AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Senate Republicans on Wednesday chose calm, soft-spoken John Thune (R-SD) as the next majority leader, even as the “conservative” House faction gave up on running an opponent to contest Mike Johnson’s continued speakership: The path is smoothing out wonderfully for President-elect Donald Trump to truly usher in the promised “Golden Age.”
Then Trump announced Matt Gaetz as his pick for attorney general.
We understand why the once-and-future prez wants a complete loyalist in that job: The Justice Department played a key role in hamstringing Trump four years ago with its horrific bungling of the utterly-made-up Russiagate nonsense.
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But Gaetz has made a lot of personal enemies in his few years in Congress; more knives will be out for him than were for Sen. John Tower — the last Cabinet nominee rejected by the Senate, back in 1989.
Any Senate confirmation hearing will be a tawdry spectacle, featuring the sex-trafficking and drugs claims that have swirled around Gaetz. Not a good look.
Trump likes to keep things interesting, and this move will definitely do that.
Trump’s other picks have been solid: Marco Rubio for State completes an absolutely top-notch, outside-the-box national-security team that puts China, Russia, Iran and other dark powers on notice that the days of appeasement are over.
This includes Director of National Intelligence-designate Tulsi Gabbard: The intelligence community has become a rancid hotbed of political game-playing; with Gabbard, Trump sends the strongest possible signal that it must and will end.
She, along with other key nominees, also makes good on Trump’s iron vow to end all the covert “fighting disinformation” government-censorship operations.
Similarly, tapping 20-year Army veteran Pete Hegseth for Defense means real change is on the way at the Pentagon.
He’ll do wonders for morale and put an end to the slide into wokeness, but like other Trump picks he’ll need strong support to tackle the vast bureaucracy.
Yet, with help from the Musk-Ramaswamy “Department of Government Efficiency” team, he could end the corrupt and wasteful military-procurement system set up back in the 1960s by Robert McNamara (a “genius” to rival Wile E. Coyote).
Along with New York’s own Lee Zeldin and Elise Stefanik, Trump is picking a lot of very smart people, fresh faces with the experience to make a huge difference all across the federal government.
Speaker Johnson is also still new to the leadership game (but succeeding to near-universal acclaim). And Thune offers a fresh start in the Senate, even as he and his fellow senators do their jobs in curbing some of the inevitable excessive impulses of the new administration.
A golden age may be tough to pull off, but this is definitely the dawn of a promising new era in Washington.