A Very Important Day
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For the first time in nearly 18 years, Senate Republicans will elect a new leader today who is NOT Mitch McConnell. This is one of the more important moments in the American political system in the last two decades. Not only will the Republican Senator elected today be the leader of the Republicans, but given that the GOP has taken control of the Senate, he will also be the Senate Majority Leader and wield a profound amount of power over the next two years (at least).
Mitch McConnell, despite how much he disliked Trump and vice versa, was an enormously effective partner for Trump in getting his judicial nominees through and protecting him from being convicted in the Senate after he was impeached twice.
The candidates running are Senator Rick Scott of Florida, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, and Senator John Thune of South Dakota.
Scott is the MAGA favorite, and powerful figures in Trump world like Elon Musk, Charlie Kirk, Benny Johnson, and a handful of Senators, including Ron Johnson and Rand Paul, have come out publicly to endorse him.
Tucker Carlson has also made a big push, urging people to call their Senators’ offices to advocate for Scott.
Normally, these sorts of efforts would be successful, but here’s the rub: the vote is by secret ballot. So Senators can vote for whom they want with no repercussions.
Scott isn’t very popular in the Republican conference, and Senators still blame him for the disastrous Senate results in 2022 when Scott was in charge of the GOP’s Senate campaign committee.
Thune and Cornyn are not liked in MAGA world—they’re often considered RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) and not sufficiently loyal to Trump for various reasons.
But here’s the issue for Trump world: Trump supporters have been flooding U.S. Senators’ phone lines and tagging them on social media with very aggressive and harsh messages. No matter how MAGA the Senate becomes, Senators are old-school and don’t like to be bullied.
So, given that the ballot is secret, what motivation do they have to bend to harassment and harsh attacks?
While many Trump supporters have pushed for Scott, Trump himself has remained quiet on explicitly endorsing Scott. After all, if his bid to get Scott elected fails, it will be seen as a major failure before he is even sworn in.
He did get all three candidates to bend to his will, however. In a post first shared on Truth Social, Trump said anyone who wanted to be GOP Senate leader had to be willing to agree to recess appointments for his nominees.
All three candidates quickly fell in line and tweeted that they agreed Trump had the right to get his nominees confirmed and that recess appointments would be used if necessary.
(I am trying to learn what my readers know and don’t know. If you would like explanations for issues like recess appointments, please comment below and I’ll keep that in mind for the future.)
Welcoming a “fascist” to the White House
As I write this, Trump has just landed in Washington, D.C. Among other meetings, Trump is meeting with President Biden in the Oval Office.
This is the standard Oval Office meeting after a presidential election to show the American people, and the world, that the United States is initiating a peaceful transfer of power.
Biden, who was under no legal or ethical obligation to host Trump at the White House, will no doubt greet Trump cordially.
But this is no standard peaceful transfer of power, of course, since Biden repeatedly referred to Trump as a threat to democracy and explicitly called him a fascist.
Many voters already have a hard time wrapping their minds around what a fascist is but they know that it’s not something good from Biden’s perspective. What kind of message will it send when Biden welcomes a man he called a fascist into the White House?
Biden is an institutionalist, so it’s no surprise that he’s handling the results of the election in this way, but how seriously can threats of fascism be taken if you’re doing a grip-and-grin with the man you called a fascist?
Some Democrats are wondering why Biden couldn’t just leave the White House on January 20 and leave the door unlocked for Trump.
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I would like to know more about recess appointments. Also it may be a good time to do a quick history lesson on fascism and some previous leaders that were actually fascists. Thank you!
I appreciate all you do. Learned about you from Leah Remini's podcast and began following you for your work on Scientology. As someone who has gravitated to independent journalists over the last few years I really appreciate your content. I'd love further explanations on things such as recess appointments for convenience, but I also understand I can look up these things myself as well. Thank you!