Playing Trump Cabinet Roulette With Marc Caputo and Meridith McGraw
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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Tuck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. Trump is moving in hot. He is assembling his cabinet at breakneck speed, and it's causing the Senate to experience extreme whiplash as they try to wrap their heads around the idea of confirming candidates like Matt Gaetz for attorney general.

would never be confirmed before Trump. Remember, the Senate is a gentleman's club. They don't feel the pressure of the grassroots in the same way that Congress does because they're up for reelection every six years. There's a certain decorum and propriety. They're kind of like the adults of the congressional wing. And Trump is putting a lot of pressure on them. He's showing them that he has a mandate and he's stretching the powers of the presidency. He did outrun many of these members by a lot.

And so he's obviously coming in there and making pretty extreme demands. And he really won't back down on Matt Gaetz in particular. Already, he's making it known that he wants to call a national emergency so that he can use the full force of the military to execute mass deportations. I think this will be extremely messy, much like the Muslim ban was. I'm not sure he can pull it off. I think the courts will try to stop him.

But I do think there'll be a moment of extreme shock for the country when they see that happening. So on this show, I trade reporting and notes with my colleagues, Mark Caputo at The Bulwark and Meredith McGraw at Politico, about the cabinet pageantry happening in Mar-a-Lago, the infighting, as people jockey for roles or try to get their...

guy in the administration. We also talk about the confirmation circus that's about to happen in January when these Senate hearings for these cabinet appointments actually play out. And we also talk about what's next, like in the next few days, because anything can happen.

Mark, Meredith, thanks so much for coming on the show. I've got two of the preeminent Trump whisperers on the call. Between the three of us, we will be able to hold out our crystal balls and predict what is going to happen over the next month. I know, actually, no matter how long you've been covering Trump, you can never really predict what's going to happen next, right?

Honestly, the Matt Gaetz for AG thing, that really threw me for a loop because even Matt didn't know about it early in the week last week. He thought he was getting passed over. And he's kind of like annoyed apparently about it. I mean, the fact that that came together on a plane ride from Palm Beach to DC in the morning...

That it was just Trump and Gates and Elon Musk and Boris and his advisors all like, you know, going around the horn thinking about this is like the most Trump appointment ever. And Susie Wiles is in the other part of the plane. Yeah, she's not going to the back of the plane. Like, you know what? Nothing good is going to come of this. Yeah.

Yeah, it's like the kids were left to play and they picked AG. Let's talk about Susie Wiles because I feel like not a lot of people really know her. Like we throw her name around. She's the chief of staff. She was the co-campaign manager. She was around forever. You guys know her really well. Like how would you describe her?

I would describe her as a master of being able to manage people and competing interests. And I'm going to be accused of being too much of a fanboy by some people. They can go fuck themselves. But the reality is her success in Trump's orbit has been because she's had a very sort of Zen-like approach, an egoless approach to him. And as I've either said or written, or maybe both,

The campaign, the Trump campaign, and I think now the administration is essentially built on the MAGA serenity prayer, which is having the serenity to accept the things that she can't change, which is Donald Trump's essential nature, and try to just change or fix all of the other things and having the wisdom to know the difference. And she has that wisdom. Exactly. And I think she's definitely an operator and she knows not to mess with too many people around Trump because she'll create too many enemies.

And she knows that's another part of it. Don't be a gatekeeper. She has, I think, gained the most loyal following of staffers that I've ever seen around anybody in Trump worlds. There are people that have worked with her for a long time that would like follow her anywhere. And to what Mark was saying, she really does have such a calm presence.

presence. And she is really thoughtful and she knows when to step in and make her case on something. And she also knows what Mark was saying too, that like Trump is not going to change his ways. He is who he is. And it's one of the reasons I think she's been so effective with him is that when she does

jump in to make her case on something, people listen. They know that it's serious and meaningful and she means business. Yeah. She's like a 67-year-old grandmother as well. Even just the way she speaks is very calming. I remember the first time I called her probably seven years ago with a bad story. And...

She was just like, oh, let's talk about this. Most people, when I call them, they freak the fuck out and start screaming at me. But with her, she was just like, let's talk. I was actually impressed by how implausible she was because usually people in Trump's orbit, actually anyone in political circles on both sides, they tend to just lose it. Well, that's because Trump world and a great example of this was a Washington Post article about the toxic masculinity issue.

Of the Trump campaign. And what was interesting is like Susie Wiles had helped assemble this team of just these aggressive alpha males who apparently throughout the campaign at their morning meetings or periodically would just sit there and shout at each other.

And she would just sit back and basically say nothing to your point. So that when she did speak, it had something to say, it had value, and people would listen, the shouting would stop. Sounds like she never really wanted a title either, right? Which is always something that everyone in Trump world wants. They want proximity to Trump. Seems like she didn't really care. I think the only way to win the Trump game is to be okay with losing, right? Well, you know, if you think back to...

her more modern Trump origin story. She's been around for a long time, obviously, but when she came back in early 2021, it was such a political low point for Donald Trump. He didn't have anybody around him. A lot of people didn't want to work for him. He didn't know who to trust. He didn't know who to lean on or call on. And Susie was there and she was his person at really a low point and helped bring him back. And

And she, at the time when she first started working for him, she wasn't taking a paycheck. She was just like travel was the only thing that was being paid for. And so I think in that way for Trump, it was like somebody who wasn't trying to get money out of him, wasn't trying to get fame out of him. Um, she was working for him because it was, uh,

She's a political problem solver. And I can't think of a bigger political problem to solve at the moment than Donald Trump in early 2021 after the White House. They also had a common enemy, right, in Ron DeSantis. So that's always binding. And she brought over all of her former DeSantis staffers. And I think that speaks to what you were saying earlier, which was that she has such a loyal following.

And that primary campaign, you could tell the relish and joy with which Taylor Budowich, then the head of the Trump super PAC, Susie Loyalist, just relished wrecking DeSantis. And they really seemed to enjoy themselves in that way. And while I never got the sense that Susie was out to seek revenge, all of a sudden,

all the people around her were out to seek revenge for her because she had been wronged by DeSantis. Yeah, because he fired her after she helped him win his first gubernatorial race. And a lot of them had also cycled through DeSantis' world in a very, like, kind of rough way. Some of them being fired, some just leaving, feeling, like, completely burned. We know DeSantis...

kind of brides people pretty rough. So she had a, she had an army around her when she came into Trump world and they, they stayed with her and they were loyal. I want to kind of move on to just the idea of this like breakneck speed in which these transition appointments are happening. And it's not even like they're going through heritage books that were being prepared of, you know, binders full of appointments. These are just randoms. I mean, some of them are randoms, like

Pete Hegseth, I was like, what? That guy on Fox? He's going to be in the administration's secretary of defense? Now, Tulsi, I thought, yeah, they'll probably give her something because she helped with moderate voters. Democrat turned Republican. She was out there as a surrogate. Okay, she gets rewarded. Fine. RFK Jr., Mary scooped that last week. I didn't think they were going to, he was going to go that far as to give him a cabinet appointment.

Trump picked Doug Burgum for Interior. Not surprising, but he's also like Energy Czar. DHS Secretary. Oh God. Kristi Noem, the dog killer. I mean, it all happened so quickly, but I don't even think I could have imagined her in the cabinet. There was never any talk about her being in the cabinet. It's just kind of so random in some ways to me. And it makes me think that he just feels like

I own you, Senate. I outran most of you. You will confirm my people. And if you don't, I'll do recess appointments. And this is my mandate. And I want to move tomorrow. He'd probably start making moves right now if he could, if he was in transition land. So I don't think...

It's so random though. I think, you know, some of these picks are obviously shocking, but like he had talked in 2016 about maybe having Hegseth for like a VA secretary and Tulsi, like you said, Tara, like it was probably, she was going to get some role. RFK Jr. in that same vein, he probably wasn't going to be satisfied with anything less than that.

And Matt Gates, we know how that happened. Um, and some of the other picks to like Rubio, he had passed over for VP Burgum. He had passed over for VP. Um,

So as much as like it has seemed, I think, really random at times, I totally agree with you. But it's like these are his sort of like MAGA Avengers and they've been out with him on the campaign trail. They've been around him. If anything, I feel like some of his base would be upset if they weren't the ones that were his picks.

I don't think the base cares about Rubio, though. Maybe I'm wrong, but... Not really, yeah. Or Burgum. I don't think Burgum's a MAGA warrior. Not to pick apart your argument, but I agree. They've been loyal to him, and they've been out on the road, for sure. Yeah, maybe MAGA Avengers, like, the wrong term, but, like, they've been really loyal to him and played a big role in his campaign in the end. The only two that really surprised me were Hegseth, just because that's out of, like, kind of left field or right field. It's also his qualification is that he's a...

Fox News anchor and veteran? Military guy. Yeah. I mean, 20 years, I guess. Bronze star. I mean, you know, he knows something about combat at least. But I couldn't I can't speak to whether he's qualified or not.

And now there's these allegations that he paid off a woman for sexual assault that just came forward. But I guess that actually adds to your resume. People keep asking, like, is he going to back away from Hexeth? And I'm like, when is Donald Trump, like, backed away from someone who has been accused of impropriety, especially a man with sexual impropriety? Like, I can't really think of it.

That's a bonding force for them. The only one that surprised me was Gates. I had told some people ahead of time, like, if you were Donald Trump, who would you pick? I was like, well, I would pick Matt Gates because he's loyal. He's smart. He'll do exactly what he wants him to do. But there's no way he'll pick Matt Gates. And then, boy, was I wrong about that.

That would seem very left field, but I'm impressed that you, you kind of saw that on the horizon. I have a text message to prove it. Ooh, text message approval. Yeah. But the, uh, I just don't know if, you know, my mainstream media mammal brain looks at all the mainstream media coverage of Gates problems, just wonders like how, how is he going to get through the Senate? But they,

They claim there's a path. I guess he can't just be a recess appointment, right? People have said this to me that you'd have to already be in the attorney general's office in some sort of role to be acting. Good question. I mean, if that's the case, yeah, I could easily see the whoever appointing him to a role in the, you know. Yeah, there's always a way around all this stuff, I guess, right? You can only be acting for two years and he goes and runs for governor in two years, governor.

governor of Florida in 2026? That's possible. I just don't I don't know the specifics. And people say that it's not quite clear about exactly how Trump could force a recess appointment if the senators realize, well, if we vote to go into recess, that vote for going into recess is essentially a vote for a controversial pick we might not want, i.e. in this case, Matt Gaetz. So, you know, time is going to tell.

That's my big question. You know, there's been so much talk about these recess appointments and, you know, Johnson said he's open to it. Foon had said he's open to it. But to Mark's point, and I know like Parliament doesn't

parliamentarian expert here, but don't they have to vote to go into recess and they would know what Pandora's box they were about to unleash? It's hard to see. I mean, if they already would lose Collins, Murkowski, McConnell said there's no way. Well, then where does that leave you? Someone posted, I think Jane Meyer from the New Yorker had posted on social media that McConnell had said this.

And it caused this uproar and then she deleted the post. So what do we think? What's the percentage chance that Matt Gaetz gets confirmed and how? You got me, man. I think he has got to make the case to senators about his seriousness as an actual administrator and person who wants to properly lead the agency. And he has to make the case that the allegations against him are false. Both are possible, but

It's just the coverage of him is just so negative that, man, I just...

It just is a real heavy lift. I don't know. What do you think, Mayor? On this ethics report, I guess Johnson's saying it's not coming out, but I don't know. Don't you think it'll leak? And a lot of the senators want to see it. Can Johnson stop senators from requesting this? I don't know. I mean, that's a big question is what happens with that ethics report. How much lobbying does Gates and Trump's team do behind the scenes?

There's just so much bad blood in Congress with Gates. It's it's really remarkable. I don't know. I think of all of the people Trump's put forward so far, I think Gates might have that might be the biggest uphill battle at the same time with Donald Trump so determined to put him in that spot. I would I would not rule anything out. What do you think? No, no.

Yeah, if Trump is really as determined as he says, I think there's a 70 percent chance we have Attorney General Matt Gaetz. The question is, does Matt Gaetz withdraw himself from contention if he thinks he doesn't have the votes? I don't know.

Will Matt Gaetz actually force a vote? Will Donald Trump go along with it and force a vote and have these hearings, which will be a spectacle? I mean, sort of literally spectacular hearings because he is equipped to defend himself. And he is. And one of the reasons he has so many enemies, acid tongue and sharp tongue and quick wit and quick on his feet. So.

That's another aspect we just have to consider. Do the senators actually have the stomach for this sort of spectacle in and of itself on Capitol Hill? Again, this is a classic Trump pick in that it is so...

controversial that we just don't know if his own party is going to go along with it. These confirmation hearings are going to be lit, though. Yeah, I guess RFK Jr., too. That's going to be a wild one. Tulsi met with Assad secretly. Of course, that's going to come up as well. If you're Kristi Noem, you're probably like, whew. Yeah, I shot a dog. I'm good.

Which I would say is a disqualifier, okay? So I know we were saying like Susie was on the other side of the plane and then they cooked up this Matt Gaetz thing. How much influence do you think she has? I feel like she used a lot of her juice on Marco Rubio, former client, friend for Secretary of State. But like how much do you think she's really able to expend now on the rest of these picks? Because like now you're hearing Boris Epstein is clashing with Elon Musk and he's the one who was pushing Matt Gaetz and...

And, you know, Howard Lutnick is grading on everyone. He's the transition chairman. He really wants secretary of treasury. Scott Besant was like seen as a shoo-in as of last week or the week before that when Trump was spending time with him. But there's been kind of like clashes. So a lot of people are like trying to exert their influence. And I kind of feel like Susie's taken a bit of a backseat at this point and sort of letting them like duke it out because she's

she kind of got her person in, but I'm curious to hear if you think that she's going to keep trying to exert influence over the next few decisions. No, I think my view of her has always been that, you know, she lets...

She's letting Trump lead. And we're just at this moment right now in the transition where you have... The names that you just rattled off, those are all huge egos, huge personalities that are enclosed in this tight space at Mar-a-Lago. And it's just, I think, inevitable that there's going to be clashing and power struggles with all of this. And I don't think that is...

The result of like, you know, a lack of anybody trying to exert any sort of control over the chaos. It's just the same chaos that's always been there that Trump really enjoys. He he loves people jostling for positions. He he enjoys seeing people like.

you know, duke it out. He enjoys the chaos. He actually thrives in it. And in some ways it's like one of his, I don't know, political positives in a way it like prevented people from ever knowing what he was going to do next, you know, prevented us from knowing who he was going to pick here. So I think the chaos is the, um, is the point. He likes to see the gladiators fighting for him, right?

Poor Melania. She never has any say in anything. Does she want it though? Well, she really wanted Rick Grinnell for Secretary of State. She wanted Burgum for VP. She gets a spot, Mar-a-Lago. That's pretty nice. I'm not interested in what she's going to do with that role though, to be honest with you, because between like her book coming out, her stepping on

some of the abortion messaging there with her book, pushing her own NFTs, her own Christmas ornaments. I'm very curious about what sort of presence she will have in the White House. She understands franchising, marketing, you know, she's a be best mayor. Maybe there's going to be an extension of be best, which I think is the ultimate sign off instead of all the best or best Tara. I say be best. Yeah.

It's great. Sure, it doesn't make grammatical sense, but I love it. I wonder if Trump is going to continue to hawk watches and NFTs as president. I mean, the fact that he did that as a candidate was kind of crazy, right? You just made me think of this with Melania selling Christmas ornaments and all of these other things. I think when you had asked earlier, what do we just see for the next few weeks? Man, I just have no idea. I don't get a lot of feedback or a lot of intel on just what

what Melania Trump wants to do. I mean, and it's in part because this transition has just been so kind of in your face and zero to 60 in three seconds that it's just really we're just back right where we were in 2017. I mean, the chaos, as Meredith says, or the energy is the same. It seems a little more directed.

But it's just really hard to kind of get a 10,000 foot view of what's happening. Elon Musk has actually lost some of the battles. He wanted Rick Scott to be the Senate majority leader. He publicly tweeted that he lost that one, right? There was someone else that he was pushing for that that lost a position as well. He's pushing Lutnik. Did my story yesterday on Lutnik, on Lutnik, you know, stepping on his fair share of rakes. And first it started with picking a fight.

unintentionally so with RFK saying RFK will never be HHS secretary. Well, RFK is HHS secretary. And then, you know,

30 minutes or a few hours after Lutnick met with Marco Rubio last Monday for the Secretary of State's post, the news leaks that Rubio was going to get the Secretary of State post. And Rubio people, Grinnell people, and Trump people, they're like, look, this doesn't benefit us leaking like this. He seems to have earned his fair share of sort of...

enemies there. And the way in which Lutnick has really gone after Besson, who is his rival for Treasury Secretary, really speaks to how he might have overplayed his hand. And the question is, with Elon Musk posting the endorsement of Lutnick for Treasury Secretary, is that sort of a defining moment in his influence over Trump?

If Trump decides not to go with Lutnick after Elon Musk publicly posts this, and the guy's with him all day and is privately talking to him,

Kind of says something about Trump. Trump is probably not liking some of the chatter that is starting to make him sound like a little sock puppet for the billionaire. Right, right, right. I agree. I think that Elon may be overstaying his welcome at Mar-a-Lago, sitting at the table all the time. Oh, he also was pushing for a Laura Trump, which I think Trump also wants Laura Trump in that Senate seat that's about to open up in Florida with Marco Rubio getting the secretary of state. Now, he's also the transition chairman. Yeah, coach.

I've heard some tension there too. Even before Trump won, people were complaining about Howard Lutnick. Because of how he handled RFK.

And he just showed up on CNN. The campaign didn't even know this before the election. And he starts freelancing about vaccines. And then he calls off and says that RFK will never be HHS secretary. That triggered a series, you know, RFK got mad. It triggered a series of meetings that week and kind of gummed up the campaign in the final week. And they're like, why are we dealing with transition ego dynamics prior to the election even being over? Wasn't the ideal situation. And a lot of people laid the blame right there on Ludmik's feet.

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What do you guys think this all means, though? Like, I know we're talking, like, a lot about inside baseball. Like, what's the dynamic inside? But what does it mean for the actual administration? The fact that these are the people that Trump is picking, that he's going to have some friction with the Senate. Does this mean, like...

January 20th, expect just full on mass deportations, lineup of Adam Schiff and all of the enemies of the people, maybe some of the people on this call. But, you know, like lining up all the enemies of the people, tariffs on tomorrow, like this just mean it all happens all at once. China, maybe there's no travel between the U.S. and China. The trade is completely stopped, like the Muslim ban.

Remember the first few days Stephen Miller put the Muslim ban out and all these people are stranded in the airport? What do you see happening? Of the first 100 days? I'm talking about first five days. The first five. I mean, Trump has said, right, that deportations are going to begin immediately. They have...

Tons of executive orders that are lined up and ready to go for Trump to sign and get sent off and kickstart, you know, the stuff on the first day. I mean, that's that's what all incoming presidents do really on the first day. They reverse Trump administration policies. They start their own. I mean, yeah.

The interesting thing now with Trump is he's actually just like putting back in place a lot of the stuff that he had done before. But if passed his precedent, then like it's going to be messy, as you said, with like, you know, these deportations. However, they are going to go about enacting a lot of his immigration agenda. That's going to probably happen.

get tied up in the courts. You know, what he does with tariffs immediately, what sort of impact that has. And then as we've been talking about these picks that he has for different agencies, the hearings for that, the confirmation battle that's going to go on. People won't be in place unless he does the recess appointments. You're right. So it's going to be, I think, a very busy time to say the least. The most consequential pick

Our decision is to fully elevate Stephen Miller to a deputy chief of staff. So he's essentially going to be the immigration czar, which he always was. He's incredibly well informed on all the ins and outs of immigration policy. So you've got sort of he's going to be the brains of the immigration policy. He's got Holman, the kind of the skull cracking border czar who is just saying like,

We just can't wait to flood the zone in blue cities and start deporting people. I just wonder how much of it is bluster to the degree of like, do they have the infrastructure to even begin a mass deportation thing? Like literally you have to have bodies to go find bodies and then take them to places to then deport them. And just how that works is,

I don't know. It's got chaos written all over it. It's also got civil rights violations written all over it. There's bound to be, if they do this on a mass, sudden scale, loads and loads of people who are actual U.S. citizens who could get swept up in this. That has a looming problem written all over it.

I think a lot of the administration's energy is going to be consumed by the drive to do deportations and the ensuing kind of logistical problems in doing it. The question is whether he can get the military to go along. This is now a Pete Hegseth question. He'll be in charge of DOD and posse comitatus and how that works using troops if they do. It

He did pledge and he joked, but it was still a pledge and it was covered as a pledge, not as a joke that he was going to be dictator on day one for immigration on the border. But man...

what that looks like is going to be a real, real possible mess. Yeah, it's going to have a huge impact on the economy, probably more so in the Western states where a lot of these workers are using agriculture, right? Republicans from some of these border states are trying to sort of change their tune a little bit on this. I forget who it was. I'm blanking on his name. It was on this week yesterday. It was suggesting maybe it should just be...

you know, migrants who've committed crimes, criminals. I mean, they're all sort of saying that criminals first, criminals first. You're hearing that from a lot of Republicans. You know, it's interesting because, you know, Bill Barr wrote in his book that before COVID, they were planning to do a big roundup mass deportation, but COVID sort of slowed it down. And then there's the there's the revoking of temporary protective status. You know, as a Miami resident, there are thousands and thousands of Haitians here and people from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras.

That is just that's going to be a huge thing. Now, contrary to what the Biden and then Harris campaign would lead you to believe and some of the mainstream media coverage would lead you to believe I as a resident of a Hispanic heavy, if not a majority, certainly a plurality county can tell you here in Miami-Dade County in Florida is.

Hispanic voters are they're cool with mass deportations, assuming it happens to only people who are not like citizens last in the door. You know, that's that's a part of it. Or, you know, their argument is, well, we came here legally. But in these in these big cities,

Whether it's Miami or Chicago or New York, there has been an immigration or migrant backlash that was beneficial to Trump. Eric Adams did him a huge favor by making this a central issue for the midterms. When does he get pardoned, by the way? Maybe he'll get a job in the administration. OK, let's play a little like cabinet roulette. Throw out a few names. Who do you think goes in next?

Listen, I'm not going to come back and say, Mark was wrong on my show. I am so keeping my head above water and drinking from a fire hose here in heavy seas, whatever mixed metaphor I can come up with. It's just, as I told you, man, I got no vision anymore on this. None. Dr. Ben Carson. He's got to come back, right? Loyal soldier. Surgeon General. Okay. Well, he ruled that out. He ruled out Surgeon General. So maybe he goes back to HUD. I don't know. But I...

Dr. Carson seems game to come back. Well, I don't think Trump can tap anyone else from the House. He's done enough. The majority is so slim. That would be kind of insane. Like, what is the majority now? It was 218 to 211, but they're going to be losing three right off the top. I kind of think he's going to go for a flashy move on Treasury.

Even though Mnuchin wasn't a flashy pick. Or he's going to go with Scott Bassett. Do you know Scott Bassett is openly gay and has children? He would be the second most powerful openly gay person in power after...

Pete Buttigieg. I don't know. I could kind of see him going with him, but I don't know. I could also see him. I know they are saying Mark Rowan from Apollo was like a billionaire worth nine billion might be considering him. There was another person. I thought that they gave Lighthouser USTR, but they were talking about him, but his name has been slashed off the list. I mean, that's a huge, important and important job is USTR, right? I think Secretary of Treasury is like the next big one that we're going to hear about this week. And it might be delayed because if

he decides not to do Lutnick. He might also decide not to do Ascent. And then it's just sort of back to the drawing board and to your point, like flashy pick out of the box. Who knows? Trump probably just loves the press to the outrage machine whenever he makes a pick. Like I'm sure there's a part of him that loves the Matt Gaetz pick because of the outrage it's creating. Totally. I wonder what Linda McMahon will end up doing if she'll go to commerce and

She's a small business administrator. You know, she has this co-chair of the transition if she comes back and does something. Another one that might be interesting to watch is like NASA administrator because of Elon Musk and SpaceX, you know, who goes into that role. But I do feel like the next ones to come with the exception of treasury, you

are like lower profile, still cabinet level and important, but lower profile agency positions. I wouldn't be surprised if campaign and now transition positions

senior advisor and spokesman Brian Hughes wound up at NASA. NASA? Yeah. He was in the Air Force. He is interested in NASA. And prior to coming on the Trump campaign, he was the de facto. Well, he wasn't the de facto. He was the administrator for the city of Jacksonville.

in Florida, which is a giant city. Land-wise, it's one of the biggest cities in the United States. You know, city-wise or population-wise, it's one of the biggest cities in Florida. And so he actually knows how to be an administrator. But that's just kind of throwing it out there because if I guess I violated my own rule and taking a wild guess, but that wouldn't surprise me as something that people don't expect. Well,

Well, I'd like to go up into space, Brian, if you can hear me. Get as far away from this madness as possible. Tara, I can see it. I can see it. Oh, I did hear something. So Brooke Rollins, who was in the White House before, and there was talk that she might be Department of Education secretary. She's not going in there. But of course, like if Trump calls you and tells you, you know, they want to give you a job, it's hard to say no. But the...

The Department of Education secretary, like if you get that job, it's basically to dismantle the organization, which is, I guess, what most of these people are being brought in is to dismantle their organizations. I think in the case of education, you're right. I mean, the guy who would definitely like that job and excel in it is another Florida man, Richard Corcoran, who was Florida's Department of Education secretary under DeSantis. By the way, his spokesman and communications advisor for his brief gubernatorial run in 2018 was one Taylor Budowich,

He is now the head of New College in Florida, which used to be a very liberal college and was a DeSantis conservative takeover with Chris Ruffo. Corcoran would enjoy heading an agency like the Department of Education to dismantle it. He would go at that with relish. Mayor, last thoughts? Buckle up, baby. I think it's going to be an interesting few months. And then honestly, I...

Starting to get a little nervous here just thinking about like day one and that first week and frankly, the first 100 days, I think are going to be a head spinning moment in American history. Are you ready? White knuckle, white knuckle. I just want to know like when we're going to be able to have time off, right? Great question, Mark. You're asking the right question. Right, like I bet he's going to make picks on Christmas. Don't say that. And New Year's and Thanksgiving. Why not?

from the Mar-a-Lago patio while he's having his Christmas ham. With the Grinch, right? Like, I can see 100%. It kind of reminds me of that kid in the movie Boogie Nights who's throwing, like, the snap bangs and just, like, throwing bits of explosive chaos into the mix. We all deserve vacations, but we'll never get them. So, see you in the loony bin. Or the gulag, whichever one. Yeah. Oh, God, that too. I'll be in Europe using that second passport. All right. All right.

See you guys. Thanks so much for joining the show. Bye. Bye. That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Christopher Sutton and Connor Nevins. If you like this show, please rate it, subscribe, share it with your friends. If you like my reporting, please go to puck.news slash Tara Palmieri and sign up for my newsletter, the best and the brightest. You can use the discount code Tara20. I'll be back on Thursday.