Feminista Fridays: The Predator Administration

(Matt Gaetz 2008 Mug Shot)

My favorite new hobby, aside from dealing with the perpetual pit that has been lodged in my stomach since November 5th, is surfing the internet to see reactions from Trump voters to his cabinet nominations.

The refrain goes something like this, whether about Matt Gaetz’s appointment to lead the Justice Department or Tulsi Gabbard being placed in charge of our intelligence services or Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his brain worm being nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services:

“We didn’t vote for this!”

Oh, my friends… yes, you did. You were voting exactly for this, because Trump was not lying during the campaign to get your vote. You voted for him because he is so authentic, because he always levels with you about the important stuff.

Not the migrants eating cats and dogs, which he knew and you knew and he knew that you knew was complete and utter bullshit.

But the really important stuff, like what he was going to do to this country, that part was always out there. Like using the Justice Department to go after his enemies. Like an America First policy, which you might have thought was about putting the United States first but really meant putting a Putin-loving, Assad apologist in charge of our national security. Like Making America Healthy Again, which you might have thought was about making our food and drugs safer but really meant putting a bear-dumping, brain-worm addled former heroin addict in charge of our children’s health. Make Smallpox Great Again has a certain ring to it.

“But I voted to bring down the price of eggs!” You might say.

Yep. But along with those cheaper eggs, which incidentally are getting cheaper even now, you are getting a side of the cantina scene from Star Wars. Or, should I say, you are getting some promises about cheaper eggs with a main course of crazy, administered to you by sexual predators — adjudicated, admitted and alleged.

Trump knows this, of course, which is why the cadence of his cabinet roll outs has been so telling. He demanded that all three men running to replace Mitch McConnell as majority leader pledge to allow recess appointments of his nominees. Under normal circumstances, a president who controls the senate with votes to spare would have no problem confirming his nominees, so the demand for recess appointments means that even Trump understands how insane some of his cabinet picks are. But with Trump, of course, the insanity is a feature, not a bug.

The cadence to the rollout has been interesting to see.

First, Trump announced the normies: Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, Elise Stefanik as the ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz as his National Security Advisor.

Senators heaved a sigh of relief.

Then, Trump went with the ridiculous: Pete Hegseth to head up the Department of Defense. This was starting to push it a little. Hegseth has zero managerial experience, some questionable views on women and the January 6th insurrection and some interesting personal issues (including, as of last night, a serious allegation of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017, which is, incidentally, when he transformed from a typical Bush Neo-con to a MAGA zealot).

Republican Senators could tut-tut a little but if January 6th and sexual assault are suddenly disqualifying, hell — what have they all been doing supporting an insurrectionist and adjudicated sexual assailant as president?

Then, Trump went for the dangerous: Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. This created a mass eruption in DC, where Gaetz is the most hated man in the House by both sides of the aisle. Gaetz also has some interesting habits, like crushing Viagra and mixing it with Red Bull so he can — and I quote — “go all night.” Plus, he also has a serious allegation of sexual misconduct, but this time, the assault includes the underage trafficking of a minor girl.

Republican Senators could express outrage but, as Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-MAGA) warned anyone who opposed Trump’s picks, Trump could “get you out of the Senate too.”

Then, Trump went for the threatening: Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. Gabbard love blaming the United States for genocides committed by Vladimir Putin and Bashar Al-Assad. You see, it’s our fault that Russian soldiers have invaded neighboring countries, mass murdered civilians, raped women and kidnapped Ukrainian children into Russia, where they are indoctrinated to hate their parents and their homeland. It is also our fault that Assad has gassed, murdered and ordered the mass rape of his own people for over a decade. According to Gabbard, none of this would have happened if the United States had minded its own business and just let Syria and Russian do its own thing. After all, history shows that Russia has always been a peaceful country, intent on living in harmony with its neighbors. Just ask Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. With that history, Gabbard might choose to reflect on why Russia’s own neighbors have been clamoring to get into NATO.

Remember, Trump can unilaterally grant anyone security clearance, even against the wishes of the intelligence community, as he did for Jared Kushner in his first term. Gabbard can have it whenever he wants her to have it, irrespective of what anyone else thinks makes sense. Let that sink in, on behalf of our own citizens and especially on behalf of any foreign intelligence assets we currently have burrowed in the Kremlin or other hostile capitols.

Senators stayed largely silent on this one because Gabbard is not as personally loathed as Gaetz. Plus, no one wants to revisit the “Russian Hoax” from times past, which is neither a hoax nor a thing of the past, but something Trump is very sensitive about.

Then, Trump went for the batshit crazy: Robert F. Kennedy as the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Yes, yes, Kennedy is going to make our food supply healthier (yay!), lower obesity (fantastic!) and eradicate the use of pesticides from our food supply (good luck). If that were the end of it, we could probably ignore the brain worm, the slaughtered bear he dumped in the middle of Central Park and the beheaded whale he rigged up to the roof of his family car.

But Kennedy has said that his first act of business would be to tell the Institutes of Health to pause drug development and research into infectious diseases for eight years. He also wants to make all vaccines optional while using his perch to rail about how they cause autism and other ills. It’s not a stretch to understand that the head of HHS casting doubts on the safety and efficacy of vaccination will lead to their decline — and to the decline of herd immunity, which threatens us all, especially children and the immunocompromised.

Kennedy also believes that the CIA, among others, has long had a plan to use the COVID pandemic to bring about global totalitarianism. He thinks that some Americans forced to get COVID vaccines had it tougher than Anne Frank and that 5G towers are installed “to harvest our data and control our behavior.” And just in case trivializing the Holocaust was not enough, Kennedy also had this to say about the pandemic: “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and — and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and — and Chinese.” He also postulated that AIDS was not caused by HIV but is a result of gay men using “poppers,” an inhalant that briefly stimulates euphoria. Oh, and people may be transgender because they drink contaminated water.

Like Trump, Hegseth and Gaetz, Kennedy was also accused of sexual assault by at least one woman — his own’s children’s babysitter. His second wife committed suicide after finding his little black book, where he ranked women based on how far he got with them sexually. He lamented in a diary that, really, it was the women’s fault for seducing him — or getting him “mugged,” as he would coin succumbing to his “lust demons.”

I have no idea what the rest of this week will bring (Kash Patel at the FBI? Looks probable! Hegseth as the stalking horse for Mike Flynn? Can’t rule it out!) but it will be interesting to see what the incoming senate majority does. Oh! And did I mention that Trump has decided to keep shattering norms by forgoing FBI background checks and using “private companies” to vet his candidates? What do you want to bet that these private companies, which do not have the FBI’s intelligence resources, find nothing wrong even with someone like Gaetz, Hegseth and Gabbard, who are ripe for kompromat?

There are the usual suspects who may tank one or two of these nominations, including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska; Thom Thillis of North Carolina, which just elected two statewide Democrats; and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is up in two years but may feel that Louisiana’s open primary could insulate him from MAGA retribution. Susan Collins of Maine, who is also up in 2026, could do the right thing but occasionally has a penchant for lulling herself to sleep by assuring herself that the offending nominee has “learned his lesson” and won’t do it again. You know, kind of like her explanation for why she would not convict Trump after his first impeachment or vote down Brett Kavanaugh, who assured her that he would not overturn Roe v. Wade before she confirmed him to the Supreme Court.

And then there is Mitch McConnell, whose preferred successor as senate majority leader, John Thune, handily defeated McConnell’s arch nemesis Rick Scott. McConnell is in the twilight of his career and is widely expected not to seek re-election in 2026. For the entirety of Trump’s first term, he tut-tutted in private but did Trump’s bidding in public. He refused to join other Republican senators in convicting Trump after the insurrection of January 6, which would have ended Trump’s ability to run for another term. He stood by as Trump shattered every norm, repeatedly insulted McConnell’s own wife in the most racist terms and otherwise destroyed the Republican Party to which McConnell dedicated his whole career. It is no surprise that the two loathe each other.

Yet, for McConnell, winning seats and confirming conservative judges and justices to the bench was paramount and he knew that he could do neither without Trump. So he went along — and along, and along.

Finally, in the end of his career, with others carrying the load to lead senate Republicans, will he do the right thing? Will McConnell, an institutionalist who is one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters, vote to confirm Gabbard? Will McConnell, a polio survivor, vote to confirm Kennedy?

For years, McConnell has been Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. Maybe this will be the time he does the right thing, we hope — until he doesn’t. But maybe this time is different (said Charlie Brown). Hope springs eternal.

More likely, all this hand wringing and anonymous leaking among senators and aides presages the typical Republican Stages of Grief, which always begin with shock and denial and inevitably end with acceptance. Maybe they will throw a hostage on the tarmac — Gaetz or perhaps Gabbard — to prove their independence but it is more than possible that they will abdicate their constitutional duties to allow recess appointments in order to wash their hands of the whole debacle. Or, barring recess appointments, they can point to the pristine background checks that Trump’s hand-selected “private company” vetting will provide to say that their concerns are allayed.

Buckle up, because if that happens and someone like Tulsi Gabbard gets control of our nation’s secrets, Putin will have essentially won this long Cold War without firing a shot. And that’s no exaggeration.

Will the price of cheaper eggs be worth it when our military is degraded, our Justice Department becomes the Department of Personal Vendettas, our allies stop sharing intelligence information with us for fear that our own leaders cannot be trusted and measles, polio and other pandemics run rampant?

For people who can’t afford groceries today, the answer is that it very well might be. And I don’t blame them. It’s difficult to think about other things when you can’t put food on the table.

But if you don’t think this is what you voted for, you were not paying attention. As the late Colin Powell once told George Bush prior to the invasion of Iraq, “You break it, you own it.” And we know how that turned out.

Speaking of Women

After Trump’s first election, there was a mass protest movement, with women wearing pink pussy hats and marching from coast to coast. Other women rented busses to protest Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination and otherwise engaged in a lot of public demonstrations of grief and rage.

This time, I would advise women to do things differently. The virtue signaling is not as important as the virtuous work. And that work needs to happen at the kitchen table, not just on the Ellipse in Washington.

Do not — I really beg you — write off your Trump-voting neighbor. Talk to her and explain what is happening. An important study out of Northeastern University shows that most people who voted for Trump do not consume the news, but from friends and family.

From the study:

“Americans ages 18 to 24 and those with less formal education lean more on personal networks; while those 65 and older and those with higher education and income favor the news media, according to the survey.”

That dovetails nicely with how this election broke down. More affluent, educated voters voted overwhelmingly for Harris. The rest have little traditional news consumption and voted for Trump. That's why, when I recently Tweeted that Trump wanted Hegseth around to unleash the military on “the enemy from within,” I got a whole host of outraged responses from his supporters demanding that I show evidence that Trump would even consider something so ridiculous.

This was not hard to prove. The Associated Press literally ran the following headline right before the election: “Trump suggests he’ll use the military on ‘the enemy from within’ the U.S. if he’s reelected.”

Why was this such a shock to so many Trump supporters, even though newspapers and many networks spoke about this ad nauseam? Because so many Trump’s supporters don’t read or watch the news. It doesn’t make them mendacious. They just consume information differently.

One of the most infuriating things I have heard since Trump’s win has been liberal cable news pundits tell you to shun your Trump-voting friends and family because they voted against your values. Of course they did! Because while you were marching and talking about the “patriarchy,” you were forgetting to speak to them about what another Trump administration would mean for them and for you. When you were at a rally far away shouting about “The Patriarchy,” they either didn’t hear it or did not understand what you were talking about.

A better use of time would have been to sit down with them. Not lecture them, mind you. Not scold them that they are morons. But use your personal credibility and relationships to explain exactly what Trump was advocating and how he was going to impact you and them directly. Unhappy about the price of groceries? Here is what Trump’s tariffs will do to that pint of strawberries that you may not realize are grown in Mexico. Unhappy about mass deportation? That’s abuela who may get deported. Yes, yes, she has been living here for decades and is a productive member of society, but she never actually applied for a green card — and so, according to Trump, she has to go.

What’s that? Trump is only deporting the criminals and the migrants who crossed the Rio Grande and hopped the border illegally? Your Chinese cousin came here to visit his sister and overstayed his visa? Gone. Trump wants to start deporting 1 million undocumented migrants in the first year and go from there. Why don’t you think the waiter at your favorite diner may be among them?

As for the people of Dearborn, Michigan, who voted to put Trump back in the White House? I get it. The Palestinians have been screwed by everyone, from the Israel to Egypt to Jordan to Iran to the United States to their own leaders, who repeatedly opted for war instead of peace. But perhaps someone in Dearborn with a shred of common sense should have said this to his friends prior to November 5: “You are not punishing Harris by voting for Trump. Whatever she does next, she will be just fine. Trump, however, may send a Christian nationalist evangelical named Mike Huckabee as his ambassador to Israel, who thinks that Israel has a ‘title deed’ to the West Bank (or, as he calls it, ‘Judea and Samaria’) and who believes that Palestinian identity is an invention. You wanted ‘from the river to the sea?’ You’ll get it if you vote for Trump — but not necessarily in the ways you think.”

So march if you must. Our rights are at stake and the future of our country is in serious peril. But please, before you book that trip to Washington and camp out on the National Mall: knock on your neighbor’s door and have a cup of coffee. Tell her what you are thinking and how that will affect her.

Rachel Maddow is not coming to save you. Neither is the New York Times editorial board or the Daily. We have to save ourselves — one convert at a time.