They Want to Blow It All Up

Plus: The amazing vanishing Mike Johnson.

Unlike the authors of Politico’s Playbook, your Morning Shots correspondents care deeply for the wellbeing of you, our readers. We’re not just going to ambush you with lurid details as you’re innocently pouring your second cup of coffee. When we quote today’s Playbook, we’re going to warn you in advance to steel your stomach: 

An attorney representing two women who testified to both federal and House Ethics investigators about [Matt] Gaetz’s alleged misdeeds is coming forward today with new details about what his clients told investigators. . . . His clients, he said, told investigators they attended more than five and as many as 10 “sex parties” with Gaetz between the summer of 2017 and the end of 2018, during his first term in the House. At those parties, they testified, there were ‘group sex situations’ and illegal drugs were present.

One of Leppard’s clients told investigators she witnessed Gaetz “having sex with her friend,” who was underage at the time, against what she recalled as some sort of game table, according to Leppard.

Anyway, Happy Monday.

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(Composite by Hannah Yoest / Photos via Getty Images.)

Trump’s Anti-Government

by William Kristol

What is one to make of Donald Trump’s startling nominations of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Health and Human Services secretary, Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general, Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, and Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense?

In an excellent piece this weekend at the UnPopulist, Robert Tracinski helps to explain their significance.

Tracinski points out that each of these nominees is radically unfit for office. But he doesn’t just discuss them individually. He considers their significance as a group, as a kind of statement by Trump about the government he will soon head.

He is constructing a kind of anti-government . . . Every appointee is selected as a deliberate negation, even a mockery, of the function of government he or she will be in charge of. . . . These individuals are not merely unqualified for their offices. They are disqualified. They are anti-qualified—the antithesis of what the offices call for.

Tracinski emphasizes that it’s not just that Trump doesn’t care about good government as traditionally understood. He is trying to actively undermine good government, to negate that very standard. Why?

This sets the theme for Trump’s second administration, in which he is clearly setting out to break our whole constitutional order. . . . It is a mistake to think that authoritarian leaders want to strengthen government. To the contrary, they want to weaken government’s institutions. They want an unstructured government, one without rules and procedures, so as to leave fewer impediments to their whims. That is the point of Trump’s anti-government: to provide more scope for the exercise of arbitrary and capricious power.

This is the method in Trump’s cabinet-appointment madness. And this is why it’s so important that these nominees be rejected by the Senate.

Tracinski compares Trump to the emperor Caligula, who famously showed his contempt for the Roman Senate, and for any nominal checks on his own power, by proposing to appoint his favorite horse, Incitatus, as a consul.

Incitatus never actually trotted into the office of the consulate, as Caligula was removed before he could go through with his plan. But it didn’t matter much. It was too late to restore republican government in Rome, with anything like the rule of law and accountability and checks and balances.

We still have a republic. Senators can exercise their advice and consent power. They can refuse to confirm Gabbard, Gaetz, Hegseth, and Kennedy—today’s stalking horses for Trump’s wish to accumulate an unprecedented degree of personalized, centralized, and arbitrary power.

Indeed, Trump is not yet president, let alone emperor. So this is a particularly good time to remind him, and the American people, that we have no emperor here, not even of a Trumpian dime-store variety. After all, if Trump isn’t checked now, what are the prospects of checking him later, when he will have succeeded in this first effort at intimidation, and when he will have all the key powers of the executive branch at his disposal?

As the political scientist Jeffrey Tulis recently pointed out, the “process of normalization” of Trump and his authoritarian spirit is very far along. That normalization over the past few years is in fact what made possible his recent electoral victory. But to yield now to these appointments would be a normalization not just of Trump as a wannabe authoritarian but as an actual, governing authoritarian.

“If Donald Trump says, ‘jump three feet high and scratch your head,’ we all jump three feet high and scratch our head,” Texas Republican Rep Troy Nehls said approvingly last week. Nehls is a strong supporter of the effort to rename Washington’s Dulles International Airport the Donald J. Trump International Airport. If it comes to that, it probably would be better just to cut to the chase and rename it the Emperor Caligula International Airport, with a giant statue of Incitatus out front—and Trump triumphantly riding it, of course.

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Mike Johnson, Bit Player

by Andrew Egger

Last Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson briefly considered abstaining from the fracas over whether the House Ethics Committee should release its report into alleged sexual misconduct by former Rep. Matt Gaetz. “The speaker is not involved with what happens in Ethics,” Johnson said. “Lots of important reasons for that.”

Apparently, those important reasons were more malleable than he’d originally thought. By Friday, Johnson had changed his mind.

“I’m going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report, because that is not the way we do things in the House, and I think that would be a terrible precedent to set,” Johnson told reporters. “If someone is no longer a member of Congress, we are not in the business of investigating and publishing reports about people who are not part of this institution.”

In a Fox News Sunday interview yesterday, Johnson added that he was afraid releasing the Gaetz report—which they’ve been working on for years and which Gaetz transparently resigned from Congress in the hopes of avoiding—would “open a Pandora’s box.” Soon feral packs of Ethics Committee members will be roaming the streets of D.C., opening up investigations into anybody!

As faux-principled stands go, this is the House equivalent of Mitch McConnell’s 2021 argument that, while Donald Trump’s January 6th antics hadn’t been great, the Senate simply couldn’t convict an ex-president. If you think Johnson would have similar scruples if the committee were sitting on information potentially damaging to one of Trump’s enemies, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

This patented brand of “doing whatever Trump wants while working hard to spin it as the dictates of my conscience” has gotten Johnson pretty far in life. Hell, after the vice president, he’s next in line for the presidency.

That role has also helped Trump tremendously, too. The skittish normies of the MAGA coalition cling to guys like Johnson as if they were a security blanket. Johnson’s mouthing of words like “tradition” and “precedent” allows them to go on believing, in the face of all evidence, that there’s still more to their party than transactionalism and raw power, even as Johnson himself engages in transactionalism for the pursuit of raw power.

As Trump prepares his triumphal return to power, though, Johnson is already much diminished. When the strongman arrives, the supposed normie proceduralist must meekly get out of the way.

Over the weekend, Johnson tagged along with Team Trump to a UFC match. A bunch of deeply funny pictures followed: Johnson leaning awkwardly into frame as Trump sat down to lunch with RFK Jr., Don Jr., and Elon Musk; Johnson bobbing at the heels of Trump and UFC CEO Dana White as they walked into the arena; Johnson craning his neck over Kid Rock’s shoulder to make it into an elevator selfie. The speaker of the House is just happy to be included. He knows who’s really in charge.

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Quick Hits 

WINTER IS COMING: Russia on Sunday launched its most ferocious missile barrage against Ukraine in months, dealing heavy damage to Ukraine’s energy grid as the country gears up for yet another hard winter at war. Both Russian and Ukrainian officials confirmed that the target of the attacks was Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Also on Sunday, President Biden greenlit the most aggressive Ukrainian counter attacks to date, authorizing Ukraine to use long-range weapons provided by the United States for certain targeted strikes inside Russia. The Republican reaction came in split-screen. Top Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee applauded the authorization, while criticizing Biden for waiting this long to allow these strikes. Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr. blasted the news: “The Military Industrial Complex seems to want to make sure they get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives. Gotta lock in those $Trillions. Life be damned!!! Imbeciles!” 

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NOT GOING GRACIOUSLY: The Associated Press may have called Pennsylvania’s Senate race for Republican Dave McCormick, but Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, down by 0.2 percent with the race headed for an automatic recount, hasn’t conceded. That’s his right, even if it would be unprecedented for a recount to affect a race with tens of thousands of votes separating the candidates.

But Casey is going further, asking counties to count undated or misdated mail-in ballots, which are invalid under state law. The Democrat-majority Pennsylvania Supreme Court reaffirmed this year that such ballots were not to be counted in this election. But election officials in some counties have forged ahead with counting them anyway. “I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country,” said Bucks County commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, a Democrat. “People violate laws anytime they want. So for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention. There’s nothing more important than counting votes.”

Election denial has become a way of life for Republicans over the last four years—although they didn’t need to reach for it much this cycle, where they won pretty much everywhere. Casey isn’t denying the results. But what he and folks like  Ellis-Marseglia are doing is harming the public’s confidence in our elections in order to achieve nakedly partisan ends. In the long run, that’s playing a game nobody wins.

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