I Can’t Wait for Matt Gaetz’s Confirmation Hearings

Opinion|I Can’t Wait for Matt Gaetz’s Confirmation Hearings

The expression “The worse, the better” is often attributed to Vladimir Lenin, and captures a sort of messianic nihilism — the dream that escalating misery will hasten the fall of a corrupt order. Usually, I find this ethos despicable; in my experience, suffering only begets more suffering. I’m making an exception, however, for Donald Trump’s nomination of the former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz to be attorney general, a flagrant provocation that is, like a pulpy B movie, so bad it’s good.

While Trump’s choice of Gaetz to lead the Justice Department is a clear sign that his second administration will be catastrophically chaotic, vengeful and corrupt, that should never have been in doubt. Trump made no secret during his campaign of his desire to persecute his political enemies. Anyone he chose as attorney general would share his interest in turning the justice system into the enforcement arm of the MAGA movement. The selection of Gaetz just rips the mask off. With it, Trump is trolling not just his defeated opponents but many of his craven establishment supporters. It’s like Caligula trying to make his horse a consul.

Of all the people Trump was considering for A.G., Gaetz is unique mainly for how much he is hated by other Republicans, and not just moderate ones. In the final months of the last Trump administration, the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether Gaetz had a relationship with an underage girl that violated federal sex trafficking laws. Though that inquiry was closed without charges, the House opened an ethics investigation into him. It was reportedly set to vote on releasing a damning report on Friday, which Gaetz may have tried to pre-empt by resigning, though it could still become public.

When Gaetz was accused of sleeping with the girl, “there’s a reason why no one in the conference came and defended him,” Markwayne Mullin, a very conservative Republican senator from Oklahoma, told CNN in April. His colleagues, said Mullins, had seen videos “of the girls that he had slept with,” which Gaetz allegedly showed off on the House floor. After Gaetz forced Kevin McCarthy out as House speaker, throwing his party into disorder, Mike Rogers, a Republican congressman from Alabama, seemed ready to physically attack him and had to be restrained by colleagues.

It should go without saying that Gaetz is not, by any normal standards, even a tiny bit qualified to be attorney general. He practiced law for only about two years before running for office, handling small-time civil matters, like suing an old woman for money she owed his father’s caregiving company.

His chief credential is not his mastery of the law but his contempt for it. “We’re proud of the work we did on Jan. 6 to make legitimate arguments about election integrity,” he told Steve Bannon in 2022. He’s called for abolishing both the F.B.I. and the Justice Department unless they “come to heel.” If confirmed, he will be single-minded in his devotion to carrying out Trump’s will without concern for legal niceties.