thing. They will be considered inseparable.

    1. gibba-mang

      Speaking of which Biden needs to release the entire Epstein file as well as Garland's DOJ file on Trump. Not that it will actually change minds for for historical accuracy.

    2. realrobmac

      Trump's first wife also died a couple of years under very mysterious circumstances. It's amazing how little was made of that. Falling down stairs? Seriously? Who has ever heard of someone dying from that outside a movie? Remember that she accused him of raping her when he was angry after having hair transplant surgery.

  2. Yikes

    The only good news about any of this is that Trump does not have any actual policy agenda. With judges, he will just go by some list handed to him. With taxes, the lower on him the better. With regulations, doing away with them is fine, better still if they apply to him.

    He absolutely could give a rats ass about Matt Gaetz, or whatever Gaetz wants. And for that matter all Gaetz wants is attention for treating government like a joke.

    So, for the next two years, government will be a joke. If we are looking for anything to be thankful for, just be thankful he does not have an actual plan like Hitler.

      1. aldoushickman

        yes, but to the extent that they do, is that plan served by Gaetz as AG? Probably not, unless that plan is indistinguishable from the chaos that incompetents like Gaetz would create anyway.

        Put another way: Barr had a plan and an agenda, plus the skills and resources to implement it. It's probably why Trump survived his first impeachment. People who want the president to be a King advanced their game with Barr.

        What does Gaetz advance?

        1. golack

          This is just Trollish behavior to break people.
          I'd guess any serious things DOJ would have to do will be outsourced to the appropriate billionaire/Federalist Society member.

        2. Altoid

          If you're a Bannon type, the institutional chaos Gaetz will allow is the point. If you're not a Bannon type but have specific ideas for DOJ, Gaetz is both a clownish troll figurehead and an easy distraction for the media, an irresistible bright object or laser dot for them to chase.

          Far more important as a tell, if there are any plots afoot, will be the deputy AGs. They have much more day-to-day supervision and direction over what happens in the department than the AG does, and having a weak nonentity like Gaetz as AG will give them even more influence.

          I agree with you that trump is uber-vain, mercurial, stupid in the Fran Lebowitz sense, doesn't think in complex ways, and all that. But he does viscerally understand and know how to manipulate deep archetypes and shallow media to get the attention and adulation he craves. This makes him very useful for some people who do have plans.

          He also likes to have his subordinates fight with each other, and I think that's the biggest weakness of his ways. The people with plans that don't only aim for chaos end up fighting each other and frustrating each others' plans. As long as there isn't a single Dr Evil behind them all, that's the opening for preserving what we can of the country.

    1. Art Eclectic

      Getting rid of Gaetz is a down payment for having the House rubber stamp any and all of his asks. R leadership would like to disappear Gaetz to the closest Siberia at US disposal.

      1. aldoushickman

        Gaetz resigned of his own accord to beat the release of the House's investigation into him. I don't see why Trump needs to be part of some complicated three-way transaction to achieve that. Nor does it make any sense that nominating Gaetz to be AG is the price to get him out of the House.

        Like, is this what you think went down?

        Johnson: I hate this guy Gaetz--I wish I could disappear him to Siberia! If only I could get him to resign somehow.

        Trump: Got you covered, buddy. How about I make Gaetz my Attorney General--put him in charge of DOJ, the FBI, the ATF, the Marshalls, the Prisons, the US Attorneys, etc.?

        Johnson: Brilliant idea boss! Rather than an annoying backbencher, Gaetz will be one of the most powerful people in America! I owe you one.

        1. Joseph Harbin

          If not for the House ethics report, Gaetz would not have resigned. He quit serving the last 7 weeks of his term. As I understand it, he can take the seat again in January in the new Congress if the AG gig doesn't work out.

        2. memyselfandi

          As a fellow rapist, it is in Trump's interest to have an attorney general not interested in prosecuting that particular crime.

    2. realrobmac

      He does have an agenda. He promised some big things while campaigning and I am 100% certain he will make an attempt at most of them.
      * Deport lots and lots of immigrants
      * Implement big tariffs
      * Let RFK Jr "go nuts" on healthcare
      * End support for Ukraine and preside over a settlement where Putin gets all of what he wants
      * Work to inhibit any support that trans youth are now getting
      * Nominate as many insane right wing judges as he possibly can
      * Massive tax cuts for the rich
      * Massive cuts in social programs (Elon Musk is going to somehow have time to oversee this in spite of supposedly running 4 different companies)

      1. memyselfandi

        Musk ultimately won't take the job when he realizes he will have to give up involvement in those companies to work for the government

  3. Josef

    Gaetz might be the test. If it fails he moves onto more drastic measures. He's going to push the Senate to their breaking point and beyond.

  4. Doctor Jay

    I'm kind of expecting him to nominate Jim Cramer as Treasury Secretary. But then, I don't know if Cramer has kissed the Trump ring or not.

  5. Josef

    Maybe it's all just a loyalty test. If the GOP fails, he'll adjust. And when I say he, I mean the people advising Trump. He is too stupid to do this all on his own.

  6. keefinmqt

    How long will people continue to insist Trump “will never try to run for a third term”? Seriously, everyone needs to be completely awakened to the threat to our Constitutional order.

    1. Joel

      He won't run for a 3rd term. He won't need to, He'll just declare a national emergency, suspend the Constitution and just live out the rest of his life as POTUS.

  7. Andrew

    There has been some discussion that T***p could use Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, with the help of Congress, to force the senate to adjourn and install all of them as recess appointments.

    1. Joel

      And I'm sure most GOP Congressmen would be happy to arrange it, on the grounds that then Trump, not they, will be to blame for the consequences. Except that they were accessories.

  8. Joseph Harbin

    ...it seemed too ridiculous. More ridiculous than Mike Flynn! This is just God level trolling from Trump.

    It could be worse than trolling. He could be serious.

    Does he understand the damage that RFK Jr. could unleash? He's really not that dumb. He knows but doesn't care. Maybe the damage puts the US back in the Stone Age. What's it to him? He'll be taking advice from End Times fanatics (like Huckabee) and sponsored by a man (Putin) whose highest goal is destroying the United States and the existing world order.

    First term, Trump showed some desire to be liked, but it's different now. He's been prosecuted and nearly assassinated and out for retribution like never before.

    Trump has been mad at the world since he he was a small child. His entire life has been the accumulation of one grievance after another. What's going on inside? I fear it's no different than what goes on in the heads of mass shooters. Now he's got the biggest gun anyone could dream of, the weaponized and lethal power of the US government.

    Best we can do may be to duck for cover.

    1. aldoushickman

      "Does he understand the damage that RFK Jr. could unleash? He's really not that dumb."

      Recall that Trump suggested that his people were looking into using UV lights and bleach inside the body as potential cures for covid. He really is that dumb. I don't doubt that he thinks that RFKJr. is a really smart guy who (just like Trump!) knows more than the so-called "experts" around him.

      1. Joseph Harbin

        Trump was smart enough to know the vaccine was the way out of the Covid pandemic. There was a time he'd brag about Operation Warp Speed, his one big success. But the crazies weren't buying it so he shut up. He went all in with the antivaxers to get their support for the campaign. But he doesn't need anyone's support now. He's in FU mode and who's gonna stop him?

    2. Yehouda

      "He knows but doesn't care."

      Definitely doesn't care, but I don't believe knows. His lack-of-care for anybody else is so deep that he is really ignorant about many things that most of people know at least something about.

      "First term, Trump showed some desire to be liked,..."

      I don't think it was a desire to be liked. He was (a) worried about being impeached (b) thinking about the next elections. Neither of these issues bothers him now.

      1. Joseph Harbin

        Liked enough to get reelected. That's all he wanted.

        He did Op Warp Speed and got himself vaxxed pronto. He's pig-ignorant but he's not entirely as stupid as he plays for the crowd.

        1. Yehouda

          "He did Op Warp Speed..."

          That is too complimentary. More accurately he didn't put sticks in the wheels of the operation. The medical establishment always regarded vaccines as the best bet.

          1. aldoushickman

            Agreed. I've never heard anybody articulate one damn thing that Trump did to accelerate vaccine development; his biggest contribution was getting out of the way and letting the US Government and medical sector's enormously deep bench of fantastically well-trained and resourced talent do their jobs.

          2. Joseph Harbin

            I don't want to litigate what Trump did or didn't do. But it was a bragging point. For a while. And when it failed to play with the MAGA crowd later, it wasn't. And of course, the depth of his ignorance knows no bottom.

            But I think somewhere in that pea brain of his he has the sense to know that getting rid of vaccines will create greater risk of disease. That why his threat is potent. The MAGAs love it. Everyone else fears it.

            You may think I'm overestimating his knowledge and understanding. OTOH, you may be underestimating to his knowledge of the risks and overriding desire to create havoc anyway.

          3. memyselfandi

            It should always be remembered that the phase 3 trial process for both Moderna and Pfizer had begun before warp speed was ever conceived of. The original predictions of when a vaccine would be ready was December of 2021. And as late as mid october both Pfizer and Moderna were still predicting their vaccines would be ready January 2021. It only moved to mid december (i.e. 3 weeks earlier than the first predictions because of the unexpectedly high rate of infections in October and November. This resulted in sufficient infections in the control group to prove the vaccines were working.

  9. Heysus

    Word on the street is that Gaetz is just smoke and mirrors and false flag to hide Tulsi and his other ‘great’ picks. I see Don jr has left the trough for a real job. Who will run the home show…

  10. SeanT

    um, what is up with Jared Polis?

    “I’m excited by the news that the President-Elect will appoint @RobertKennedyJr to @HHSGov. He helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 and will help make America healthy again by shaking up HHS and FDA.

    “I hope he leans into personal choice on vaccines rather than bans (which I think are terrible, just like mandates) but what I’m most optimistic about is taking on big pharma and the corporate ag oligopoly to improve our health.

    “He will face strong special interest opposition on these, but I look forward to partnering with him to truly make America healthy again and I hope that we can finally make progress on these important issues.” – Colorado Gov. Jared Polis.

  11. pokeybob

    Is it too early to invest in Iron Lung manufacturing? Will other nations allow US citizens entry if they can't show basic vaccination? Gaetz will be confirmed. The "rule of law" is next.
    The climate catastrophe will be....

  12. Lon Becker

    Flynn seems the most likely. Trump has always seemed to resent that he was forced to drop in his first term just because he was representing a foreign country while advising Trump. That is the best way for him to show that he is not so constrained in his second term.

    Trump may not actively want to destroy the US, but it is hard to see what he would do differently if that was his goal. Blue states will have to protect themselves from the incompetence of the federal government. Red states are more likely to just suffer from, for example, having HHS led by somebody who thinks health care is a threat to people's health.

    1. memyselfandi

      Neither Gaetz nor RFK Jr will be confirmed by the Senate. They are simply sacrificial lambs to lower the standard necessary for Trump to get his other bad picks approved. Republican senators will see that Trump doesn't push for confirmation for either of them.

      1. FrankM

        I'm not buying the stalking horse argument. I'd like to think there are 4 Senators with enough spine to vote no, but I really doubt it.

        Trump has one note to play - dominance. These absurd nominations are his way of daring the Senate to oppose him. Once they've rolled over on this, he owns them.

  13. bouncing_b

    When you don’t think government does anything useful or positive, it doesn’t matter who you appoint.

    And if you want to destroy the “deep state”, incompetence is a plus. It has the benefit of driving out the most dedicated employees, which is the quickest and most effective way to break agencies. Rebuilding that reservoir of talent and commitment will be the work of decades.

    He is a ”fucking moron” as his first Secretary of State said, but he knows what he hates.

  14. Josef

    "Speaker Johnson says he’s going to request Ethics Committee not release Gaetz report." Is everyone else as shocked as I am?

Comments are closed.