Once Again, Donald Trump Misreads the Senate

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Inside Donald Trump’s hermetically sealed bubble of supporters, it’s become something of a given that the former and future President can simply bypass Congress and magically fill his Cabinet with the loyalists of his choosing. 

That might have been the case if Trump didn’t want Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth as Attorney General and Secretary of Defense, or Tulsi Gabbard overseeing the nation’s spy agencies—not to mention Robert F. Kennedy Jr. getting anywhere near the CDC. These are picks almost tailor-made to ensure the Constitution’s Advice and Consent clause remains on sturdy ground.

Even those who most need Trump to think they are worthy allies are setting the ground for a slow slide back to reality: “None of this is gonna’ be easy,” incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune said last week of Trump’s nominees, underscoring just how much of a slam-dunk this Cabinet is not. 

But if you want to really understand the posture key leaders are taking on Trump’s norm-busting nominees, listen carefully to what outgoing Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is telling allies in open session and, perhaps, in private counsel.

“Institutions worth preserving have to be defended. And this is the work which, by necessity, has occupied my focus during my time in Washington,” McConnell told a conservative think tank gala in his honor last week. “It’s been quite evident to me that a credible check on majority rule was worth preserving even when it didn’t serve my party’s immediate political interests. Because wild swings in policy with every transfer of power don’t serve the nation’s interest. For consequential legislation to endure, it should have to earn the support of a broad coalition.”

McConnell was speaking broadly at an American Enterprise Institute event about the Senate’s baked-in slow pace and its capacity to cool passions. But when asked point-blank, the outgoing Leader minced no words: “Each of these nominees needs to come before the Senate and go through the process and be vetted.”

To someone unversed in McConnell-ese, that answer might not have meant much, but it was a doozy for anyone who knows the way in which the Kentucky Republican wields his influence. By Sunday night, perhaps egged on by a since-deleted message on the platform formerly known as Twitter, the MAGAverse was going ballistic at the suggestion that the Upper Chamber was not on-board with giving Trump a blank check on his own Cabinet.

If Trump can’t get the support he needs from a Republican-controlled Senate to confirm his polarizing picks, that leaves only the prospect of recess appointments to ram them through. It’s an idea that’s led to some out-of-the-box fantasizing. (The House, too, would have to recess, although the roadmap to Speaker Mike Johnson managing to engineer a Senate recess has too many pitfalls to take seriously.)

Privately, Republicans are dubious that availing himself of widespread or even unilateral recess appointments is the best way for Trump to assemble his second-term team or to sustain any credibility for the Senate. But they also are bracing for an incoming White House unmoored with norms or traditions, with an eye toward vengeance, and a leader who sees any second-guessing as disloyalty meriting meted justice.

Yet at least on his Cabinet nominees, no one should expect Thune to abdicate his safeguarding role. After all, he’s long sat at McConnell’s side to study the particulars of the Senate history and tradition.

That’s why so many insiders see McConnell’s comments—those confirmed and those dubiously reported and then deleted from social media—as a cover for others to quietly defect. Like House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, McConnell expects to formally slide back into a rank-and-file position in his party but retain outsized influence on big questions of strategy, identity, and ambition—even as party colleagues may grumble about leaders who won’t actually give up power.

The Trump-McConnell animus is never going to evaporate and provides a useful foil for Thune to try to stay in Trump’s good graces as long as possible. When asked last week about the possible use of recess appointments, Thune was careful in his word choice and seemed plenty happy to let McConnell play the heavy.

“It’s an option,” he said of leaving the Senate on a break long enough for Trump to install his picks to serve roughly two years. But he was realistic about the math in his chat with Fox News.

“You have to have all Republicans vote to recess, as well. So the same Republicans … that might have a problem voting for somebody under regular order probably also has a problem voting to put the Senate into recess.”

Put plainly: that is really, really unlikely to happen. Someone like Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is not going to be ready to tank a Gaetz nomination by recorded vote but then send herself home for at least 10 days to give Trump a Supreme Court-guided window of a recessed legislature.

All of this is steeped in the experiences of the longest-serving party chief in Senate history, McConnell. He has hardly been circumspect about his skepticism toward Trump—or any President, really—relying on the procedural loophole to stack the deck while lawmakers are away, regardless of if the fuse-lighting tweet might have been made in haste or error.

Take, for instance, Trump’s 2018 demands that McConnell eliminate the procedural hurdle of 60 votes to move forward on most legislation. McConnell simply ignored the demand, drawing more ire from Trump without any real cost to his power in the Senate. And when Joe Biden tried for the same result in 2022, McConnell once again simply pretended the request didn’t land in the Capitol.

It’s expected to remain the same when Thune takes over in the next Congress. Most Republican lawmakers seemed to agree with that posture, one that served McConnell and his legacy well even if it left Trump and Biden alike frustrated.

Therein lies the power of Senate inertia. Unlike Trump, the Senate doesn’t swerve. It tends to hold steady, which is why—at least in an historical framework—Trump’s visions of unilateral appointments to the Cabinet don’t really hold up to scrutiny. Going against Trump is risky, but the bigger trouble may come from trying to recalibrate the Senate to accommodate potential Cabinet picks who thus far have drawn a mix of confusion, bemusement, and horror from the halls of the U.S. Capitol.

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