WASHINGTON – In a normal presidential transition, the president-elect spends weeks carefully considering candidates for key positions in his Cabinet. Potential candidates undergo rigorous private vetting by trusted advisors and attorneys and then by the FBI. It's a laborious process that often takes the entire three months between the election and the inauguration.
But when did Donald Trump ever recognize the value of traditional norms?
He refused to give the FBI permission to begin standard background checks because he hoped he could forego them, or because he didn't trust the G-Men, or both.
Instead of waiting for the investigation, he announced most of his nominees within three weeks, apparently assuming that the tsunami would force the Senate to confirm them quickly.
He even suggested skipping the constitutionally required Senate confirmation step entirely and pushing to fill his Cabinet through the back door of “recess appointments.” He was apparently surprised when otherwise loyal Republican senators quietly refused to support this bold power grab.
His nominations set a new record for speed, if not quality.
The result was predictable. His most controversial nominees — who appeared to have been chosen with little to no private scrutiny — were followed by a parade of corpses pouring out of the closet. (Some of the skeletons had been strutting in public for years.)
The resulting media leaks were embarrassing. They made the second Trump administration look as chaotic as the first. But there were also significant political implications.
Most presidents use their transition and the honeymoon period that typically follows to build public support for their policies and programs. But Trump must now spend most of his time getting Republican senators to support his candidates.
Opinion polls show his public support has not grown since Election Day; he's still at the 50-50 favorability mark.
And it was all avoidable.
“When the Senate confirmation process is working properly, it's in the president's best interest — even though presidents are usually upset about it,” said Gregg Nunziata, a former Republican aide in the Senate who has handled dozens of nominations. “There is a protocol in place to deal with allegations confidentially and discreetly. If this protocol is not followed, interest (in a candidate’s background) will spread to other channels” – primarily the news media.
That's what's happening now. Scrutiny of Trump's Cabinet comes after the fact, mostly by the news media. The results weren't pretty.
Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman Trump nominated for attorney general, somehow thought he could get past the House Ethics Committee's evidence that he had paid a 17-year-old for sex. (The New York Times reported that Trump spontaneously chose Gaetz after meeting with Gaetz and Tesla founder Elon Musk aboard the president-elect's private jet.)
Eight days after the nomination was announced, CNN reported that Gaetz had a second illicit encounter with the girl. His nomination was completed by nightfall.
Next came Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host known for his opposition to women in combat roles and his war against “woke” generals. Trump suggested Hegseth as defense secretary, a job that requires managing nearly three million people and an $849 billion budget, even though he had never led anything remotely close to that.
At first, the National Guard veteran appeared to be headed toward confirmation as Republican senators joined in. Then a whistleblower told Trump aides that a woman had accused Hegseth of raping her at a Monterey hotel in 2017, and the story immediately went public. (Hegseth said the encounter was consensual.) Two days later, it emerged that Hegseth had paid the accuser in exchange for a nondisclosure agreement.
Skeletons continued their march. The New York Times reported that Hegseth's mother sent him an email berating him for abusing women. (She denied the news and condemned the newspaper for publishing it.) The New Yorker reported that Hegseth's former co-workers at a veterans organization said he was drunk and disorderly at company events. NBC quoted his former Fox News colleagues as saying he also drank there. (“I never had a drinking problem,” said Hegseth, who promised to stop drinking.)
Hegseth's support among Republican senators began to wane, and many said he needed to undergo a full FBI investigation.
Last week, Trump mused to his advisers that he might replace Hegseth with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But on Friday, the president-elect became defiant on social media: “Pete is a WINNER and there’s nothing we can do about that!”
So the Hegseth fight will continue – possibly with further political costs.
“His confirmation hearings will be completely brutal,” one Republican strategist warned. “There will be weeks of coverage on cable television, a medium that Trump cares about. How much guts does he have for this when he’s about to take office?”
Hegseth is not the only candidate facing difficulties. Some Republican senators have expressed concern about Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democrat who was named director of national intelligence. Kash Patel, his nominee for FBI director, will have to defend his goal of using law enforcement as a retaliatory weapon against political opponents. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. must explain his long-held belief that no vaccine is safe.
The consideration of these nominees has just begun.
Now Trump faces an unpleasant choice: long, painful and public battles to get controversial candidates into office, or quick decisions to let go of failing candidates, as he did with Gaetz.
It is not uncommon for new presidents to lose one or two Cabinet nominees.
If they fail quickly, the damage is rarely extensive. Who remembers that President Biden couldn't get confirmation of his first-term nominee for budget director, Neera Tanden, or that Trump couldn't confirm his first-term nominee for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder?
But Trump made a potentially irreparable mistake.
By putting forward so many candidates with obviously weak qualifications that go beyond political loyalty, he has turned their endorsements into a zero-sum test of his ability to force obedience from proud senators. Since there was only a 53-47 majority in the chamber, losing four votes could mean a defeat.
Even before his inauguration, the president-elect had failed in two respects. His failed proposal to lure candidates into office without Senate approval angered the lawmakers whose help he will need over the next four years.
And he may have thought he could give his opponents a head start by announcing his nominees early — another misjudgment. He simply gave the news media enough time to give them the scrutiny they deserved from the start.