Senate Democrats are under massive pressure to fight Donald Trump as he prepares for his second term — and they are coalescing around a strategy to do so, reported Carl Hulse for The New York Times.
Specifically, they have realized Trump is damaging the GOP with his most controversial Cabinet nominations, and they can simply sit back and let Republicans fight over what their incoming president is doing.
Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “is keeping quiet for a reason, and it is not because he does not have opinions on President-elect Donald J. Trump’s administration in the making,” wrote Hulse. “With some Republicans raising their own profound concerns about Mr. Trump’s ethically and legally challenged choices, such as the former Representative Matt Gaetz to be attorney general and the Fox News personality Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, why get in the way of their intraparty hand-wringing?”
Gaetz ultimately withdrew from consideration over allegations of child sex trafficking investigated by the House Ethics Committee, necessitating Trump to replace him with former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Hegseth, meanwhile, is similarly mired in sexual assault allegations.
According to the report, Schumer believes if he was too outspoken against Trump’s picks, he could be made into the villain around which MAGA could rally to get the nominees confirmed — but if he is on the sidelines and the predominant voices arguing over the picks are Senate Republicans, it fractures and demoralizes the GOP more effectively.
The strategy is already having its intended effect, reported Hulse — because when Gaetz dropped out, “he claimed privately that a handful of recalcitrant Republicans — Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, as well as Senator-elect John Curtis of Utah — had prompted his exit. Right-wing activists quickly went after them, calling on MAGA world to vote them out.”
