President-elect Donald Trump tried to ram through a bunch of "flagrantly unqualified" loyalists without serious scrutiny — and it ended up blowing up in his face, wrote Doyle McManus for the Los Angeles Times on Monday.
Trump's controversial pick to run the Department of Justice, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), flamed out amid questions about an ethics investigation into allegations he was involved in child sex trafficking and multiple other nominees are getting intense scrutiny before the confirmation process has started.
Even members of Trump's own party have voiced frustration that the nomination process has become a disaster.
One of the big problems, wrote McManus, was when Trump resisted allowing the traditional FBI background checks on nominees, "because he hoped to do without them or because he didn’t trust the G-men, or both."
He reportedly had wanted to wait at least until he could install another far-right loyalist, Kash Patel, in charge of the FBI before moving ahead with them, but ultimately backed off amid criticism.
That controversy, though, added new fuel to the fire against Trump's other less qualified picks, with new sexual assault allegations coming out against Pentagon pick Pete Hegseth, and criticism mounting against the Director of National Intelligence nomination for former Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a conspiracy theorist who has spoken favorably of the just-deposed Syrian dictator.
"His most controversial nominees — picked apparently with little or no private vetting — were followed by a parade of skeletons streaming out of closets," wrote McManus. "The ensuing media leaks were embarrassing. They made the second Trump administration look just as chaotic as the first.
"But there were substantive political effects as well."
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For instance, Trump has been so busy "jawboning GOP senators to back his nominees" that he can't do a media tour to tout up his presidential agenda, something most president-elects kick off with to build public support.
Ultimately, McManus concluded, "His abortive proposal to finagle nominees into office without Senate confirmation alienated legislators whose help he will need over the next four years. And he may have thought he could get the jump on his opponents by announcing his nominees early — yet another miscalculation. He merely gave the news media enough time to subject them to the scrutiny they deserved from the beginning."