The following is a lightly edited transcript of the November 22 episode of the
Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

By now, you’ve heard that Matt Gaetz has withdrawn from consideration to be Donald Trump’s attorney general, apparently after Republican senators basically told him that the jig was up, he wasn’t going to get the job. At the time of this recording, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, was also meeting with GOP senators and his fate appeared uncertain. Why did Republican senators make a stand on Gaetz, and what does that tell us about how aggressive they will be in checking Trump’s excesses once he takes over?

Today, we’re talking about this with one of the most knowledgeable observers of Congress out there, Norman Ornstein, who also co-hosts the Words Matter podcast on the DSR network. Really great to have you back on, Norm.

Norman Ornstein: Great to be with you, Greg.

Sargent: So Matt Gaetz is done. He faced a ton of scrutiny over allegations of sex trafficking and drug use and all that. By all indications, Republican senators had been privately informing Trump and his advisors that Gaetz wasn’t going to get confirmed and Gaetz himself reportedly had included he didn’t have the votes. What do you make of this? What does it mean?

Ornstein: I don’t make a lot of it, Greg, in this sense: The evidence against Gates was building even without the report from the House Ethics Committee, which we know is pretty damning. We know from what we had from federal authorities that we had thousands of transactions on Venmo, often laundered through his “foster son” that went to paying women and girls to travel to drug-fueled sex parties, including two women who swore that they had witnessed him having sex with a 17-year-old. That was going to end up coming down, burning and crashing no matter what.

I couldn’t resist commenting as soon as I heard this. The good news for Trump is that the pool of Republican sex predators is large enough that he’ll be able to find a replacement pretty easily. But what we also know, Greg, is that Trump has flooded the nomination zone with a group of unqualified, often cringe-worthy people. Some, like Pete Hagseth, with their own checkered history of sexual misbehavior, the nicest term we can use for it.

Sargent: Alleged, Norm, alleged.

Ornstein: Yeah, alleged. Knowing that Trump was going to be dealing with a Republican Senate that might block one or two, but would let the rest go through. They are not going to be a body which says, We’re holding these nominees to a standard that we normally would or have in the past for cabinet nominees or other top officials. So he’s going to win most of these. Hegseth, we can’t be sure because we don’t know what else might emerge. Most of the rest are probably going to make it.

Sargent: One thing that strikes me about all this as well, Norm, is that Trump had really gone quiet about Gaetz. When Trump wants Republicans in Congress to do something for him and he senses they’re slipping away from him, he’s really not shy about cracking the whip. Remember how he blasted Republicans to get them to kill the bipartisan border security bill? In this case, Trump had put Republicans on notice that he would use recess appointments to get his nominees through if needed. He went quiet on that too. Why did he suddenly go quiet on all this? What happened here, do you think, really?

Ornstein: If I had to guess, my guess is that somebody—probably Susie Wiles, his incoming chief of staff—came to him with the FBI report on Matt Gaetz, and with an annotated copy of the House Ethics report because, of course, he’s not going to read this stuff, and basically said, You are in for a festering, burning pile of excrement if you continue forward with this guy. Don’t keep pushing him. There are plenty of others. Let him get out now before it keeps going on and on and endangers other nominees.

Sargent: I got to say, supporting this idea, the only thing that motivates Trump ever is self-interest. And it’s pretty clear that what’s going to develop here is people like Susie Wiles are going to develop techniques for appealing to his self-interest. One good example is this, right? Here’s what the FBI report says. This is going to pile down on you, Mr. President. It’s going to be a disaster for you. You are going to get beaten up. You, you, you.

Ornstein: You’ve raised an interesting point, Greg, which is that this may strengthen Susie Wiles a little bit. Remember that this nomination was cooked up on Trump’s plane when he sat with Boris Epshteyn, and Susie Wiles was in another part of the plane. It was announced before she had any input. She didn’t say anything afterward, smartly so, and watched as this fell apart. So Trump has to know that maybe he should take a little advice from her.

Having said that, however, I’m not sure how long that relationship can last. Susie Wiles, who’s a pragmatic person, certainly a movement conservative but more in the traditional vein, took this job with a promise that she could........

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