Whiskey Tango Foxtrot 🤡 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🤮 🤢 

💩 Show Chronicles:  All things considered, yesterday began smoothly.  Biden held his nose and did what few of us could or would have, he politely welcomed Trump to the White House.  Senate Republicans held a closed door, secret ballot vote to select their new leader.  The candidates were South Dakota’s John Thune, Texas’ John Cornyn, and Florida’s Rick Scott who last year sent retiring leader Mitch McConnell into panic and denial mode with his bullet point plan to sunset Medicare, Medicaid and anything else voters care about.  Despite being Trump and co-president Elon Musk’s choice and having the vocal support of MAGA Senators Bill Hagerty, Rand Paul, Ron Johson, Tommy Tuberville and Marco Rubio, Scott failed to get enough votes to even make it past the first of what turned out to be two rounds of voting. After the second round John Thune, Mitch McConnell’s designated heir apparent, emerged the winner. In the before times, Democrats being happy about McConnell notching a strategic victory would have been unheard of, but given the choices, seeing Thune win the leadership role is a relief.  He’s a traditionalist and during a brief post vote meet-up with the press, he said that his plans include holding confirmation hearings for Trump’s appointees with the caveat that he’d reconsider if Democrats behaved unreasonably or if he finds a horse’s head in his bed.  Okay, he didn’t say that last 🐴 part, but you know that he was thinking it.

Devil’s Gaetz:  Smooth lasted only a fraction of a Scaramucci, because as the day wore on, Trump announced a few more of his appointees,  First, he announced that his choice for Director of National Intelligence is former Democratic Congresswoman. turned MAGA Trumper Tulsi Gabbard.  Gabbard. a veteran, who Hillary Clinton has repeatedly called the “favorite of the Russians,” has no intelligence creds but probably is Putin’s choice for the position. Her appointment is terrifying, but it turned out to be only the tip of the day’s horrors as Trump’s next major announcement was the nomination of Florida’s Matt Gaetz to serve as Attorney General. While Senators, on both sides of the aisle, were digesting Gabbard’s selection, Trump dropped the Gaetz megaton bomb.  The choice of Gaetz is horrible on so many levels.  First of all, he’s the subject, or was until yesterday, of a House ethics investigation for his drug use and for having sex with at least one minor.  Second, though he has a legal degree, he has relatively little experience practicing law and is woefully unqualified for the job which includes managing 115,000 people though that probably is the point, because as the recently released from jail Steve Bannon put it, Gaetz is being hired to be Trump’s blowtorch, his mission is to destroy the DOJ as we know it, firing and/or chasing away as many career attorneys as possible.  Remember how William Barr surrounded himself with experienced real attorneys and actually pretended to do his job a lot of the time, Gaetz, the disrupter who threw the House into disarray when he ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy won’t even pretend, he’ll proudly brag about setting DOJ on fire because Trump promised retribution and that would be retribution.  Unlike the other House members who Trump has nominated for cabinet positions, Gaetz, has already resigned from the House likely because a scathing ethics report detailing his sex and drug offenses was due to be released this Friday. Since the House Ethics Committee can only investigate and report on current members of Congress, Gaetz’s early resignation means that the report won’t be released. That said there’s a nonzero chance that someone will leak it, or at least that’s the hope of a lot of Republican Senators who’d rather not be put in the position of voting on the Gaetz nomination because to the extent that Trump can’t figure out a way to circumvent the “regular” hearing process with a recess appointment, they’re going to be put in the position of having to vote for or against a woefully unqualified, sex offender appointed by another sex offender. No doubt most of them are so scared of Trump because 🐴 🐴 and his MAGA enforcers that they will vote for Gaetz, the hope is that there will be enough outliers with guts willing to do otherwise.  Feel like 🤮, go ahead, you are not alone. And while you are praying at the porcelain throne 🚽, don’t forget about Trump’s other truly awful pick, Defense Secretary nominee, Fox news bro Pete Hegseth who just last week said that it was okay for Putin to want Ukraine back because after all it was his to begin with.  So far, we haven’t heard anything about Trump’s health care picks, but at least one possibility, RFK Jr, is frothing at the mouth, increasingly frustrated that his name hasn’t been called, at least so far. Mike Bloomberg isn’t frothing but he has emailed and posted a series of missives about RFK’s dire inadequacies.  Those missives, complement Trump for project Warp Speed COVID vaccine delivery because nothing works better with Trump than effusive compliments.    

The State of Play:  As expected the Republicans have won the House.  Their exact majority remains uncertain.  According to CBS, Republicans have won 218 seats, Democrats 211, nine remain up in the air. Three of the Republican seats, the Gaetz seat plus the ones currently held by Elise Stefanik and Michael Waltz, will remain vacant until they are filled following as yet unscheduled special elections.  While all three seats will probably remain in Republican hands, at least for the immediate future Mike Johnson, who is expected to hold on to his Speakership, will have a hard time getting anything done. That may be by design, because it’s also being reported that Elon Musk, the shadow president who may or may not be wearing out his welcome at Mar a Lago, is looking for ways to usurp the House’s budgeting powers so that his as yet unwritten DOGE/Fire Everyone Plan can be implemented by fiat. On the Senate front, as expected, the Pennsylvania race between incumbent Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Dave McCormick is headed to a recount.  McCormick remains in the lead, but his lead has fallen a smidge below the recount threshold.  Moreover, somewhere around 80,000 ballots have yet to be counted.

#BringThemAllHomeNow