Senate Republicans won the first round of their power struggle with Trump as President-elect Trump’s attorney general nominee, Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration.
Gaetz posted on X: “It is clear that my confirmation is unfairly disrupting the important work of the Trump/Vance transition. There is no time to waste with an unnecessarily prolonged Washington brawl. Therefore, I am withdrawing my name from consideration for the position of Attorney General. Trump’s DOJ must be ready from day one.”
trump The crew is trying to soft sell a withdrawal as four Republican senators oppose Gaetz. The reality is that more than half of Republican senators opposed Gaetz, and even Trump’s threats were not enough to sway them.
Trump learned a sobering, hard lesson about the limits of his power. Donald Trump will never be able to choose his own cabinet or become a dictator. Because neither Republican nor Democratic senators are willing to give up power. Trump needs the Senate to get the job done, which still requires 60 votes to pass the bill.
The Gaetz nomination was a test to see if Trump could bully the Senate into giving up power to him. The Senate did not accept it. President Trump has two other candidates for Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Health and Human Services who will face difficult confirmation battles.
RFK Jr. could be the next Trump nominee, but the collapse of the Gaetz nomination shows that Trump is not going to waltz in or become a dictator and that he still has some constitutional principles left.
