Trump's 'slush fund' has even loyalists turning against him |
Trump’s ‘slush fund’ has even loyalists turning against him
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is wrapping up his second month in what’s supposed to be a temporary job. But after a week spent infuriating Senate Republicans (and just about everyone else), President Trump doesn’t seem to be in any rush to name Blanche’s permanent successor.
That raises a serious question for our country: How long will Trump let Blanche squat in the attorney general’s office?
The odds of Trump nominating a new attorney general are at an all-time low after Blanche’s botched effort to sell Republican lawmakers on Trump’s $1.8 billion government weaponization fund — a scheme so brazenly self-serving that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called it a “slush fund to pay people who assault cops,” referring to its potential use to compensate the violent offenders in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) derided it as “stupid on stilts.”
So Trump can probably count those two out of any vote to confirm his next top cop.
The dysfunction at the Justice Department is a grim echo of the chaos at the end of Trump’s first term, when loyalists took over key roles and public trust in the nation’s attorney general collapsed. With Blanche, Trump is speedrunning those failures again.
Republican senators, fearful of losing control of the upper chamber because of Trump’s toxic choices, think they can stave off disaster by exerting more control on Trump’s next attorney general pick. What the Senate Republicans don’t realize — or won’t admit — is that Trump has no interest in giving them any control at all.
Blanche is........