Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were put on notice on Friday by a highly respected conservative that even the thought of appointing acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to the post should make them sick.
Washington Post columnist George Will argued Friday that Republicans owe no favors to President Donald Trump as he tries to foist his compromised former personal lawyer on the country.
“There are many sufficient reasons to oppose confirming Todd Blanche as attorney general," wrote Will. "Presidents generally are owed some deference in selecting Cabinet members, but ‘some’ implies limits, lest the Senate’s advice-and-consent duty be drained of responsibility. And not all presidents are equally owed. Today’s president is owed little, given his contempt for the unwritten rules of civility that can lubricate a congenial society’s governance.”
Having dismissed the president, Will set about making his case against Blanche by citing multiple Trump appointees who were passed through the divided Senate only to be found lacking in all ways for their jobs.
Will first called out former Attorney General Pam Bondi — ousted over her handling of the Epstein files — and a slew of others, as incompetents.
“If at most four Republican senators had, in committee or floor votes, behaved as independently as the Founders thought senators would," Will wrote, "Bondi, Kristi Noem, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others would not have been confirmed to offices far above their competences."
Then he honed in on Blanche
“Blanche was acting attorney general when the Justice Department took seriously Seashellgate,” he wrote.
“Blanche, who serves at the pleasure of the president, signed a memo pledging that the IRS is ‘Forever Barred’ from ‘examinations’ of Trump, certain members of his family, the Trump Organization and ‘related or affiliated individuals.’ This ‘negotiated’ — try not to snicker — settlement between the president and the executive branch he heads exemplifies the administration’s sludge of self-dealing.”
Noting that Blanche received an “embarrassingly backhanded endorsement” from former attorney general William Barr who claimed Trump’s latest appointee “will run the department as effectively as anyone could under President Trump,” Will asked, “Is this sufficient reassurance for Republican senators? Or will, at last, a nominee trigger their gag reflexes?”