The swift sinking of former Rep. Matt Gaetz as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general showed Thursday that Republicans are still capable of finding fault with Trump’s choices, and even pushing back.
Whether they will flex that muscle often — or again at all — is anyone’s guess.
Heading into a second White House term with both chambers of Congress in his party’s control, Trump nonetheless had to acknowledge defeat on Gaetz after Senate Republicans balked at the embattled MAGA firebrand becoming the nation’s top law enforcement official.
Both Trump and Gaetz, in separate statements, said Gaetz was withdrawing his name because he didn’t want to be a “distraction” for the Trump transition. Gaetz said there “is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle.”
Such a scuffle would probably have been stacked heavily against Gaetz, amid blockbuster leaks from an ethics investigation into allegations that Gaetz engaged in drug-fueled sex parties involving underage girls. Those reports increasingly raised alarm bells not just among Democratic detractors of Gaetz and the president-elect, but among Senate Republicans — who met his withdrawal with what appeared to be an intentionally understated shrug.
After Gaetz announced his withdrawal, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the decision was “appropriate.” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said he respected Gaetz’s decision and looked forward to confirming “qualified” nominees moving forward.
Ronna McDaniel, former Republican Party chair, told CNN that Gaetz’s nomination had appeared doomed to fail. “It was hard for some of these senators and others,” she said. “He trolled them. He went after them. He wasn’t going to win a congeniality contest.”
Bob Shrum, director of the Center for the Political Future at USC, said “we don’t know the final answer” yet as to whether Republican senators will continue to push back against Trump or other nominees. But clearly with Gaetz, Trump was given a clear — if “back channel” — message that the nomination was “not going to work.”
“Even though the Republicans want to be loyal to Trump,” Shrum said, “you can push them too far.”
Norman J. Ornstein, a left-leaning emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written extensively about the Senate’s dysfunction, said Senate Republicans scuttled Gaetz’s nomination because they anticipated more evidence of sexual misconduct by Gaetz coming out. But such a stand should hardly be viewed as an indicator of more robust pushback against Trump in the future, he said.
“This does not mean that the Senate Republicans will now give the appropriate scrutiny and judgment to other ethically challenged or utterly unqualified nominees,” he said — before naming several of Trump’s recent Cabinet picks, including Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and military veteran who Trump has nominated for Defense secretary and who is facing fresh questions about a 2017 allegation of sexual assault.
“They may reject one, but Trump knew that if he flooded the zone with deplorables, the Republican Senate would end up confirming most of them,” Ornstein said.
Democrats, meanwhile, cheered Gaetz’s withdraw. Sen.-elect Adam B. Schiff of California said Gaetz was a “terrible choice for the nation’s top law enforcement agency,” a position that requires someone devoted to the rule of law, “not the person of the president or partisan agenda.”
Some also suggested it should not prevent the release of the House ethics report about Gaetz — the same argument they made after Gaetz’s decision to resign from the House following Trump’s nominating him last week.
What will happen next — not just for Gaetz but for Trump’s efforts to stand up a government of nontraditional appointees — is unclear.
Gaetz, who was previously the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation, could still get a post in the Trump administration that does not require Senate confirmation, an action presidents of both parties have taken to retain loyalists who are too controversial to win jobs that require approval.
Stephen Miller, the author of some of Trump’s harshest immigration enforcement tactics, including family separation during his first term, was chosen last week as his deputy chief of staff. Neera Tanden, who directs President Biden’s domestic policy council, has held a number of jobs in the administration after withdrawing from a job to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
Some in Washington on Thursday wondered, too, if Gaetz might try to reclaim his seat in the House, to which he had just won reelection. Florida state Rep. Joel Rudman, a Republican who announced this week that he would run for Gaetz’s House seat, said on X on Thursday that if Gaetz “wants to come back to Congress, I will support him 100%.”
More broadly, Gaetz’s withdrawal marks an important moment in defining the limits of Trump’s power in a second term with a more pliant Congress and Supreme Court than during his first term — when his takeover of the Republican Party was still in its early stages.
Gaetz was the most objectionable among a group of nominees who would have faced immediate disqualification during an earlier era. The ethics investigation — details of which have been leaking out in a steady drip since his nomination last week — was only the most salacious aspect of his dossier. He also lacked significant management and criminal law experience and had repeated numerous false conspiracy theories.
Still, the factor that may have been most harmful were his relationships with fellow Republican lawmakers, who regarded him as an empty showboat willing to hurt the party to gain attention. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the Bakersfield Republican, has made his ire for Gaetz clear since Gaetz played a central role in McCarthy’s ouster last year. And many members of the Senate in recent days said they wanted to know more about his ethics investigation before casting votes, an objective that ensured a messy confirmation hearing.
In a post illustrating the depth of contempt for Gaetz in GOP congressional circles, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) posted a photo of McCarthy lifting a wooden gavel, with the caption, “Justice has been served.”
By withdrawing, Gaetz may clear an easier path for whomever Trump nominates next, given that many senators are wary of bucking the president-elect, who has threatened retaliation in his second term while some allies have warned of primary challenges for even the slightest sign of disloyalty.
His withdrawal also raises uncomfortable questions for other Trump nominees who face questions in the Senate, including Hegseth.
Late Wednesday, officials in Monterey released a police report from 2017 outlining a woman’s claim that Hegseth took her phone, blocked her from leaving his hotel room and sexually assaulted her. Hegseth’s attorneys have acknowledged he paid the woman as part of a settlement.
Hegseth has vociferously denied the allegations, saying Thursday that “the matter was fully investigated, and I was completely cleared,” and some Republicans appeared to be rallying to his side.
After meeting with Hegseth, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, described Hegseth Thursday as “a strong nominee.”
“Pete pledged that the Pentagon will focus on strength and hard power — not the current administration’s woke political agenda,” Barrasso said in a statement. “National security nominations have a history of quick confirmations in the Senate. I look forward to Pete’s hearing and a vote on the floor in January.”
Influential right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, whose nonprofit Turning Point Action largely ran Trump’s ground game in swing states such as Arizona and Wisconsin, had been rallying his millions of social media followers to support Gaetz’s nomination.
On Thursday, Kirk seemed to offer those senators who blocked it a warning — saying his group would start a lobbying initiative in support of Trump’s remaining Cabinet nominees, holding rallies in conservative states where senators might need extra “encouragement” to approve them.
“We will bring this road show, on the ground by the way, potentially to Rapid City, South Dakota; to Sioux Falls, South Dakota; to Boise, Idaho; to Fayetteville, Arkansas; to Topeka, Kansas; to Tupelo, Mississippi,” Kirk said. “You picking up what I’m throwing down?”
Only if senators expressed unwavering public support for Trump’s picks, he said, would he consider standing down.
Times staff writers Hailey Branson-Potts and Jenny Jarvie contributed to this report.