Trump Nominations & Recess Appointments
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Hey folks, Preet here. The transition to the second Trump presidency is underway, bringing big changes. Trump's return to the White House will likely mark the end of his criminal prosecutions. Already, Trump's election victory is causing delays in the federal election interference case and sentencing in Manhattan. President-elect Trump is also in the process of nominating members of his cabinet and filling other high-profile positions.

In other news, the Department of Justice charged an Iranian man for plotting to assassinate Trump. Joyce Vance and I discuss all that and more on a new episode of the Cafe Insider podcast. If you're a member of Cafe Insider, head over to the Insider feed or click the link in the show notes of this podcast to listen to the full analysis. Stay tuned, listeners. Remain here for an excerpt from our conversation. To become a member of Cafe Insider, head to cafe.com slash November.

For a limited time, get 40% off your membership for the first year. That's cafe.com slash November. Now, on to the show. So as they say, as the old phrase goes, as we think about what kinds of things Trump will do in the second term, personnel is policy, right? Depends on who's put in spots, not just what the platform is, not just what the commander-in-chief and the CEO of the country, president,

says he wants to accomplish. If you put incompetent people, those things won't be accomplished. If you put in people of ill will, those things may or may not be accomplished, but the way in which they'll be accomplished may be awful and terrible, unethical, borderline illegal, unconstitutional, unpatriotic. So I think for the next number of weeks, we're going to look very carefully at who he's appointing

and the way in which he wants them to be put into office. And Trump, you know, we're seeing it already. He's going to be making news every day with another appointment, although he doesn't have the ability to appoint. He's already talking about, you know, bypassing the normal procedure, which is very surprising to me. As we're recording this, Republicans have taken back the Senate at least 52 to 47. There's one Senate race that's outstanding. So at a minimum, it's going to be 52 to 48.

He should be able to get his nominees to the cabinet positions and other Senate confirmable positions in place. Notwithstanding that, Trump has weighed in both on the leadership question, because Mitch McConnell is stepping aside as leader, and also on the confirmation process. Let me read this tweet. Quote, 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.

Sometimes the votes can take two years or more. He goes on to say, we need positions filled immediately. Additionally, no judges should be approved during this period, meaning during the transition, because the Democrats are looking to ram through their judges, etc., etc., etc. Elon Musk replies, this is essential. There is no other way. And Rick Scott, who by the time you listen to this, may in fact be the Senate majority leader for the Republicans, also endorsed this.

Trump's tweet, 100% agree, I will do whatever it takes to get your nominations through as quickly as possible. Why is he talking about recess appointments before he served his first day of the second term when he will have the Senate back? I mean, it's crazy, right? They have a clear majority in the Senate that should be proof even if they lose a person or two. But, you know, I've seen some mention, and I thought you might know more about this,

about an intention in the Senate to go into recess almost as soon as Trump is inaugurated. I'm not sure I understand what that's about, and I'd love to know more. It's funny, though, how short people's memories are, right? Donald Trump forgets that he confirmed judges in the lame duck, including Aileen Cannon, the judge in the classified documents case, confirmed after he lost the election in 2020.

Shocking hypocrisy. Or maybe it's not shocking hypocrisy. Maybe it's now expected hypocrisy. Expected hypocrisy. There's an organization that I think is quite respectable called the Center for Presidential Transition. And in December of 2020, so this is not updated, it doesn't take into account what happened in the Biden administration with the appointees to the cabinet. But back in 2020, you look back at generations and generations of presidential administrations at their start,

and noted that 95% of cabinet nominees have received pre-inauguration hearings, which is pretty substantial. And that overall, the vast majority of any president's nominees are confirmed very, very quickly, sometimes within a day. The Senate confirmed Clinton's nominees in less than one day on average, and George W. Bush's in less than two days on average.

There were some outliers. Eric Holder took 13 days. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis took 35 days. Trump was a little bit different. And this report points out some of the reasons why. Let me just read from it and see what you think of it, Joyce, and think of the current posture of Trump as he enters upon his second term. Quote, while Trump's nominees took an average of nearly 24 days each to confirm, his experience was the exception rather than the rule. Because of the transition's leadership changes immediately following the election, which I think was the firing of Chris Christie.

The Trump transition had a late start, selecting and vetting candidates. This late start, combined with paperwork delays for nominees, and the fact that a number of nominees had particularly complicated financial portfolios, added days to the confirmation process. There were additional procedural votes, whatever. And it concludes, ultimately, even with those problems, 14 of the 15 secretaries Trump officially submitted to the Senate were eventually confirmed. And by the way, how many of those 15...

has Trump himself called stupid, idiotic, moronic, treasonous, and stupid. Did I say stupid twice? Sort of. So what's going on here? Well, and we should say in addition to the ones...

of Trump's who left in disgrace, which was more than just a couple. You know, I'm sort of at a loss here. Trump should have no trouble getting his people confirmed immediately following his inauguration. This should not be an issue for him. He has thorough control of the Senate.

We're starting to see some of the names. We have not seen, you know, sort of the big power agencies yet. We haven't seen names at the Department of Defense or at the Justice Department. We have seen Kristi Noem for the Department of Homeland Security. Well, we saw the EPA first, Lee Zeldin, EPA. Does he have any qualifications to do environmental work? I got to do some research on that. I mean, it's crazy. I guess the question is, what is Trump trying to do and accomplish?

And I want to be very careful as we go forward. I think we've always been pretty careful not to jump to conclusions, not to always assume that there's the most nefarious purpose, not because it's not often the case, but I really do think in a second Trump term, everyone needs to pick their arguments very carefully. Everyone needs to acknowledge that they could be wrong about things. Shouldn't be jumping on critique bandwagons like sometimes happens, whether it's the Hunter Biden laptop

or anything else. But the question that's being raised is, is Trump doing something larger than anticipating a lot of opposition to some of his more controversial picks that may be coming down the pike? Is he trying to eviscerate the role of the Senate, who in the Constitution, along with the House, is a co-equal branch of government, number one, and number two, has a historic role enshrined in the Constitution to advise and consent on nominees?

And is this something more than anticipating a struggle with nominees? Does it rise to the level of trying to undo the constitutional order? Are the people who are saying that off their rocker? Are we doing this again? Over-criticizing too early based on various moves that Trump makes or things...

that he says without making moves? What do you think? So look, I mean, I hear that, but I just don't understand why, unless he just wanted to make a point, right? Senate, I am defying your advice and consent rule here. There's no need because he has the votes. He has the votes

beyond a shadow of a doubt. I think that makes it difficult to see unless there's something about this crazy idea that the Senate will go into recess and who knows what that would mean so early in a new administration. It's really, I think, difficult to diagnose. And I'm very interested in following this to see if there is something to be concerned about buried in all of this. ♪

I hope you enjoyed our discussion. To listen to the full episode, head to cafe.com slash November to become a member and get 40% off your membership for the first year. You'll be supporting our work and you'll get exclusive access to full weekly podcast episodes of Insider and bonus material from Stay Tuned. Head to cafe.com slash November. I just don't get it. Just wish someone could do the research on it. Can we figure this out?

Hey, y'all. I'm John Blenhill, and I'm hosting a new podcast at Vox called Explain It To Me. Here's how it works. You call our hotline with questions you can't quite answer on your own. We'll investigate and call you back to tell you what we found. We'll bring you the answers you need every Wednesday starting September 18th. So follow Explain It To Me, presented by Klaviyo. Okay.

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