ArcaMax

In just two weeks since being elected to return to the White House, Donald Trump has given those accused of suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome ample cause to feel, well, decidedly un-deranged. Regrettably if unsurprisingly, it's shaping up to be an epic time for "I-told-you-so's," as the president-elect's selections of those who will control the U.S. government triggered not just alarm bells but air raid sirens.

Trump's choice of now former Rep. Matt Gaetz to be attorney general of the United States, the nation's chief law enforcement officer, would be a joke were it funny, but no one was laughing, including congressional Republicans. It's been quite a fortnight, just as half of the country predicted.

Whether Tulsi Gabbard is playing for Vladimir Putin or for the United Sates is open to real question, but she will not only know but oversee all of America's most sensitive national security secrets as Trump's pick for director of National Intelligence. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who announced that his brain has been invaded by worms and advances positions that our medical and scientific communities uniformly regard as gravely dangerous to Americans' health, has been tapped to be -- that's right -- secretary of Health and Human Services. Peter Hegseth, who has virtually no experience running anything and admits that last year he paid off a woman who accused him of sexual assault (he denies wrongdoing), will be secretary of Defense, in charge of 3.4 million service members and civilians. But these folks are Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton compared to Gaetz.

Trump's abrupt appointment of Gaetz coincident with Gaetz's abrupt resignation from Congress last week seemed designed to prevent the release of an apparently damaging investigative report on Gaetz by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee, which had scheduled its release for the end of the week, detailing evidence that Gaetz had engaged in sexual trafficking, illegal drug use and campaign violations. Gaetz denies any impropriety, but he and the president-elect sure seemed eager to prevent the Senate, which will have to pass on Gaetz's nomination, from knowing the facts. That's because Gaetz's resignation from the House enables the Republican Chairman of the Ethics Committee to rule that, with Gaetz no longer in Congress, the report is no longer "germane."

While some Republicans made modest statements allowing how it might not be such a bad thing if Americans knew whether or not the next attorney general is sleazy or worse, the fix gives every appearance of being in. No doubt with more than a suggestion from Mar-a-Lago that what Americans don't know won't offend them, House Speaker Mike Johnson promptly announced that he would "strongly request" that the report on Gaetz not be released. Which is to say that Johnson has ordered that it not be.

But that's only the tip of Gaetz's iceberg. Trump's appointee as attorney general voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and embraced every drop of fraudulent election denial hogwash uttered by Trump over the last four years -- which, after all, is his principal qualification for the job. Here was Gaetz in March 2023, one of the paeans to democracy and the rule of law that have made him a hero to the alt-right: "We either get this government back on our side," thundered Gaetz, "or we defund and get rid of, abolish, the FBI, Center for Disease Control, Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco, Department of Justice -- every last one of them if they do not come to heel." When the Anti-Defamation League criticized Tucker Carlson for endorsing the Great Replacement Theory, a whack job conspiracy theory that Jews are orchestrating a takeover of America by people of color, Gaetz gleefully endorsed the theory. "@TuckerCarlson is CORRECT about Replacement Theory as he explains what is happening to America," Gaetz tweeted. "The ADL is a racist organization."

Trump's stalwarts are outraged that we've described him as an authoritarian, a strong man or worse.

Too bad. This is exactly what we were talking about.

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Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.

Copyright 2024 Creators Syndicate Inc.