'Beyond-worse-case' Trump scenario is 'now upon us': columnist

The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait expected President-elect Donald Trump's second term to be bad -- but even he found himself in awe at the picks that Trump has made for his cabinet.

In his latest piece, Chait marvels at the figures that Trump wants to bring into his cabinet, including Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, scandal-plagued former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (R-HI).

Chait contends that the notion that Trump would nominate these people for cabinet jobs "would have sounded like a beyond-worst-case scenario cooked up to scare moderates out of voting for Trump," before adding, "And yet that scenario is now upon us."

Chait notes that Senate Republicans have made encouraging noises about rejecting the nomination of Gaetz as attorney general, but he's skeptical that they will actually defy his will after having failed to do so many times in the past.

ALSO READ: 'Infowars has been taken down!' Alex Jones freaks out on air as his website is confiscated

"At every step along the way, Republican elites have assumed that they could stop Trump later," argues Chait. "But when the decisive moment arrived, they discovered that the cost of confrontation had gotten higher, not lower. Opening a breach with a man whom the base had come to admire, and then worship, would imperil their own ambitions, not just Trump’s."

This kind of political calculus is something that has played out again and again over the years, Chait concludes.

"Old-guard Republicans appear to be in the middle stage of a familiar Trump-era progression," he explains. "It begins He’d never do it before moving on to We’ll stop him if he tries and finally settling on There was nothing we could have done anyway. As they advance through these stages, they will cede Trump more and more power, which will only vindicate their ultimate fatalism. How could they ever have stood up to somebody so strong?"