Donald Trump is not a monarch.
That’s the unmistakable lesson of the ill-fated nomination of Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Rather than showcasing Trump’s absolute power over his GOP allies, it revealed his limits. The doomed nomination lasted just eight days — and its failure is an unwelcome lesson for the president-elect, who has been projecting invincibility and claiming a historic mandate despite his reed-thin popular vote victory.
“The short version is ‘checks and balances work,’” said Eugene Volokh, a UCLA professor of law.
Though Republicans will control both chambers of Congress, the resistance from Senate Republicans to Gaetz’s nomination proved that there are still some checks on Trump — no matter how limited — that can hold, despite fear on the left that he will squeeze Congress into submission, get carte blanche from the conservative-dominated Supreme Court and enact his agenda at will.
“I think it shows that Donald Trump cannot get anything he wants,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California-Berkeley School of Law.
Chemerinsky and others cautioned against extrapolating too much from the Gaetz debacle; he was so uniquely despised and compromised by legal and political scandal, and vying for a position that wields unique and extraordinary power, that his failed nomination may not be a harbinger of the pushback Trump may face for other nominees.
In fact, if Trump is able to muscle through his other controversial nominees, the lesson may be that Trump is more unchecked by Congress than ever, said Edward Foley, an Ohio State University constitutional law expert.
“The Senate will have come up short as measured by the Senators’ own views about the nominees and their capacity to withstand presidential pressure,” Foley said.
Still, Trump has long sought to avoid even the appearance that his power, particularly over Republicans, has limits. He won the presidential election just 16 days ago and is at the apex of his influence, unfurling unconventional nominees for powerful government posts at breakneck speed. And he has vowed to launch his second term with a fusillade of executive branch force, from mass deportations to pardons for Jan. 6 rioters to facilitating the wind-down of the Russia-Ukraine war. And he is also expected to rely on the attorney general to rip out the last vestiges of any lingering investigations into his own alleged crimes.
And in recent days, Trump appeared to lean into the Gaetz nomination despite acknowledging its uphill climb. He reportedly called senators and urged them to keep an open mind, and he sent his Vice President-elect JD Vance to Capitol Hill to persuade senators with reservations about Gaetz.
The failure to confirm Gaetz — perhaps his most ferocious loyalist in Washington — to a post that wields significant influence over Trump’s own legal fate is not the plan Trump drew up.
Sen. Chuck Grassley said the episode shows that Trump’s ability to jam through controversial nominees is roughly the same as it was for Bill Clinton, who nominated three attorneys general before getting one confirmed.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated the Cabinet position for which Bill Clinton put forward three nominees.
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