Transitioned
1. This essential reading New York Times story captures just how chaotic, free-flowing, and Cluster F-ing and S- Showing the Mar-a-Lago personnel bizarre bazaar is, but, if anything, the piece understates matters.
2. This essential reading New York Times story captures just how powerful Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn is now, but, if anything, the piece understates matters
3. Yes, in case you didn’t know, a lot of people have Donald Trump’s mobile number and call him. And he answers pretty much every call. I’ve covered a lot of transitions and I’ve never had so many people end my conversations with them by saying, “I’m going to call Trump.”
4. The “background checks” taking place before some of these cabinet picks have been announced are roughly as rigorous as what someone would go through before being selected as the head of external affairs at a small New England liberal arts college.
5. Keep your eye on the deputy secretary nominations, with some Trump advisers counting on strong #2s to run the departments under the “leadership” of cabinet members with management resumes that are lacking.
6. There is zero sign that the media and Capitol Hill conversations will turn away from the nomination controversies anytime soon. There is still a lot more reporting to come on the backgrounds of Kennedy, Gaetz, Noem, Hegseth, and Gabbard, stuff that has never been public before and, in at least some cases, would be considered disqualifying for the positions sought, under normal circumstances with a normal president-elect, neither of which pertains here.
7. As you game out the confirmation prospects of these five, there are two underappreciated and/but countervailing dynamics to keep top of mind. On the one hand, there are actually many more Republican senators who could vote “no” on various of these controversy nominees than is commonly thought. On the other hand, JD Vance and the MAGA superstructure (podcasts, social, Substacks, etc.) are gearing up to mobilize aggressively to make threats and take names if they are crossed.
8. While it is still typical for folks to say “X nominee will definitely be confirmed,” or, alternatively, that “X nominee will definitely NOT be confirmed,” I would not recommend taking either position definitively about any of the Big 5 at this point.
9. Let’s hope for America’s sake the fierceness on display by the combatants jousting over who will get the plum jobs as part of the Trump economic team will be replicated by whoever survives this beastly battle as they confront China. And let’s hope for Donald Trump’s sake that the team he ultimately assembles can get along.
10. A normal transition facing five nominees under siege would have an aura of crisis around it; at Mar-a-Lago, they call this Saturday. If folks go down, they fill find new picks and move forward.
****
AS FOR THE DEMOCRATS
1. This Axio story about House Democrats privately grousing about Nancy Pelosi stepping back into the spotlight is a watershed moment regarding the Bay Area titan’s relationship to her flock and her unchallenged status as the Godmother – and also perhaps the single most important story for the party since Election Day.
2. The New York Times essential reading piece rounding up the post-election elite Resistance efforts has a lot of great threads in it, but some might see in these plans an over reliance on process and on consultants looking to make more bucks, rather than on ideas, voters, and true leaders.
3. If you haven’t yet watched it, I give you my highest recommendation that you spend ten minutes viewing this young doctor who came on 2WAY yesterday and explained why he left the Democratic Party to vote for Bobby Kennedy. His generational account is revealing, spellbinding, and explanatory in a way you will not read in the New York Times or Washington Post:
****
ESSENTIAL READING
* All embedded above.
****
CORRECTIONS: Friday’s edition was filled with too many typos and errant words to list here, including the numerous misspelling of “Gaetz” as “Gates,” the latter of which you can blame autocorrect for. Nonetheless I take full responsibility for all of the errors, regret them, and say only by way of explanation that mistakes were made.