Trump’s National Security Team Keeps Getting More Extreme

Two former staffers from Donald Trump’s first presidential term are now vying to be his deputy national security adviser. 

Politico reports that Sebastian Gorka and Michael Anton are top contenders for the post, which would not require Senate confirmation. On Monday, Trump asked Florida Republican Representative Mike Waltz to be his national security adviser.

Both Gorka and Anton would be controversial picks. Gorka reportedly believes that violence is inherently part of Islam, and vehemently supported Trump’s Muslim ban. Born in London to Hungarian parents, Gorka lived in Hungary from 1992 to 2008, and at one point had an arrest warrant on gun charges in the country. 

In 2016, while also a consultant for Trump’s first presidential campaign, Gorka worked for the FBI, but was fired for his anti-Muslim diatribes. Gorka also was accused of having ties to a Nazi-allied organization in Hungary, Vitzi Rend, a charge he denies, although he has been photographed wearing a medal from the antisemitic group.  

From January 2017 until August of that year, Gorka worked in the Trump administration as a strategist and deputy assistant to the president and was supposed to work on national security issues. However, he was unable to obtain a security clearance, raising questions about what he was actually doing in the White House. Even Gorka’s academic credentials have been called into question, as he claims to have a doctorate, which experts say was awarded on weak standards.  

Anton worked as a speechwriter for conservative figures including Rudy Giuliani, Condoleezza Rice, and Rupert Murdoch before joining the Trump administration as a deputy assistant to the president for strategic communications in 2017. He has also espoused anti-Muslim views, criticized the Black Lives Matter movement, and even claimed in 2020 that George Soros was planning a coup with the help of the Democratic Party. He is arguably best known as the author of “The Flight 93 Election,” a 2016 manifesto that urged conservatives to support Trump. 

Of the two, Anton is more likely to get the post, according to one of Politico’s sources. But if either gets the job, they will have access to vital national security information, will craft policy, and will likely also target American citizens they disagree with. That’s a scary prospect, especially with a president who has repeatedly threatened to use the military against “the enemy within.”  

Donald Trump tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday, effectively handing the reins of the nation’s health policies to a renowned conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic who has admitted to having brain-eating worms in his head.

“I am thrilled to announce Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as The United States Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS),” Trump announced on X. “For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation.”

Kennedy’s nomination was always on the horizon, despite the insistence of Trump’s transition co-chair that it would not be the case.

In his first speech after being declared the winner of the 2024 election, Trump promised that Kennedy would take on a role in his second administration that would “help make America healthy again.”

“He’s a great guy, he really means it, he wants to do some things and we’re going to let him go to it,” Trump said.

During an interview with NBC News’s Dasha Burns earlier this month, Trump refused to promise that he wouldn’t ban vaccines, instead outlining his intentions to talk to Kennedy and “talk to other people” and make a decision. “He’s a very talented guy and has strong views,” Trump said of Kennedy.

During the same interview, Trump signaled that he would be open to RFK Jr.’s recommendation to remove fluoride from all public water systems—a 1945 public health decision that has reduced cavities and tooth decay in adults and children by as much as 25 percent, according to the American Dental Association.

The choice will likely draw the ire of medical professionals across the nation, as Kennedy reportedly has plans to strip even long-standing vaccines from the market.

Vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The jabs are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox, a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

This story has been updated.

Senate leadership seems all mixed up about giving Donald Trump the power to straight-up bypass Congress and appoint Matt Gaetz as his attorney general.

Ahead of Trump’s recent Cabinet picks (a crew of loyalists so unqualified it feels more like trolling than anything else), the president-elect laid out his shady plan to get them appointed without Senate approval.

“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner,” Trump wrote Sunday on X.

Unlike typical official appointments, recess appointments don’t require a Senate vote, and allow the president to unilaterally decide who will fill a role. The appointment wouldn’t be permanent; it might only last until the end of that session, which is no more than two years. At the end of that time, the president could just renominate their pick and appoint them again.

This would be particularly useful in the case of Gaetz, an antagonistic MAGA acolyte currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for alleged sexual misconduct, among a slate of other charges.

CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju asked several top Republicans whether they actually supported Trump’s request for recess appointments.

Florida Senator Rick Scott, a staunch Trump ally, said that he supported Trump’s request. “Well I believe in recess appointments, so I was very clear,” said Scott. “And I think John Cornyn and John Thune are committed to recess appointments.”

That would have been all well and good if Scott had won his bid to become the Senate majority leader earlier this week. But he didn’t, Thune did. And it’s not clear that Thune or Cornyn agree with Scott at all.

“Well that’s another whole issue; obviously I don’t think we should be circumventing the Senate’s responsibilities, but I think it’s premature to be talking about recess appointments right now,” Cornyn replied, when asked about possibly allowing recess appointments.

Scott claimed that he, Thune, and Cornyn had agreed on recess appointments ahead of the Senate GOP election Tuesday. Cornyn said that no such discussion had taken place.

Cornyn added that “there should not be any limitation” on the Senate’s investigation into Gaetz. Separately, he told ABC’s Rachel Scott that he “absolutely” wanted to see the Ethics report on Gaetz.

As for Thune, he claimed that whether he would allow Trump to make recess appointments hadn’t even crossed his mind.

“I haven’t given that any thought yet,” Thune added. “I just know that the nomination isn’t formalized yet, but when it is, we’ll process it in the way we typically do and provide our advise and consent.”

On Wednesday, Thune signaled that he hoped to put nominees through standard confirmation hearings. “I’m willing to grind through it and do it the old-fashioned way,” Thune told South Dakota reporters.

Another member of Republican Senate leadership, Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, who became vice chair of the Senate GOP Policy Committee Tuesday, also pushed back on Trump’s request for recess appointments.

“I think the Supreme Court would even step in on those roles,” Lankford said, adding that he wouldn’t favor recess appointments.

Elon Musk is holding open auditions for employment at his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Applicants simply must be willing to work grueling hours for zero compensation. 

DOGE made the announcement Thursday from its official account on X, writing:

We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE. We don’t need more part-time idea generators. We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting. If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.

Musk then quote-tweeted a message regarding the “monumental amount of tedious super-high quality work” that would be required to run the department.   

“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero,” Musk wrote. “What a great deal!” The billionaire attached a laughing emoji at the end of the tweet. 

Musk is familiar with these kinds of absurd labor demands. He warned Twitter employees to either be “extremely hardcore” or leave when he bought the platform in 2022. He also told them they’d have to work “long hours at high intensity.” Eighty percent of the staff left soon after.

Musk was one of Donald Trump’s most prominent advocates (and donors) on the campaign trail, and he hasn’t left the president-elect’s side since his victory. In return Trump gifted Musk the Department of Governmental Efficiency—or DOGE, a stale reference to an ancient internet meme—along with Vivek Ramaswamy. How the department will operate, and what the jobs there will even look like, remains to be seen. 

Steve Bannon has a vision for the future, and it involves locking up MSNBC’s anchors and their producers for criticizing President-elect Donald Trump.

“You better be worried. You better lawyer up. Some of you young producers, you better call Mom and Dad tonight. ‘Hey Mom and Dad, you know a good lawyer?’ Lawyer up. Lawyer up,” Bannon said on his show, War Room, Wednesday.

The shocking threat came on the heels of news that Donald Trump had tapped Florida Representative Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general (a conveniently timed appointment that has the dual benefit of killing a House Ethics investigation into Gaetz’s alleged misconduct with women and minors). That decision will effectively hand Gaetz the keys to the Justice Department during Trump’s second term—so long as the unsavvy but deferential political operative can ride the wave.

“You try to destroy Trump. You try to imprison Trump. You try to break Trump,” Bannon continued. “He’s not breakable. You couldn’t destroy him. And now he is turned on you. And he’s put a firebrand in charge of main justice—Department of Justice. And you’re going to have to live with it.”

The ex–Breitbart editor then went on to name names, calling out host Ari Melber and MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann, who was part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

“I’ve never complained about this,” Bannon said. “Never bitched and moaned about it. Just came with the territory. I understood they feared us. And why do they fear us? Because we were coming to take down the globalists and the deep state!”

Bannon was himself, at one point, at the epicenter of Trump’s universe, serving as the forty-fifth president’s chief White House strategist before the former Apprentice host fired him in 2017 following a series of controversies in which Bannon openly contradicted Trump and began to encroach on the MAGA limelight.

But despite his incredible fall from grace, Bannon has continued to posit his influence in the far-right sphere. In 2023, the political provocateur issued a similar threat, promising to slam MSNBC with “prosecutions and accountability.”

“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Bannon said at the time.

Republican Senators Rand Paul and Thom Tillis got into a heated exchange Thursday over aid for hurricane victims in Virginia and North Carolina.

Tillis asked for an aid bill to be passed by unanimous consent during a floor speech, but Paul had other ideas, pushing for an amendment that the relief be paid for with green energy funds and complaining about unrelated funds to Ukraine. In effect, Paul’s amendment would block the aid bill, which drew Tillis’s ire. The North Carolina senator then asked the Kentucky senator to yield his time for questions, setting off an argument.

“Look, our state motto is Esse quam videri,” Tillis, who represents North Carolina, said. “It says to ‘be’ rather than to ‘seem.’ This is a disingenuous offer to amend my bill.”

Tillis suggested that Paul was grandstanding and perhaps planning to use his rant, which attacked the Green New Deal, in a fundraising email. “This bill, if it got amended, has no prayer,” Tillis said. “I came to the Senate to make a difference, not to make a point.

“I assume that Senator Paul knows how to count votes,” Tillis added. “He has to know that he doesn’t have the votes to get this bill done if it’s amended. To be rather than to seem. I’m focused on trying to get North Carolina back on track and not playing a game on the Senate floor.”

Paul stuck to his guns, insisting that the funds weren’t available thanks to the “accumulation of $35 trillion worth of debt,” prompting a response from Tillis that Paul was “playing a game of being disingenuous.” The North Carolina senator noted that the House, which is controlled by Republicans, would find a way to pay for the aid relief and that Paul was “putting a poison pill” that would prevent the bill from passing in the Senate.

Paul used debate over the bill to expound upon a favorite Republican punching bag, the Green New Deal, missing the irony that the environmental plan seeks to reduce the greenhouse emissions that are a major factor in increasingly severe hurricanes. Tillis has a point—people who have suffered because of Hurricane Helene care more about immediate relief than funding technicalities.

It’s only been a week since Republicans had a successful election in which they won the presidency as well as Congress, and they are already having trouble passing a simple aid relief bill for hurricane victims that even had Democratic support. If this is how Congress is going to function when the GOP takes full control next year, we can expect more gridlock and hardly any bills being passed.

For anyone who was worried that Donald Trump’s decision to nominate Representative Matt Gaetz to be the next attorney general seemed a little half-baked, that’s because it was: The plan came together within the span of only a few hours, Politico reported Thursday.

At the beginning of Wednesday, Gaetz wasn’t even on Trump’s short list for the position, but the president-elect wasn’t quite feeling his spate of options, according to Politico’s Playbook.

Then Gaetz boarded Trump’s plane Wednesday morning, and Boris Epshteyn, the Trump team’s top lawyer, went to work convincing Trump that the Florida Republican, who’d previously been investigated by the Justice Department, should now be its leader. (Epshteyn is accused of assisting Rudy Giuliani’s fake electors scheme in Arizona and obstructing the certification of the 2020 election result. He pleaded not guilty, but the case is still ongoing.)

One Trump adviser told The Bulwark that Trump liked Gaetz, who has no experience as a government attorney or judge, for his unorthodox, extrajudicial style.

“None of the attorneys had what Trump wants, and they didn’t talk like Gaetz,” the adviser said. “Everyone else looked at AG as if they were applying for a judicial appointment. They talked about their vaunted legal theories and constitutional bullshit. Gaetz was the only one who said, ‘Yeah, I’ll go over there and start cuttin’ fuckin’ heads.’”

It seems that Trump didn’t actually want a lawyer; he wanted a loyal mercenary. Meanwhile, Gaetz’s nomination, and subsequent resignation, has raised a considerable ruckus on the Hill.

The House Ethics Committee was planning to release a report on its multiyear investigation into Gaetz Friday. Gaetz is being investigated for alleged sexual misconduct and a spate of other alleged ethics violations.

He was previously investigated by the Justice Department for allegedly having an inappropriate relationship with a 17-year-old girl and violating sex trafficking laws, but he was never formally charged—though the probe still might explain his take-no-prisoners attitude toward the attorney general spot.

John Clune, the attorney representing the underage girl, on Thursday urged the House Ethics Committee to release its report. “She was a high school student and there were witnesses,” he wrote on X.

House Ethics Chair Michael Guests insisted he had no plans to release the report, though not all Republicans agree. Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin demanded that the report be shared with his committee, and Republican Senator John Cornyn also urged its release. Some GOP sources suggested that the report will be leaked as early as Thursday, per Pablo Manriquez.

Alex Jones is having a full meltdown on the cusp of InfoWars’ extinction.

The far-right conspiracy network was auctioned off to the satirical outlet The Onion, ending what was arguably Jones’s most successful endeavor while marking the beginning of his descent into irrelevancy.

During a breathless rant on Steve Bannon’s War Room from the InfoWars studio, Jones called the news of The Onion’s acquisition “ridiculous,” referred to U.S. regulators as “imperial troops,” and insisted that the auction rules had been changed at the last minute by the “deep state.”

“They are in the building, they told the office manager, and they’re calling me right now, that they have ordered the I.T. providers to cut all the I.T. off to shut InfoWars off,” Jones said. “I could get on a live camera right now and go show you the U.S. trustee and the auctioneer.”

“It’s confirmed now that they’re going to cut the power,” Jones said before busting into a grueling laugh. “We are literally sinking, tied up to the new boat, and we’re taking both ships right now, Steve Bannon, God bless you.”

“They’re in the control room.… Imperial troops are through the glass,” Jones said before standing up and walking off camera. “It is a distinct honor to be here in defiance of the tyrants.”

Bannon then suggested that Jones and his crew should put a microphone in front of the regulators as they comb through Jones’s assets.

At one point during the live broadcast, Jones attempted to project that he had made peace with the major loss, encouraging his viewers to tune in to his new news site.

“All you’re doing is shutting down the building and taking away AlexJones.com and the Infowars store,” he said. “We got funds coming in. We got high-powered lawyers. We’re moving forward. The tide has turned.”

In the run-up to the auction, Jones had appeared to be under the impression that “good guys” on the right would buy the fringe network, though he did not reveal who they were. Several groups expressed interest in InfoWars assets, including a coalition of liberal and anti-disinformation watchdog groups, according to The Daily Beast, as well as some of Jones’s own supporters, like Donald Trump ally Roger Stone.

The Onion’s monumental media scoop was made in partnership with the families of Sandy Hook victims, whom Jones owes at least $85 million after he lost a $1.5 billion case for claiming that the massacre, which claimed the lives of 20 first graders and six adults, was a hoax.

Ben Collins, The Onion’s CEO, playfully shared the news on social media, asking if anyone needed “millions of dollars worth of supplements.” As the news broke, The Onion—in true form—published an article by Bryce P. Tetraeder, the so-called CEO of Global Tetrahedron (The Onion’s “parent company”), in which the faux executive praised the conspiracy network as an “invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses.”

“With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal,” the satirical piece read.

Donald Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general is not just drawing backlash from Senate Republicans—even Fox News hosts aren’t fans. 

On Fox & Friends Thursday morning, Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade didn’t hold back their misgivings about Gaetz potentially ascending to the post, pointing out the House Ethics Committee investigation against him over sexual misconduct, drug use, and public corruption. 

“The report has been written, apparently, and Washington, D.C., leaks like a sieve. And you can bet, dollar to donuts, if he is … undergoes the confirmation hearing process as is standard, somebody is going to read verbatim from whatever it says,” Doocy said.

Kilmeade pointed out that Gaetz was “solely responsible for blowing up the House last year,” referring to his leading role in ousting former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and said he had “no plan” to fix the situation before House Republicans coalesced around Representative Mike Johnson. Later, Kilmeade called out Gaetz for being part of the “clown car.” 

“I always thought when Susie Wiles took the job [of chief of staff], you heard, she says, ‘The one thing I would say is I don’t want to see any of the clown car,’” Kilmeade said. “I always thought Matt Gaetz was in the clown car, so I’m surprised he’d be part of the starting lineup.” 

Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress Wednesday after being named by Trump to the attorney general post, only two days before the House Ethics Committee was set to vote on releasing its report about the investigation into Gaetz. While the move ends the investigation, it has raised more questions about what Gaetz is trying to hide. On Thursday, a “close friend” of Gaetz is petitioning a court to destroy records detailing a drug-fueled sex party that a trafficked 17-year-old and Gaetz allegedly attended in 2017. 

With Gaetz taking heat from Republicans and conservative media alike, it’s unclear if he’d be able to make it through the Cabinet confirmation process. The investigation into his alleged misdeeds must contain damning information for Gaetz to take a drastic step such as resigning, especially since the contents of the House committee’s report will likely come out before or during his confirmation hearings. In any case, it’s an inauspicious start for any Cabinet nominee, let alone one who is vying to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer.   

Florida Representative Matt Gaetz’s shocking attorney general nomination now has Dick Durbin demanding to see Ethics Committee receipts. 

The deeply divisive hardcore Trump loyalist was nominated for attorney general on Wednesday, leaving members of both parties aghast. Gaetz drew his colleagues’ ire after forcing out Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and has been accused of trafficking and having sex with a 17-year-old girl at a drug-fueled party in 2017. Gaetz’s friend Joel Greenberg has already confessed to having sex with the underage victim and claimed that Gaetz paid him to bring her. Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend has also told the court that he was indeed present at the party. Gaetz has repeatedly denied the allegations, which could potentially upend his nomination to the position of highest attorney in the land.  

The House Ethics Committee was investigating the Florida representative for these allegations, but that probe—which was slated to be released soon—closed as soon as Gaetz resigned from his House seat to prepare for the confirmation process.

After Gaetz’s resignation, Senate Democrat and Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin called upon the House Ethics Committee to “preserve and share their report and all relevant documentation on Mr. Gaetz with the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

“We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people,” the Democratic senator said. “Make no mistake: this information could be relevant to the question of Mr. Gaetz’s confirmation as the next Attorney General of the United States.”

Conservatives would rather sweep the Ethics Committee investigation under the rug than allow Durbin to air out Gaetz’s very dirty laundry. Republican House Ethics Committee Chair Mike Guest explained to Punch Bowl’s Max Cohen that he didn’t have the jurisdiction to release the report. “What happens in ethics is confidential. We’re going to maintain that confidentiality,” he said. The other Republican senators on the committee—Lindsey Graham, Thom Tillis, and Josh Hawley—agree. CBS News’s Robert Costas reported that Republicans don’t have much energy for “pushing back” against the controversial nomination. “Trump runs the show,” Costas wrote on X. “If Gaetz can reassure them, they’re open to backing him.”

But as Republicans move to hush Gaetz’s sex trafficking allegations, others note that this mess is likely far from over. “Mr. Gaetz’s likely nomination as attorney general is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events,” tweeted John Clune, the lawyer representing the underage victim. “We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses.”