Dem
47
GOP
53
We had an item yesterday headlined "The Clown Show, Part II: Next Quack Up" about how the Trump administration yanked one nominee for surgeon general and then chose someone arguably even worse. Looks like we're going to have to continue on that theme, because the White House has done it again.
Yesterday, the head to (semi-)roll belonged to acting U.S. Attorney for Washington, DC, Ed Martin. A couple of weeks ago, we wrote an item with the headline "Ed Martin Is out of Control." In that, we listed a bunch of the crazypants abuses of power that Martin had engaged in, and observed that by making his moves before being confirmed by the Senate, he was probably overplaying his hand, and making himself radioactive. It looks like we were right; Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) came out earlier this week and said he would not vote to confirm. That's a problem for two reasons. First, Tillis is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and his "nay," coupled with all the Democratic "nays," would have resulted in a non-recommendation being sent to the full Senate. Second, while a non-recommendation is not always fatal, there was much evidence of other "nay" votes among non-Judiciary Committee Republicans in the Senate, including Susan Collins (ME), John Cornyn (TX), John Curtis (UT) and Lisa Murkowski (AK). And so Trump, in a clear acknowledgment that he doesn't have the political capital to move the nomination, yanked it instead.
As with other folks whose heads have recently rolled, Martin is not out, he's just making a "lateral" move. Former NSA Mike Waltz is headed to the U.N., failed surgeon general Janette Nesheiwat is going to be given a job in HHS, and Martin will now work for the Department of Justice's brand-new "weaponization working group," which is focused on conspiracy theories about how the federal government has been very unfair to Donald Trump. In short, a match made in heaven—a ridiculous job for a ridiculous man.
You would think that the replacement for Martin couldn't possibly be worse. And, if so, you would arguably be wrong. Trump has decided to replace one show horse with a different show horse, and has tapped—predictably—one of the entertainers employed by Fox. Yep, it's yet another crazypants conspiracist: Jeanine Pirro. Even Pirro's own producer once described her as "completely crazy." Unlike Martin, Pirro at least has prosecutorial experience, having served as ADA and DA of Westchester County, NY, for many years. However, she's been at Fox for almost 15 years, so her law skills are probably a little rusty. That said, you probably don't need to remember the finer points of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure if your real job is to make headlines fighting back against wokeness, and DEI, and critical race theory and yadda, yadda, yadda. And unlike Martin, Pirro is at least smart enough to keep her cards close to the vest until she's been confirmed. Though one wonders if she's been told she'll be trading in a salary of $3 million per year for one of $165,209 per year.
Also, as long as we are on the general subject, Trump also fired the Librarian of Congress yesterday. Carla Hayden had been on the job since 2016, and was generally well regarded. However, she is Black and was appointed by Barack Obama, and in the last couple of weeks, the right-wing commentariat has been attacking her for being "woke, anti-Trump, and promot[ing] trans-ing kids." So, she had to go. Our prediction is that for her replacement, Trump picks someone who is white, male and thinks the best thing to do with books is burn them. (Z)