Staffing is going apace so the new administration can hit the ground running.
Matt Gaetz as AG and Lt Col Tulsi Gabbard as DNI will be popular with the base.
Ditto Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head DOGE.
Marco Rubio (a neocon) as Secretary of State will be less popular.
I hope there are positions for RFK jr and his running mate Nicole Shanahan (the ex-wife of the Google guy and who produced some amazing online ads once they joined forces with President Trump).
Thune is replacing turtle as the Senate Majority Leader, and it will be his job to get these candidates confirmed if they need to be confirmed. Turtle blocked a number of appointments in the first Trump administration (eg Herman Cain to the Fed) saying he didnât have the votes. In olden times, the Senate leadership went out and got those votes. I remember Arlen Spector casting doubt on whether he would vote for Wâs judicial nominees, and he was pulled aside and asked if he liked his committee assignments.
Donald Trumpâs electoral victory on November 5 appeared to give further credence
to the idea that betting markets could be a more accurate barometer
for election outcomes than traditional polls.
(snip)
âOn Polymarket it looked like a done deal, and if you were just watching TV,
you would think itâs neck and neck,â Coplan said on CNBCâs Squawk Box.
The Polymarket spokesperson said the incident was an act of âpolitical retributionâ
by the Biden administration.
To me, betting markets could/should be given more credence. In betting, you actually have skin in the game; âdonât tell me what you think, show me where your money isâ. In polling, thereâs quite a few potential biases as many people answer the way they think they are expected to answer. Obviously betting markets have their own biases as well.
It is too bad the Justice department and FBI have become so politicized because in cases like the Polymarket guy being raided by the FBI, it looks a lot like political payback.
Merrick Garland has been a disaster but god help us if sociopath Matt Gaetz gets the job, cause it will be even worse except from the right. I have to think/hope that the senate will reject him. Someone like Senator Cotton or Hawley are hard line right wingers but at least they arenât âallegedâ pedoâs like Gaetz âallegedlyâ is.
I donât think the far left has much to fear.
A key element of lawfare has been that there are very very few Trump supporters living in DC. Trump got 4.09% of the vote there in 2016. File a case in DC and the jury will likely be 12 angry Democrats. A Republican on trial there is lucky if there is one juror who doesnât hate them.
Even if a Trump DOJ wanted to engage in revenge lawfare (and thereâs no evidence that they do), where would they file the cases?
Gaetz himself has been a victim of lawfare, and his job in Justice will be to clean house.
