President Donald Trump’s failed push to install Ed Martin as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia is a telling sign that his second-term power streak on Capitol Hill is beginning to slip, Mother Jones’ Dan Friedman wrote Thursday.
Martin’s nomination collapsed after Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) publicly opposed it, citing Martin’s support for January 6 rioters. The backlash forced Trump to back down and pick Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, a MAGA favorite, to fill Martin's role on an interim basis.
But the move signaled more than just a personnel shift, according to Friedman’s analysis. The “derailed nomination shows Donald Trump’s power is waning,” he said.
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“With Martin, Trump tried to force GOP senators to confirm an unqualified bumbler and extremist just because he is Trump’s ‘favorite US Attorney,’” Friedman told readers. “That didn’t work. That makes Martin’s derailed nomination a defeat for Trump too.”
While Martin, who Friedman called an “unqualified extremist,” may be a minor figure in the MAGAverse, “his defeat is a significant sign that Trump’s power to make the government accept his lies is ebbing,” he concluded.
“The rejection of Martin’s nomination is also a sign of the limits of Trump’s effort to rewrite the history of January 6 and the lies that led to it,” Friedman added, noting that Martin was a staunch 2020 election denier who was deeply involved in the Stop the Steal organizing.