What did Donald Trump do today?

He pushed Charles Kushner as the U.S. Ambassador to France.

In a post to his private social media network today, Trump said that Charles Kushner was a "tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker" and the founder of "one of the largest & most successful privately held Real Estate firms in the Nation." 

He also acknowledged that Charles is the father of Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law. Jared, who could not pass a security clearance check, was nevertheless put in charge of Middle East policy during Trump's first term. He then received a $2 billion investment from the Saudi Arabian royal family while Trump was still in office.

What Trump did not mention was that Charles Kushner is a convicted felon who served time in prison after being convicted of making illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. (Perhaps not coincidentally, these are all things that Trump himself is known to have done.)

As part of that scheme, Kushner hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, and arranged to record a sexual encounter between the two. He then sent the tape to his own sister in an effort to intimidate her into not testifying against him. Chris Christie, then a U.S. Attorney and since a prominent Republican politician, called it "one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes" he had ever prosecuted.

Trump also did not mention that he pardoned Kushner for that "loathsome, disgusting crime" on the way out the door of his first term.

Why does this matter?

• It's insulting and counterproductive to make a felon the ambassador to a major military ally just because he's the crony of the president.

• People who commit "loathsome, disgusting crimes" shouldn't be given offices of public trust.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He actually boosted the economy, after a fashion.

Today is "Black Friday," traditionally a very busy shopping day, and a bellwether for the strength of the retail economy. It is expected to be a good one, with inflation and unemployment both low, and most other economic indicators in the green since the pandemic economy ended.

But there is one factor driving sales today that is very unusual: shoppers are listening to retailers and economic experts, and reporting that they are buying big-ticket items now, rather than risk seeing their prices driven up if Trump makes good on his promise to reignite a trade war with the United States' three largest trading partners.

This is a rational fear: consumers are effectively saying that they understand that tariffs are taxes that are ultimately paid by consumers in the country that imposes them, and that they would prefer not to pay them if possible. This is a concept that has been famously difficult for Trump to grasp.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Trump tonight to discuss the situation. He appears to be playing the "good cop," with Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum and Trudeau's own opposition being more blunt. Trudeau, who has been in office since 2015, has developed something of a sideline in helping to "manage" Trump, sometimes at the behest of Trump's own staff.

Why does this matter?

• Americans should not have to save themselves from the costs of their own president's incompetence.

• Americans should not have to rely on foreign leaders to save them, either.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got celebrated by two of his favorite people.

Trump celebrated Thanksgiving as he does many holidays—by sarcastically mocking Americans who didn't vote for him. But he also was on the receiving end of well-wishes from two extremely influential men in his life: Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk.

Putin, speaking today to Russian media, called him a "real man" and "intelligent." Trump's fascination with Putin, whose regime has interfered on his behalf in each of the last three presidential elections, is widely known. As Russia's intelligence head put it:

The election campaign is over. To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.

Putin is a former KGB spymaster who has enjoyed forcing Trump into bizarrely submissive demonstrations of loyalty, such as the 2018 press conference in Helsinki, Finland, where he got Trump to say that he trusted Putin's word over that of the U.S. intelligence community—something that horrified virtually every Republican who was asked about it. Trump is also financially reliant on Putin to prop up his ramshackle business empire.

Trump also received holiday greetings from Elon Musk, whose financial backing has proved equally important, and who has been even less restrained about flaunting his influence over Trump since the election. (Trump staffers infuriated by Musk's imposition on the transition have accused him of trying to become "co-president.") Musk sat himself at the head table with Trump and members of his family for Thanksgiving dinner.

Why does this matter?

• It's bad that the President of the United States can be this easily manipulated.

• Russia is a hostile foreign power and does not have the United States' best interests at heart.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He found a public health official who will never contradict him.

Today, Trump announced that he would nominate Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health. The NIH is the country's biomedical and public health research agency. It plays a major role in setting public health policy, communicating about health issues to the public, and responding to disease outbreaks.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump was repeatedly infuriated by his own public health officials' unwillingness to simply agree that the pandemic was no threat, or that it would go away on its own, or—once Americans had already started dying by the tens of thousands—that miracle cures were somehow already available. 

In particular, Anthony Fauci—at the time, Director of the NIAID and so a key part of any disease outbreak response—seemed to enrage Trump with his unwillingness to let COVID misinformation go unchallenged, even if it had just come directly from Trump himself. As this site noted in May of 2020:

Fauci has been forced to publicly contradict Trump a number of times. In response, Trump has tried to limit Fauci's public appearances outside of the White House briefings. He's also sidelined Fauci from certain briefings where reporters were likely to ask questions where Fauci's answers would embarrass him. For example, Fauci was kept away from most of the briefings in the immediate aftermath of the debacle where Trump wondered aloud if injecting household disinfectants might cure the virus. Trump has even jumped in front of the White House podium to physically prevent Fauci from answering questions that would require him to contradict Trump.

As a result, Trump encouraged his political supporters to attack Fauci and other public health officials even while they were still fighting the outbreak—and, in the case of unpopular but necessary control measures like school closures, while the Trump administration was still following their advice.

Bhattacharya was one of a number of figures who rose to prominence as "COVID skeptics," gaining traction within the Trump political movement through a willingness to attack Fauci and other public health officials. His résumé is scant—he's never practiced as a physician and he has no experience managing even a small organization, much less an agency with a $48 billion budget—but the fact that he was saying along with Trump even in the first stages of the outbreak that no real response was necessary seems to have endeared him.

In particular, Bhattacharya said in March 2020 that he expected COVID would only kill 20,000 Americans—comparable to a flu season—and that the much grimmer forecasts were off by "orders of magnitude." He then embarked on a years-long campaign to discredit Fauci and other federal public health officials. His preferred strategy, which Trump endorsed too, was "herd immunity"—in essence, allowing the disease to run completely unchecked until enough of the survivors had immunity that it could spread no further.

COVID has killed 1.2 million Americans.

Why does this matter?

• The job of public health officials is to protect the public health, not the president's feelings.

• Any job where American lives are at stake is too important to give to an unqualified political crony.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got his bluff called.

Yesterday, Trump threatened to impose 25% across-the-board tariffs on Mexico and Canada, the United States' two largest trading partners.

Today, both countries promised to retaliate.

Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico's president, said in a statement that

For every tariff, there will be a response in kind, until we put at risk our shared enterprises. Yes, shared. For instance, among Mexico’s main exporters to the United States are General Motors, Stellantis, and Ford Motor Company, which arrived in Mexico 80 years ago. Why impose a tariff that would jeopardize them? Such a measure would be unacceptable and would lead to inflation and job losses in both the United States and Mexico.

Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, took a slightly more conciliatory tone, but ended up in the same place. He pointed out that European markets could take up the slack while noting that 60% of the United States' crude oil imports come from Canada. Ironically, it was Canada's more Trump-like politicians who pointed out that retaliation was inevitable and the resulting trade war would once again be disastrous. "It's like a family member stabbing you right in the heart," said Ontario premier Doug Ford.

According to the extremely conservative Tax Foundation, Trump's last attempt at a trade war caused an additional $80 billion in taxes to be paid by Americans, while reducing total tax revenue collected, increasing the budget deficit. The resulting economic chaos shuttered farms and businesses, putting as many as 250,000 Americans permanently out of work.

The United States does over $1.3 trillion in trade each year with Mexico and Canada.

Why does this matter?

• It's stupid to double down on a catastrophic failure.

• Other countries—even allies and trading partners—will not try to save the United States from the consequences of its own president's actions.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He forgot how his first trade war went.

Today, Trump said that one of his first acts after being inaugurated would be to impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada.

Specifically, he said that he would do this to force Mexico and Canada to prevent immigrants and drugs from coming across the U.S. border. Presumably he meant across the southern U.S. border, in which case it's not clear what Canada has to do with it.

As for Mexico, this isn't the first time that Trump has tried to outsource the United States' immigration policy to that country. In his first administration, his reliance on an Obama Administration agreement called Programa Frontera Sur, where Mexico would take steps to reduce the number of migrants passing through its southern border to the United States, gave Mexico enormous leverage over the United States.

Mexico is the United States' single biggest trade partner.

Tariffs are taxes paid by American consumers on foreign goods. As such, they tend to fall most heavily on low- and middle-class Americans, who cannot afford large price increases. In small amounts, they are a technical economic tool for working out trade imbalances or protecting domestic industries. 

Tariffs are not useful as instruments of foreign policy, because their function is to reduce trade that American consumers want. Because countries inevitably impose tariffs of their own on American goods in retaliation, the resulting trade war hurts all sides.

Trump had an opportunity to learn this lesson during his first term, when he entered into an absolutely disastrous trade war with China and the European Union. It cost hundreds of thousands of American jobs, slowed the growth of the U.S. economy to a crawl, and led to massive farm foreclosures because crop prices fell through the floor. There was a spike in suicides by bankrupted farmers as a result, after multiple taxpayer bailouts failed. It also spiked the overall U.S. world trade deficit—meaning that the United States imported more goods at higher prices for its consumers than before—which was the opposite of what Trump said it would do.

Trump also said today that he would impose huge tariffs on China, which, again, means imposing enormous taxes on Americans who want or need to buy Chinese goods, like computer hardware or prescription drugs.

Why does this matter?

• Presidents should be able to learn from catastrophic mistakes.

• Presidents should be able to admit catastrophic mistakes.

• The United States economy is too important for a president to be this ignorant about how it works.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to drum up sales for his picture book.

While Trump cabinet announcements have been coming at a regular pace over the last few weeks, Trump himself has been barely visible, other than a command performance a failed Elon Musk rocket test. He's also been relatively quiet on his private social media network: his only post today was an ad for a picture book about him.

The book, Save America, is mostly public-domain photographs, or taken from the taxpayer-funded collections of Trump's presidential "library" (though it exists only as a government website at the moment). There is almost no text. As a Washington Post review notes, the photographs are often about subjects where Trump has already tried to rewrite history. For example, it complains that "Democrats" lied about his inaugural crowd being "the biggest ever." It wasn't, but Trump made insisting otherwise the main order of business on his first day in office.

The book also insists that "pictures were almost impossible to get" of the Jan. 6th riot that tried to overturn the 2020 election on his behalf. They are not—it was one of the most heavily photographed events in human history—although none of the following pictures appear in it.

With shipping, Trump's picture book costs $110, almost double the price of the $60 Trump-branded Bible he also sells. Save America is published by Sergio Gor, who Trump just named to head the White House Personnel Office.

Why does this matter?

• There's self-promotion and then there's fleecing the rubes.

• Running a vanity publishing company doesn't qualify someone to staff a White House.

• Even when people are paying more than a hundred dollars for it, it's still wrong to lie.

What did Donald Trump do today? 

He endorsed a kindred spirit in an upcoming special election in Florida.

Because Trump has tapped Florida Rep. Michael Waltz to serve as his national security advisor, there will be a special election in Florida's 6th congressional district. Today, Trump endorsed Florida state Sen. Randy Fine in that race.

Given the generic wording of the post, it's not clear if Trump actually knows who Fine is, but the two are certainly kindred spirits. Like Trump, Fine has a recent history of being cited for contempt of court: in August, he mouthed curse words during a video hearing and made obscene gestures. The judge ordered him to undergo anger management.

Also like Trump, Fine has been known to play politics with charities. In 2022, the West Melbourne Police Department hosted a fundraiser for Special Olympics at a fast-food restaurant. They invited a city council member, Jennifer Jenkins, but not Fine, and he responded by threatening to get routine state funding for the charity and the city struck from the budget. 

When a city attorney used a public records request to release text messages proving Fine had made the threats, he tried to get the attorney fired. The whole affair led to a state ethics commission ruling against him. Once again emulating Trump, Fine declared it a "kangaroo court."

Fine has displayed a Trump-like approach to women who challenge him. He called Jenkins a "whore," published her phone number and encouraged social media followers to harass her, had people show up to her house saying "Fine says hi." 

Finally, Fine shares something of Trump's physical courage. When he was subpoenaed related to his ongoing fight with Jenkins, he hid under a desk in an attempt to avoid being served, and then claimed he thought it was an attack by Hamas.

Fine's office in Palm Bay, Florida, is approximately 6,500 miles from any place Hamas has influence.

Why does this matter?

• Endorsements say something about the person making them.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He escaped justice for the crimes he's already been convicted of.

Trump will take office as a convicted felon, having been found guilty in May by a New York jury of 34 counts related to fraudulent business records. The judge in that case, Juan Merchan, delayed sentencing until after the election, and has now decided to postpone it indefinitely.

It is not yet clear whether Trump can still be sentenced when and if he next leaves office.

Trump's lawyers are now claiming that Trump, both while president and as a private citizen who has not yet taken office, is "completely immune from any criminal process."

He is also under indictment in three other separate criminal cases: for stealing and refusing to return highly classified documents, interfering in Georgia's electoral process in an attempt to invalidate or change the outcome of the 2020 election, and taking part in a broad conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election on a national level, including by disrupting the official certification by Congress on January 6, 2021. 

Trump has promised to seek revenge against the Justice Department officials and law enforcement officers who brought charges in those cases, and has threatened at one point or another to jail almost everyone who opposed him politically. 

Why does this matter?

• No one is above the law or "completely immune from any criminal process" in a democracy.

• Using the power of the state to take revenge for "crimes" against the leader is literally fascism.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He replaced one political loyalist with another as his attorney general pick.

Today, former Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration as Trump's pick for attorney general. Gaetz had resigned from Congress last Wednesday, the same day that Trump tapped him to lead the Justice Department, in order to avoid the publication of an Ethics Committee report on allegations that he had engaged in the sex trafficking of minors, among other crimes.

In the meantime, witnesses have spoken out and documents have been released to the press that corroborate the worst allegations against Gaetz.

Gaetz is one of at least three Trump nominees (so far) to have credible criminal sexual assault charges made against them, not counting Trump himself. A police report from 2017 was released today about Pete Hegseth, the weekend Fox News host Trump has tapped to lead the Defense Department. Hegseth paid the woman who made the charges an undisclosed sum of money in exchange for her silence. She sustained injuries consistent with sexual assault. A Trump spokesperson falsely claimed that a police report had exonerated Hegseth.

Trump picked Gaetz impulsively during a two-hour plane ride, with key advisors out of the loop, and Gaetz himself in attendance. There was no opportunity for his staff to present him with some of the better-known facts about the charges made against Gaetz. 

Today, just hours after Gaetz pulled out, Trump announced he had chosen Pam Bondi as his latest pick. Bondi was his personal defense attorney for his first impeachment trial, but her relationship with him goes back years. In 2013, she sought and received a $25,000 political donation from Trump's private charity foundation before deciding, as Florida's attorney general, not to pursue Floridians' complaints against his Trump University scheme, which was ultimately found to be fraudulent. (It's illegal for charities to make political donations. This was one of a litany of illegal actions that ultimately led to the Trump Foundation being shut down by New York state officials and Trump personally being fined millions of dollars.)

Why does this matter?

• Bad things happen when presidents choose staff based on personal loyalty rather than fitness for office.

What did Donald Trump do today? 

He tapped a patent grifter to be the U.S. Ambassador to NATO.

Today, Trump announced that he would nominate Matthew Whitaker as the U.S. Ambassador to NATO. Whitaker served briefly as Acting Attorney General in Trump's first term, after Trump fired Jeff Sessions for refusing to kill an investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf.

But Whitaker is better known as a board member of World Patent Marketing, a firm that the Federal Trade Commission called an "invention promotion scam." In 2017, the FTC found that WPM had falsely promised to promote clients' inventions, then threatened them with costly legal actions if they complained.

The company, which at one point tried to get clients to invest in a cryptocurrency it described as "a theoretical time travel commodity," is now defunct. The FTC wrote that its victims had paid

World Patent Marketing Inc. thousands of dollars to patent and market their inventions based on bogus 'success stories' and testimonials promoted by the defendants. But after they strung consumers along for months or even years, the defendants did not deliver what they promised. Instead, many customers ended up in debt or lost their life savings with nothing to show for it.

Whitaker has no military or diplomatic experience.

As NATO Ambassador, Whitaker would be the representative of a president who has repeatedly threatened to withdraw the United States from NATO, which would effectively destroy it. Curtailing NATO's influence has been the primary military goal of the Putin regime in Russia.

Why does this matter?

• Jobs relating to the military defense of the United States and its allies are too important to give out to political cronies.

What did Donald Trump do today? 

He came when he was called.

This afternoon, Trump posted on his private social media platform that he was

heading to the Great State of Texas to watch the launch of the largest object ever to be elevated, not only to Space, but simply by lifting off the ground. Good luck to Elon Musk and the Great Patriots involved in this incredible project!

Unfortunately for all concerned, the test—which was not a launch into space—was a failure. 

Of course, the rocket's failure was not Trump's fault—but his presence at the launch site was significant all the same. Musk is the richest person in the world and owns companies that profit massively from American tax dollars. This, combined with his financial support of Trump and his willingness to use his own social media presence to skew coverage of the election, makes him by any definition an oligarch.

There's no question that Musk is getting his money's worth. He's insisted on having a voice in key staffing decisions that will benefit him directly, and has been sitting in uninvited on Mar-a-Lago strategy meetings. He took part in a call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, even though Musk has taken the Putin regime's side. Musk has also maneuvered Trump into appointing him as co-chair of a ceremonial advisory committee on waste in government, which would give him a pseudo-official public platform.

As early as last week, there were reports that Musk was already overreaching. A staffer who said that Musk had "opinion on and about everything" fumed that he was trying to emotionally manipulate Trump.

He’s behaving as if he’s a co-president and making sure everyone knows it… He's sure taking lots of credit for the president’s victory. Bragging about America PAC and X to anyone who will listen. He’s trying to make President Trump feel indebted to him.

Why does this matter?

• It shouldn't be possible for anyone, no matter how rich, to buy this kind of influence over the President of the United States.

Note: WTDT never posts links directly to Truth Social. All links go to a mirror site.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He kissed up to the junior senator from Oklahoma.

In a post to his private social media site at 4:03 A.M. EST, Trump lavished praise on Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin, for a "wonderful interview" he did on Fox News.

Polite congratulations over a brief cable news spot would be unusual behavior for Trump, but he has an ulterior motive. Mullin called yesterday for the House Ethics Committee to release to the Senate its report on Trump's pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz. 

Mullin left open the question of whether the American public should be allowed to know what the bipartisan House committee learned in its investigation into allegations that Gaetz was involved in bribery, drug use, and the sex trafficking of minors.

Shocking details about what the Ethics Committee learned are leaking out anyway. A lawyer for two women who testified before that committee said today that Gaetz paid them for sex, and that one of them witnessed him having sex with a minor at a house party.

Mullin is no fan of Gaetz, accusing him of making sexually derogatory comments about South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (Trump's pick for Secretary of Homeland Security), and of "living off [his] daddy's money" rather than earning a living. Mullin also publicly lashed out last year over Gaetz's bragging about his supposed sexual exploits—and alluded to the issues the Ethics Committee was investigating.

In other words, Trump apparently woke up before dawn today worried about Mullin joining other Republican senators in voting down Gaetz, and tried to curry favor via that social media post.

However, Trump has a backup plan: insisting that the Republican-controlled Senate completely abandon all oversight of his appointments by going into recess just so that he can bypass the confirmation process altogether.

Why does this matter?

• There's diplomacy and then there's humiliating yourself.

• The American people are not an inconvenience for a president to find an end-run around.

• A better way to avoid embarrassing confirmation hearings is not to nominate embarrassing nominees.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He threatened a woman for releasing the results of a poll.

In the closing days of the campaign, respected Iowa pollster Ann Selzer released her final poll of the state. It showed the surprising result that Vice-President Kamala Harris was leading in the state by three points.

In the election itself, Trump won the state handily, by 13 points. Today, in an angry post to his private social media network, he said that Selzer should be "investigated" for "ELECTION FRAUD." Asked if Trump was serious, his spokesperson Steven Cheung said that he was.

It is not a crime to release a poll that turns out to be inaccurate, or even—as Trump has done too many times to count—to make up numbers on the spot and insist that they are real. It is a crime to carry out a criminal investigation under false pretenses.

Why does this matter?

• Treating every imagined slight against the ruler into an attack on the state is what fascists do.

• It's a bad sign for Trump's emotional stability if winning the election wasn't enough for him.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got confused about how computers work.

Trump announced today that he was naming Chris Wright as his choice for Secretary of Energy. A climate denier, Wright is an oil industry executive who will now be in a position to add to a net worth in the hundreds of millions.

By Trump standards, Wright is a relatively uncontroversial choice. In the statement announcing the choice, Trump once again insisted that there was a connection between unrestrained oil drilling and… virtually everything, but in particular "winning the AI race with China."

Even for a 78-year-old, Trump is notoriously mystified by computers, and seems to get most of his ideas about them from popular culture. He said in 2017 that sensitive documents should be given to bike messengers rather than sent electronically, but also that his then-10-year-old son could probably handle cybersecurity. 

He's also fallen under the sway—and in political debt to—tech investors like Elon Musk, who are gambling that new kinds of software models will eventually produce something commercially useful, or at least increase the value of their cryptocurrency bets.

There is a connection to energy: the computer farms that are required to "mine" the strings of numbers used for cryptocurrency, and to simulate summaries of information in products like ChatGPT, are enormous energy hogs. They use electricity on the scale of medium-sized countries, and are pushing carbon emissions through the roof. They're also a huge physical and economic strain on local power grids and water supplies, and they're noisy, which accounts for their low popularity in the communities where they're located.

Of course, there are legitimate potential applications for new kinds of computer models—but research on them doesn't require enormous amounts of energy.

Why does this matter?

• American energy policy should serve the interests of the American people, not just a few tech industry speculators and oil executives.

• Presidents don't have to be experts on everything, but it's bad if they believe anything their donors tell them.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He picked some communications officers.

Today, Trump announced he was appointing Karoline Leavitt as his press secretary, and Steven Cheung as his director of communications.

Leavitt is a 27-year-old campaign spokesperson who has drawn comparison to Hope Hicks, a spokesperson turned advisor in Trump's first administration. Both were very young and inexperienced, but had (or adopted) a certain look Trump favors in his spokeswomen, and both reportedly have a knack for soothing Trump's emotional outbursts. 

Cheung is a former spokesperson for Ultimate Fighting Championship. He recently falsely accused a law enforcement officer of having a mental breakdown when she objected to the Trump campaign using Arlington National Cemetery for a campaign photo op. He called a South Carolina politician a "bitch" to deflect from first-hand witness accounts that Trump used racial slurs on the set of his game show. He used racial dog-whistles to suggest that Vice-President Kamala Harris "smells."

Leavitt and Cheung will be the main White House employees dealing with members of the press, whom Trump has threatened with violence, imprisonment, and worse.

So what?

• White House communications officials are supposed to work for the American people, not as political surrogates.

• They're also supposed to be qualified for their jobs.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got "mentored" in economics.

Argentine president Javier Milei today became the first foreign leader to meet with Trump since his re-election. A self-described libertarian, Milei has decimated the workforce of the Argentinian government—something that Trump has promised to do in the United States.

Milei has a lot to gain from the support of an American president, and has in the past week tried to position himself as a sort of economic mentor for Trump.

Trump, who is notoriously susceptible to flattery and manipulation by world leaders, appears to have been convinced. He called Milei his "favorite president" yesterday and cited what he apparently thought were Milei's economic accomplishments.

Since Milei took office, annual inflation has spiked into the 200-300% range. The number of Argentinians living in poverty has gone up 36%.

Why does this matter?

• Presidents should get their economic advice from actual U.S. government experts, not foreign leaders with their own agenda.
  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He helped Matt Gaetz evade an investigation into child prostitution allegations by nominating him for attorney general.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was the subject of a criminal and later House Ethics Committee investigation for child sex trafficking. One of Gaetz's associates, Joel Greenberg, pleaded guilty in 2021 to six charges including bribery of a public official and sex trafficking of a minor. 

In 2018, Gaetz paid Greenberg $900 via Venmo, listing the name of a sex-trafficked girl in the memo. Greenberg then paid an identical amount three young women, with the payments labeled things like "books" and "tuition" and "school."

In the waning days of the Trump administration, Gaetz desperately sought a pardon from Trump for violations of federal sex trafficking laws.

The House Ethics Committee was set to release its investigative report on the matter on Friday, but today Trump tapped Gaetz to be his next attorney general. Gaetz, who could have stayed in office in the meantime, resigned immediately. This means he is no longer under the jurisdiction of that committee.

It's not clear if Gaetz could be confirmed, even with a 53-vote Republican Senate majority. While he was never criminally charged, the allegations that he paid minors for sex were convincing to many Republicans, too.

Why does this matter?

• The attorney general of the United States shouldn't be a political crony of the president.

• The attorney general also shouldn't be someone credibly accused of sex crimes against minors.

Coverage resumes

This blog ceased publication on November 8, 2020, when Joe Biden's victory became apparent. I hoped, along with tens of millions of other Americans, that the Trump presidency, and Trump's malign influence on American politics, would begin to fade from memory.

Maybe we got too much of what we asked for.

If this daily blog with its HTML 1.0 design ever changed anyone's mind about Donald Trump, I'd be surprised. Its readership was miniscule and there was no shortage of news about Trump. In fact, there was too much—some people read it because they wanted to engage with at most one thing Trump did.

Of course, people's minds did change about Trump, and they'll change again without any help from me. Still, it seemed important at the time to keep some kind of record of just how relentlessly dangerous and criminal Trump's unhinged presidency could be. He was famously, provably lazy at his day job, often putting in three-day weeks filled with multi-hour blocks of "executive time" that he spent tweeting or watching TV. But he never took a day off from the spotlight—in fact, he seemed to delight in trolling Americans with drama for drama's sake.

In the years since, I've occasionally paged back through what I wrote here. It's astonishing how easy it is to forget the details, although in fairness there were more than 1,400 days in his term. I can't help but wonder if that accounts for his victory in the 2024 election. Perhaps he was so good at flooding the zone with reality-TV drama that it crowded out memories of the horrific blend of criminality and incompetence. (See the sidebar for a handy summary.)

I don't want to do this again. I so enjoyed not having to think about Trump every day. But I know I'll have to anyway. Writing down a little bit of what he says and does every day isn't much of an act of resistance, but it is something, and doing something feels better than doing nothing.

I'll resume regular posting in a few weeks, once I've had time to mourn what we've already lost and what we surely will. Good luck to us all.