Is this what John Thune expected?
Photo: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg/Getty Images

As Republican members of the Senate met in Washington this week to nominate their leadership to lead the chamber next year, there were some preliminary rumblings about the need to get rid of establishment types and hire some fiery MAGA figures . The leading candidate was Florida Senator Rick Scott, who challenged front-runners John Thune and John Cornyn for the position vacated by longtime Trump foe Mitch McConnell.

As voting began Wednesday morning, it quickly became clear that the Scott Rebellion, backed by a constellation of online MAGA stars including Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, did not have enough strength to win. In the first round of voting, Scott finished third with 13 votes, behind Thune with 23 and Cornyn with 15. In the second round, Thune won the performance with 29-23 votes. He may want to demand a recount.

Even as Thune won his leadership election, the president-elect named an increasingly alarming list of unqualified and/or extremist nominees for Senate-confirmed positions. The first big howler was Fox News personality Pete Hesketh for Secretary of Defense. Then the director of national intelligence was introduced, Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat and fierce opponent of the bipartisan national security establishment. But the piece de resistance was Trump’s announcement that Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, the man who personally defended Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House of Representatives, would become America’s top law enforcement official as attorney general. Aside from his reputation as a bombshell in the House of Representatives, Gaetz has long been under investigation by the same Justice Department (and more recently by the House Ethics Committee) for possible sex trafficking charges, as ABC News noted when announcing this surprising message. lecture:

The investigation into Gaetz grew out of an investigation into the Florida congressman’s former friend, former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2022 after pleading guilty to multiple charges, including sex trafficking with a minor and introducing the minor to other ‘grown men’.

Since the Justice Department declined to charge Gaetz following its investigation, the Florida congressman has faced an ongoing investigation by the House Ethics Committee regarding the same allegations.

Although Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing, he remains under a cloud and is widely regarded as one of the worst Bad Boys of the MAGA movement. Aside from his long-standing alliance with Trump himself (and with other ultra-MAGA types like his colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene), Gaetz is also friends with Susie Wiles, the former Trump campaign honcho and new White House chief of staff.

So with the majority of Cabinet and other Senate confirmed positions yet to be filled (and with RFK Jr., among others, still eagerly awaiting their rewards), Trump is already sending a clown car full of problematic nominations toward Thune’s caucus . Will he bend the knee in gratitude for the newly elected president’s decision not to oust him in favor of Scott? Will he pick one or two of the worst nominees to block and hope that The Boss will settle for half-crazy? Or will he stand up for Senate independence in the face of a newly elected president who has dominated his party like a medieval warlord? This last possibility seems unlikely.

In this feverish atmosphere, the rumor is even circulating that Trump has a plan to bypass the Senate altogether:

As unlikely as it seems, this scenario would help explain why Trump suddenly began demanding recess appointment powers from would-be majority leaders this weekend.

Be that as it may, this is probably not what Thune bargained for during his long-planned ascent to the top position in the Senate. Perhaps he should now hope that his new powers do not prove to be a death blow in Trump’s race to the day-one dictatorship that the once and future president once “jokingly” promised.