U.S. Senate demands hearings

President-elect Donald Trump announced most of his nominees in three weeks — apparently imagining that the tsunami would force the Senate to confirm them quickly. He's wrong.

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Columnists

December 10, 2024 - 4:40 PM

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth continues to meet with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill as new allegations of alcohol abuse have emerged. So far, Republican Senators are not giving Trump a pass on his nominees, insisting they will keep their role of holding confirmation hearings. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images/TNS)

WASHINGTON — In a normal presidential transition, the president-elect spends weeks carefully considering candidates for the most important jobs in his Cabinet. Potential nominees undergo rigorous private vetting by trusted aides and lawyers, then by the FBI. It’s a painstaking process that often consumes the entire three months between the election and the inauguration.

But when has Donald Trump ever recognized any value in traditional norms?

He refused to authorize the FBI to begin its customary background checks, because he hoped to do without them or because he didn’t trust the G-men, or both.

Instead of waiting for investigations, he announced most of his nominees in three weeks — apparently imagining that the tsunami would force the Senate to confirm them quickly.

He even proposed skipping the constitutionally required step of Senate confirmation entirely, pushing to fill his Cabinet through the back door of “recess appointments.” He was apparently surprised when otherwise loyal GOP senators quietly refused to roll over for that audacious power grab.

His nominations set a new record for speed, if not for quality.

The outcome was predictable. His most controversial nominees — picked apparently with little or no private vetting — were followed by a parade of skeletons streaming out of closets. (Some of the skeletons had been strutting in public for years.)

The ensuing media leaks were embarrassing. They made the second Trump administration look just as chaotic as the first. But there were substantive political effects as well.

Most presidents use their transition, and the honeymoon period that normally follows, to build public support for their policies and programs. But Trump must now spend most of his time jawboning GOP senators to back his nominees.

Opinion polls show that his support in the public hasn’t grown since election day; he’s still stuck at the 50-50 mark in favorability.

And it was all avoidable.

“When the Senate confirmation process works properly, it’s in the best interest of the president — even though presidents are usually annoyed by it,” said Gregg Nunziata, a former Senate Republican aide who handled dozens of nominations. “There’s an existing protocol to handle allegations confidently and discreetly. If that protocol isn’t followed, the interest [in a nominee’s background] is going to spill out into other channels” — mainly the news media.

That’s what’s happening now. The vetting of Trump’s Cabinet is being done after the fact, mostly by the news media. The results have not been pretty.

Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman Trump proposed for attorney general, somehow thought he could skate past the House Ethics Committee’s evidence that he had paid a 17-year-old for sex. (The New York Times reported that Trump chose Gaetz impulsively after a meeting with Gaetz and Tesla founder Elon Musk aboard the president-elect’s private jet.)

Eight days after the nomination was announced, CNN reported that Gaetz had a second illicit encounter with the girl. His nomination was finished by nightfall.

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