President-elect Donald Trump has already shot his second administration in the foot — specifically in its authoritarian Achilles heel, a political columnist contends.
Salon writer Amanda Marcotte argued Friday that Trump’s decision to demand former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) become his attorney general was an attempt to strong-arm Republican allies he’ll need as president — and whose patience has already begun to run thin.
“It’s the Achilles heel of authoritarians throughout time,” Marcotte wrote. “They relish conflict, but conflict drives away potential allies, sows chaos and can often grind the gears of their agenda.”
Marcotte argued Trump’s choice of Gaetz was a direct shot at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Republican allies who expressed disdain at the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
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She admitted she took a dark joy in watching Trump do it.
“Trump has worked to humiliate them by nominating the worst possible people for high-level federal appointments,” wrote Marcotte.
“It is a great pleasure to watch all the Republican leaders who repeatedly intervened to protect Donald Trump from himself now reap their reward: a big ol’ contempt loogie in their eyes.”
But Marcotte struck a more serious tone when she discussed the main reason critics fear Gaetz is the wrong man for the job — namely accusations, which he denies, that he sexually assaulted a woman who had not reached the age of consent.
She cited an ABC News report confirming a woman testified to the House Ethics Committee that Gaetz ‘had sex with her when she was 17 years old.'”
Marcotte argued Trump’s demand that Gaetz head the Justice Department amounted to the latest loyalty test in a series of challenges with increasing stakes.
“Trump’s loyalty tests of congressional Republicans have escalated quickly from ‘walk naked through the streets’ levels to ‘eat puke’ levels,” she wrote.
Marcotte argued Trump’s strongman tactics were to blame for the few accomplishments of his first term and predicted this doubling-down would foretell a similar lack of action in his second.
“Trump will have sown resentment throughout the GOP before he even gets inaugurated,” Marcotte concluded. “Trump’s sociopathic tactics — while alarmingly charming to a lot of voters — tend to backfire in the art of the deal on Capitol Hill. Since all he wants to do is bad, it’s good if his biggest obstacle to his agenda is his own terrible instincts.”