Democratic Capitulation Is Contagious
Who's going to stand up to Trump if his actual opponents have embraced "strategic silence" regarding all of his spiraling abuses?
The list of unqualified family members and random hangers-on Donald Trump intends to appoint to government job is long enough at this point that it’s easy to lose track. It’s easier still because he’s encountering no meaningful friction over any of it. After he announces one appointment he moves on seamlessly to the next, leaving barely a ripple in elite political discourse.
I think it’s worth stopping for a moment to ask if and where you’ve heard any sustained critique of this rancid nepotism. The people with the power to make corruption scandalous are all uninterested, which leaves it entirely up to progressive media figures to inveigh against his self-dealing. Alas, Rachel Maddow, Crooked Media, and a handful of writers can’t carry the entire pro-democracy opposition on their backs.
This Washington Post report on Trump’s most reckless act of royalism treats it as totally ordinary that Trump wants to rearrange both Florida state government and possibly his own administration in order to install his daughter-in-law as a senator.
President-elect Donald Trump has communicated to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that he wants his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, to become the Sunshine State’s next senator — but it’s far from clear that DeSantis will acquiesce and appoint her, people familiar with the matter said.
Lara Trump’s interest in replacing Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) — who is set to become secretary of state — complicates an already fraught relationship between Trump and DeSantis, who waged harsh campaigns against each other in the GOP presidential primary. DeSantis is tasked with filling Rubio’s seat and could boost his standing with the president-elect by appointing Lara Trump, who announced this past week that she will step down as co-chair of the Republican National Committee.
DeSantis is seriously considering Lara Trump and cares about the president-elect’s view, according to one person familiar with his thinking who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations. But the person believes DeSantis is more likely to pick someone who has held public office in Florida and said other contenders include the state’s attorney general, Ashley Moody, and former statehouse speaker Jose Oliva…
Trump, meanwhile, has privately floated DeSantis as an option to replace his controversial pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. But Hegseth’s prospects have improved since Trump discussed the Defense Department role with DeSantis last week. Trump publicly reaffirmed his support for Hegseth, and a skeptical Republican senator — Iowa’s Joni Ernst — signaled new openness to his potential nomination after Trump supporters pressured her.
The writer
asks us to “conjure…how the story would be phrased if it was about Joe Biden dangling the whole Pentagon in front of Delaware Governor John Carney’s nose so that he would appoint Hunter Biden’s wife Melissa to the Senate.”It’s a worthy exercise, but it’s not entirely on the Post or any other mainstream media outlet that these machinations have unfolded in such ho-hum fashion. Joe Biden would find himself ensnared in controversy for much less, in large part because Republicans would pretend to care.
Democrats have, by contrast, affirmatively decided not to treat anything Trump’s doing as untoward unless and until it pertains to things like health-care and tax policy. And in their terribly narrowcast conception of politics, other potential bulwarks against mafia-style government are collapsing.
POCKETBOOK VETO
Democrats reach the same conclusion (or retreat to the same zone of safety) every time they lose an election: They didn’t Pocketbook Issues hard enough. Here’s how the people leading the latest retreat put it.
A pollster to Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign told top Democratic Party officials on Friday that they must confront President-elect Donald Trump far differently than they did during his first term, urgently pressing them not to focus on every outrage but instead argue that he is hurting voters’ pocketbooks.
The speech by Molly Murphy, which was delivered during one of the Democratic National Committee’s first post-election meetings of its leadership, amounted to a quiet indictment of much of the party’s long-standing approach to Trump. It also marked one of the most candid conversations that top party officials have aired publicly since Trump won.
“The 2025 playbook cannot be the 2017 playbook,” she said.
Speaking at a Hyatt Regency hotel in Washington D.C. to the DNC’s executive committee, she said that most Americans support Trump’s transition and that voters “don’t care about who he’s putting in Cabinet positions.”
She said that Trump will take office more popular than he was when he started his first term, though not as well-liked as President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama were when inaugurated. She stressed that Trump’s strength for years has been that voters approve of his handling of the economy, and that Democrats should aim in his second term to change that.
“These voters are saying, ‘I will give him a pass on the outrageous if my costs come down,’” she said.
You can see the desperation for a crutch, anything that permits Democrats not to stand for any principle, in all the ahistoric and helpless nonsense here.