The D.C. Brief

That might have been so, if only he didn't want Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth as Attorney General and Secretary of Defense, or Tulsi Gabbard overseeing the nation's spy agencies-not to mention RFK Jr.
getting anywhere near the CDC. If Trump can't get the support he needs from a Republican-controlled Senate to confirm his polarizing picks, that leaves only the prospect of recess appointments, which would require the chamber to go on a break long enough for Trump to install them in the meantime. But as long as Trump treats staffing as an exercise in trolling, the Senate's prerogative over his Cabinet picks remains on sturdy ground.
If you want to understand how Trump's novel nominees are being received, listen carefully to what outgoing Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is telling allies.
"Institutions worth preserving have to be defended. And this is the work which, by necessity, has occupied my focus during my time in Washington," McConnell said on Nov. 12, when asked at an American Enterprise Institute event about the potential Trump 2.0 Cabinet. The longest-serving party leader in history minced no words: "Each of these nominees needs to come before the Senate and go through the...