Anyone paying attention knew that Donald Trump’s White House would be full of flunkies, fanboys and, yes, men. But Trump’s choice of Matt Gaetz as attorney general is an incendiary stunt that still shocks — and is a huge slap in the face to women.

Gaetz, a 42-year-old congressman from Florida, is one of the most extreme members of the House of Representatives. He is also under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for sex trafficking, an investigation stemming from allegations that Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old girl.

The Justice Department also investigated the allegations, but that investigation was reportedly closed without charges — and Gaetz denies any wrongdoing.

But just over a year later, Gaetz was nominated to lead that same department.

The move also sends a strong signal that Trump is all about revenge against his perceived enemies — and that he is willing to appoint the dumbest, meanest, and most fiercely partisan people in America to get his way.

It’s not some series of troubling legal allegations that makes Gaetz an offensive choice for women in particular. The Florida rioter has made a series of viciously misogynistic comments, insulting women who advocate for women’s rights as fat and ugly, and even directing his anger at a teenage girl (who has subsequently raised $700,000 for abortion care).

He has pushed the MAGA strategy of marginalizing women voters, arguing that this helps secure the more important votes of men (“for every Karen we lose, there’s a Julio and a Jamal ready to sign up for the MAGA movement,” he told Newsmax , using a derogatory term for middle-aged white women and two stereotypical names for Latino and black men). After a leaked Supreme Court decision suggested the court would overturn Roe v. Wade and women protested for abortion rights, Gaetz tweeted: “How many of the women opposing Roe’s overturn are over-educated, under-loved millennials who, unfortunately, return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumblebee competitions?

In addition, Gaetz is a staunch opponent of abortion rights and is a co-sponsor of a bill that would ban abortion after six weeks. He has supported federal rule changes that would allow government funds to be diverted from clinics that provide contraception and other actual health care to faith-based organizations that offer Bible study. If he is attorney general, he will have the power to bring the full brunt of the federal government down on abortion providers, abortion rights activists, doctors and women seeking abortions.

For example, an Attorney General Gaetz could try to prosecute adults who help teenagers cross state lines for abortion care. He could target abortion funds and abortion care networks. He could focus on mailing abortion pills, or enforce the Comstock Act and criminalize those who mail or receive abortion pills. It seems likely that he also targets LGBTQ people, and transgender people in particular: he has opposed anti-discrimination laws that would protect LGBTQ people, and has mocked transgender people for simply existing.

He has also never worked as a government attorney or been a judge, making him a fairly unqualified choice for attorney general. His only proof seems to be that he is a die-hard Trump loyalist and that he is just as vindictive and vicious as the newly elected president.

By selecting Gaetz, Trump is also throwing overboard all election promises to female voters. The Donald Trump, who promised to be moderate on abortion and who in 2024 scaled back his most blatantly misogynistic language, barely saw the ink dry on the ballots before he made this particular decision and selected a man – in, it must be said a sea of ​​mostly male and almost entirely white cabinet candidates — who has spent his entire career puffing himself up while demeaning and insulting women.

His appointment is certainly about Trump’s desire to install a loyalist above all else. But it is also predictive of what is to come: an administration that directly attacks women and our rights, and that, at best, deems women so utterly unimportant that it gives the men who humiliate and despise us enormous power over our lives.