The Emperor's New Cabinet: Postscript

 

Margaret Rutherford as Miss Jane Marple, via Novel Suspects.

The details of how Matt Gaetz got the attorney general offer have been coming out like the facts in an Agatha Christie puzzle—I mean literally who was heard whispering with whom and where they were sitting on the plane—particularly in a Politico report (I first heard about it from Jay Kuo) citing their reporter Meridith McGraw, and it's stimulating the narrativium for me: I'm pretty sure I know what happened, and it's not at all what you might think, or what Tim Snyder has suggested, but something much more farcical, though perhaps equally chilling.

The background is that Republican operative Susie Wiles, co-chair of the Trump campaign and soon-to-be chief of staff, has been playing adult-in-the-room, keeping the boss on a bit of a leash and trying to keep him sensible, and had furnished him with a nice respectable shortlist of attorney general candidates, but he didn't like them. He wants his Roy Cohn, and the guys on the list seemed to have a different concept of the job; as Marc Caputo reports it, they

looked at AG as if they were applying for a judicial appointment. They talked about their vaunted legal theories and constitutional bullshit....

The Gaetz-for-AG plan came together [Wednesday], just hours before it was announced, Meridith tells us. It was hatched aboard Trump’s airplane en route to Washington, on which Gaetz was a passenger. A Trump official revealed more details to Playbook late last night: BORIS EPSHTEYN played a central role in the development, lobbying Trump to choose Gaetz while incoming White House chief of staff SUSIE WILES was in a different, adjacent room on the plane, apparently unaware.

So the setup is the two thugs, Epshteyn and Gaetz, confabulating, and Gaetz in a state of high anxiety, with the House Ethics Committee report coming out in 48 hours, and you know it's going to be really bad, and one of them comes up with a brilliant idea for a scheme: if they can get Trump to solve his attorney general problem by naming Gaetz, Gaetz will have an excuse for resigning his House seat and stopping the release of the report. They can do it right now, while Wiles isn't looking.

So Epshteyn walks over to where Trump is sitting and starts pitching him to give Gaetz the job: Gaetz wouldn't be giving him constitutional bullshit, he'd be hounding your enemies, sir, just like you wanted. In Caputo's words, he'd "go over there and start cuttin' fuckin' heads." 

And of course Trump loves it—he wouldn't have thought of it himself, but he doesn't care that Gaetz is completely unqualified (he'd already named the equally unqualified Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard to their important national security positions), and he doesn't care that Gaetz is a coke-snorting child fucker who told former Rep., now Senator Markwayne Mullin he would "crush Viagra and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night" (though I'm guessing Trump—and Wiles—did not realize how much trouble Gaetz was in with the ethics committee). Gaetz is his kind of guy, a guy who understands his own hopes and aspirations, and once he's made up his mind there's nothing Wiles can do about it.

In other words, the fact that Gaetz is under investigation for sex trafficking is the fundamental reason that he is slated to become attorney general. It's happening because of the investigation and wouldn't have happened otherwise, though none of the characters but him and Epshteyn realize this. 

And I still have hopes the plan may fall through, because they weren't going to able to hide the crucial element, but the main thing I'm wondering about is how pervasive this kind of thing is in Trumpworld; how much it's pure thug behavior, rather than the big political issues we try to focus our minds on, that drives what happens there.

The Emperor's New Cabinet

Artist oddly unnamed. Via Red Cheeks Factory Shop.

So I guess you've heard that Health and Human Services Secretary-Designate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to devote himself to the crusade against unhealthy snacks, which sounds more like a First Lady gig than a cabinet position, but what do I know? I certainly agree that unhealthy snacks are unhealthy, choosing to go with the science on that as well as on vaccines, in contrast to whatever it is he's doing.

At first I thought it was funny that he appeared to be going with the liberal side on this issue, since we're all down on Doritos and Mountain Dew and up on water and organic granola, but I figured out that he's actually being a conservative in the Wilhoitian sense: he wants freedom for the nice suburban ladies who are the backbone of the anti-vaccine movement, to have their kids die of measles or polio if that's how they need to express themselves, and compulsion for the poor recipients of SNAP benefits, who won't be allowed to buy Doritos or Mountain Dew other than with folding money, even if they live in food deserts where kale isn't available. It's the same old ingroup/outgroup stuff.

Idly wondering, speaking of the cabinet choices, if Trump isn't actually trying to get himself impeached. It wasn't Kennedy's nomination for HHS that led me there but Gaetz's, for attorney general. At first, having a pretty clear idea how much almost everybody in both Houses of Congress hates Gaetz, Republicans even more than Democrats, I figured Trump was just saying "Fuck you" to all of them, and enjoying the opportunity to make them grovel.

Teenager in the Room

Image via CityWatchLA.

Pushing the snooze button solves nothing, because these same losers will try to pull the same shit in 45 days. I voted yes tonight to keep the government open, but I’m done normalizing this dysfunction. This is not entertainment, it’s governance. 

—Senator John Fetterman

“There has to be an adult in the room,” the speaker said. He suggested that the group of 15 to 20 GOP holdouts who regularly sabotaged Republican-backed votes act like political children.

Actually, apparently unknown to McCarthy, there were dozens and dozens of adults in the room. Whether he actually decided to join them and be an adult himself is up for debate, but I'm not buying it. I think Fetterman's analogy fits better. McCarthy is the teenager in the room, grousing: "Mom, it's not even healthy to get up this early. You're stunting my growth! I had to do a whole impeachment thingy already this week!"

Now the babies in the room have fired him, and there's no Speaker in the House at all. I'm finding that hilarious, as apparently is John Boehner, who made it out of  a similar pickle with a good deal more dignity, though dignity was never his own strong suit:

NeverKevers

Byron Donalds swearing in in 2018, via Wikipedia.

A note or two on that guy, Byron Donalds, to whom the House clowns turned today as their Speaker candidate-of-the-day. It's not clear what they have in mind except for the obvious part, that they like putting up a Black candidate against a Black democratic candidate (Herschel Walker against Raphael Warnock) because this proves they're not racists, but it's possible there's more.

One thing is that he's from Florida, representing Naples, which makes him a member of a contingent of NeverKevers, along with Reps. Gaetz of Fort Walton Beach and Anna Paulina Luna of St. Petersburg, as of yesterday's third ballot and through today's fourth, fifth. and sixth. Another thing is that all three of them have something else in common, as Florida Republicans—close connections with Governor Ron DeSantis. Gaetz was a valuable support to DeSantis—Gaetz and his pal Joel Greenberg—in the 2018 gubernatorial campaign

One former campaign adviser said Gaetz was on every conference call with advance teams “and generally was often just a key voice in directing the campaign what to do.”

“Man, I can’t tell you how much by the end of the election he was the campaign,” said another former DeSantis adviser who worked on the race. “By the time we were in heavy general election mode, DeSantis was not doing anything without Gaetz being in on it.”

and one of the things Gaetz did was to introduce Byron Donalds, who got the job of playing Andrew Gillum in DeSantis's debate preparation, which is not necessarily a small thing.

Another thing Donalds has done, which has got him a bit of a reputation for arrogance, was when he challenged the Trumpiest of the Trumpy Elise Stefanik over the position Stefanik had conquered from Liz Cheney, chair of the Republican House Caucus, even though he was still in his freshman term. He lost, of course, but he got himself noticed.

Donalds also has a truly weird little connection with DeSantis having to do with campaign finance laws, which he did an end run around in an interesting way in 2020, when he was a member of the Florida House of Representatives running for Congress:

In 2019, Donalds formed a state political committee called Friends of Byron Donalds and started raising money. Early in 2020, Donalds resigned as chairman of the committee and three days later filed to run for an open US House seat in southwest Florida.

Around that time, a super PAC called Trusted Conservatives registered with the FEC. When Friends of Byron Donalds closed its doors in June 2020, it sent its remaining reserves, about $107,000, to Trusted Conservatives. For the next three months, Trusted Conservatives spent most of that money on ads supporting Donalds or tearing into his Republican primary challengers. Donalds ultimately won the race by just 777 votes and was elected to Congress that November.

By rights, this should have been illegal on a couple of counts: you're not allowed to transfer money raised for a state election to a federal election, and a candidate isn't allowed to coordinate with the decisions made by a super PAC. But when a watchdog complaint on this went to the Federal Elections Commission, the FEC, helplessly divided 3-3, let it go, and Donalds got away with it; and this apparently made an impression on DeSantis, who himself is engaged in a federal run for the presidency with a gigantic war chest of money raised for the Florida governorship

The Florida governor is shattering national fundraising records as he seeks a second term, attracting gobs of money from Republican donors eyeing DeSantis as a potential presidential candidate in 2024. At the end of May, DeSantis was sitting on $111 million – more money than any candidate has ever needed to win an election in the Sunshine State. More donations come in almost every day.

And scuttlebutt says DeSantis was pretty impressed by Donalds's ingenious trick.

Which doesn't prove anything, obviously, but if you add in that other thing, about the other 2024 presidential candidate who lives in Florida, when he was passing out pardons to allies in 2024, but failed to offer one to Gaetz over the latter's complicated relationship with a number of very young women and a Venmo account and other misbehavior, even though Gaetz asked very politely, then it starts to add up a little, as a move against McCarthy, McCarthy being Trump's chosen candidate (however reluctantly Trump may have chosen him): Gaetz. Donalds, and Luna are organizing a little DeSantis caucus in the House, proposing to devote it to the DeSantis campaign.

Is this what Gaetz is organizing on the Hill? An anti-Trump campaign of the unpardoned (includes NeverKevers Scott Perry, Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, Jim Jordan, and I think Chip Roy)? I hope so. As ever, I'm rooting for injuries, but this is a way of understanding why it's so much fun.

For the Record: Gaetz's Rebellion

 

Scuffle outside the Springfield, Massachusetts courthouse, 1786; 19th-century wood engraving, Granger Academic.

From here https://t.co/dccKX08vue

— Freewheeling Passion (@Yastreblyansky) May 28, 2021

https://t.co/qc2kxI5gC2 pic.twitter.com/s7qO4tfQRr

— Freewheeling Passion (@Yastreblyansky) May 28, 2021

Florida man: "How quickly can I blow it all on pussy?"

The Third Man. If you know what I mean.

Headline from the former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, not his former friend Matt Gaetz, who probably might not express himself so coarsely

I have this idea Gaetz will get away with it—been looking at the plea agreement for Joel Greenberg and seeing plenty of opportunities for Gaetz to call himself Greenberg's victim instead of a partner in crime, and don't doubt he's dishonest and disloyal enough to take full advantage of them.

His name isn't mentioned anywhere in the document, but it's clear he's involved in just two of the six crimes to which Greenberg has pleaded guilty (out of I think 33 total charges in the original indictments: the sex trafficking involving a minor, in which he bonked some of the young women Greenberg was in the habit of sourcing through the Sugar Babies app in return for money he paid Greenberg with Venmo and Greenberg in turn paid them, sometimes asking them to take MDMA with him (and paying them extra when they did); and the use of fake IDs Greenberg manufactured in his tax collector's office, which in Gaetz's case seems to have been sort of legitimate, in that he wanted ID for his real self rather than the stolen identities Greenberg created out of abandoned driver's licenses for his own use and that of the girls:

The Gaetz of Hell shall not prevail

 

So, per this Daily Beast story. sometime in late 2020 and early 2021 the former tax collector of Seminole County, Florida, Mr. Joel Greenberg, in a series of text messages exchanged on the Signal app with presidential ratfucker Roger Stone detailing some of the crimes he'd committed, including crimes committed in concert with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), for he would like to purchase a presidential pardon, for $250,000, if Mr. Stone was agreeable, in unmarked bills (well, in Bitcoin):

Karmic Relief

Sadly, armies of YouTube fans have been unable to locate the channel, which seems likely to have been deleted.

"Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" is gonna be lit on Saturday with stories of hubris brought low.

For one thing, 53-year-old Italian Marc Feren Claude Biart, a made member of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, wanted in Italy for cocaine smuggling to the Netherlands, was living his best life in retirement with a fake identity in the Dominican Republic, but done in, they say, by his "love for Italian cuisine", or really by the temptations of the Internet, where he and his wife started a YouTube channel for cooking videos. He didn't show his face in the videos, but failed to hide his tattoos, which cooking-video fan Interpol agents recognized, and they busted him, along with 354 other defendants in an enormous 'Ndrangheta sweep. (NPR, but I'd like the record to show I got the story from Frankfurter Allgemeine Twitter.)

More Power to Dr. Krugman!

Pensacola, May 2014, via Washington Post.

Don't know exactly what the program is in this polemic in the Atlantic by Sebastian Mallaby disguised as a review of a new collection of Dr. Krugman's newspaper journalism, Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future. But it's kind of peculiar, a review that can't make up its mind, lurching between extravagant praise and angry blame—as in, Krugman "writes amusingly and fluently" but has a "furious and bitter voice". Serially or in parallel? He's a "dazzling academic" but also an "undiscriminating guillotine".

His combination of analytic brilliance and linguistic facility recalls Milton Friedman or John Maynard Keynes. But Krugman can also sound like a cross between a bloodthirsty Robespierre and a rebarbative GIF. Week after week, he shakes his fist righteously at Republicans and anyone who defends them: You’re shilling for the fat cats. You’re shilling for the fat cats. Over and over. Again and again.

Oh, I get it: Dr. K. is uncivil. He's ought to be a perfect member of the neutral party, the team of the scholarly, with his Nobel and his urbanity. How could he demean themselves by taking some kind of political "side" as if one were better than the other?

Unlike that charming Milton Friedman (whom Krugman always mentions with extravagant respect), whose famous 1970 New York Times Magazine article on businessmen with the gall to talk about the "social responsibility" of corporations says