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.