Rubio, Gabbard, and Gaetz. . . Oh My!

It’s Thursday, November 14. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Coming up: interviews with author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Teamsters boss Sean O’Brien, and Trump’s new border czar Thomas Homan. Plus: Joe Nocera remembers Ted Olson. And more.  

But first, three presidential picks—and what they say about the second Trump term. 

On Wednesday, Donald Trump announced three more headline-grabbing cabinet nominees. Each represents a strand of the unlikely MAGA alliance that triumphed last week and is set to run Washington in the coming years. 

The first pick was the most orthodox and least surprising. Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that Trump was expected to select Florida senator Marco Rubio as his secretary of state. And—after a few days of nervous waiting for Rubio and his supporters—he finally did just that. 

Rubio’s elevation to the role of America’s top diplomat is a blow to those in Trump’s orbit pushing for a clean break from the Republican foreign policy establishment. More traditional Republicans welcomed Rubio as an adult in the room who has serious views on how to confront China, Russia, and Iran. But they also wondered how long he might last given how many MAGA loyalists have defined him as a war hawk. “That should make Rubio very wary,” a veteran foreign policy hand from Trump’s first term told The Free Press. “He will not last two years.” 

When it comes to the dynamics of the MAGA coalition, Rubio represents a Republican establishment at peace with its leader: a rival turned supplicant whose loyalty since 2016 has been repaid. 

The second pick was a little more surprising. Tulsi Gabbard—a military veteran and former Democrat until she came out as a Republican this year, and a longtime critic of the foreign policy establishment—is Trump’s selection for director of national intelligence. This is like putting an antiestablishment fox in charge of the deep-state henhouse. No one disputes the dynamic—they just disagree on whether that’s a good thing. 

Gabbard’s foreign policy views are at odds with many of Trump’s other picks, including Rubio and national security adviser Mike Waltz. On the day Russia invaded Ukraine, Gabbard blamed the West for the war, stating that Vladimir Putin had legitimate fears over Ukraine joining NATO that Biden should have acknowledged. She is a dove on China (unlike most everyone else in Trump’s cabinet) and is also “skeptical” that Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons on his own people—and even went to Damascus to meet the Syrian dictator in 2017.

One senior congressional staffer told The Free Press that he questioned whether the former congresswoman could even get a security clearance given her flirtations with the Assad regime, one of Iran’s closest allies. But many MAGA supporters claimed she’d facilitate a needed break from failed Republican policies. Moreover, they think there’s poetic justice in the idea that a woman who had reportedly been placed on a “secret terror watchlist” by the TSA could now be running the country’s national intelligence apparatus.  

Even Gabbard’s admirers admit she’s a little kooky. In 2022, the former Hawaii lawmaker urged Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Joe Biden to “put geopolitics aside and embrace the spirit of aloha, respect and love.” Okay? 

While Rubio represents a GOP brought to heel, Gabbard represents the ragtag Rebel Alliance—many of them former Democrats—that formed behind Trump during this election. 

But the third announcement yesterday was the real jaw-dropper: Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, Trump announced, would be his pick for attorney general. The news was met with shock across Washington. 

The Gaetz pick felt like the cabinet-appointment equivalent of shitposting. The man Trump wants to be the federal government’s top attorney practiced law for a grand total of two years before becoming a legislator. He was the subject of a long-running House ethics investigation relating to allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use—until he resigned from Congress shortly after Trump’s announcement. And if confirmed—a pretty big if—he would be running the department that recently investigated him for sex trafficking and obstruction of justice. 

We spoke to several senior conservative legal scholars and former White House officials about his appointment, and let’s just say they weren’t thrilled. 

“I’m already hearing from a wide number of solid and capable conservatives great consternation,” said one top conservative legal figure.  

“My phone is blowing up,” said a leading Republican lawyer. “I can’t believe the Senate would confirm him.”

“Gaetz will have to plead the Fifth at his confirmation, which would be a first,” said a veteran Republican strategist. 

So what’s the takeaway on Gaetz?

The left-wing critique is that he’s crazy and this will be a disaster. The conservative critique, expressed by several we spoke to, is that this is needless drama, especially given the other qualified names that had been floated. 

Some wonder if Trump is playing 4D chess—that he knows Gaetz won’t get confirmed and ultimately has someone else in mind. If Republican senators die on this hill, then he can get the rest of his picks through. Maybe. But that all sounds a little too premeditated. 

What does Gaetz represent? Full-bore MAGA. The 42-year-old congressional troublemaker would be unimaginable in a previous iteration of the GOP: fully on board both stylistically and ideologically, and unquestioningly loyal. Which won’t reassure those who worry Trump wants an attorney general to do his bidding. 

And there you have it: three legs of the MAGA stool exemplified by three cabinet picks on a weird day in Washington. 

Will Donald Trump Really Deport Eleven Million People? 

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to deport millions of illegal immigrants. Exactly whether he’ll do that, and how, are questions that will dominate the early days of his second term. 

The man who must answer the many thorny legal and political questions that arise is Thomas Homan, who Trump named his “border czar” last week. 

Homan gave an exclusive interview to Free Press reporter Madeleine Rowley, and said his priority come January will be targeting immigrants who pose “public safety threats and national security threats.” 

Read the interview in full: “Trump’s New Border Czar Has 11 Million Problems to Solve.”  

What Made Ted Olson Great

The legal giant Ted Olson died of a stroke Wednesday morning at the age of 84. “He was a great man,” writes Joe Nocera in his tribute to “the finest Supreme Court practitioner of his generation.” Olson argued Bush v. Gore, winning the case for George W. Bush. He won the Citizens United case. And he became the conservative half of the winning team in the fight to legalize gay marriage in California. 

“But when I think back on Ted Olson’s life—when I think about what made him great,” writes Joe, “it’s not the Supreme Court victories or the other career achievements I find myself focusing on. Rather, it was his integrity.

“That integrity informed his commitment to the American project, and above all else, his deep devotion to the Constitution.”

Read Joe Nocera’s full tribute to Ted Olson: “What Made Ted Olson Great.” 

On The Free Press Live: Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Teamsters President Sean O’Brien 

Up next, two interviews well worth watching from the latest Free Press Live. 

The first is with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somalia-born former Dutch member of parliament, author, and one of the bravest and most compelling advocates for Western values there is. She talks to hosts Batya Ungar-Sargon and Michael Moynihan about the recent antisemitic violence on the streets of Amsterdam—and what it all portends for the future of the West. 

The second is with Teamsters president Sean O’Brien. In September, the Teamsters declined to endorse a presidential candidate, having backed the Democratic candidate in every White House race since 1996. Polling shows Teamsters members overwhelmingly backed Trump this time around. Batya and Michael spoke to the Teamsters boss about how the Democrats lost the working-class—and the economic populism of president-elect Donald Trump. 

River Page: The One Video That Explains Why Harris Lost 

In the wake of Trump’s landslide victory, we’ve published many smart takes on why Kamala lost. You should read them all (obviously). But River Page argues that there’s really only one video you need to watch to understand the outcome of the election. It was shot by a man with a French accent in an asymmetrical hat at an official “Kamala HQ” event at New York Fashion Week, and it perfectly captures the bizarro, out-of-touch decadence of the vice president’s failed presidential bid. 

Click here to watch the video and read more from River.

John Thune, Senate leader for the 119th Congress. (Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images)

• Joe Biden hosted Donald Trump in the Oval Office Wednesday. “Congratulations. Looking forward to a smooth transition,” said Biden, as he shook Trump’s hand in front of a roaring fire, adding, “Welcome back.” Trump replied: “Politics is tough, and it’s in many cases not a very nice world. But it is a nice world today. I appreciate it very much.” The whole thing was reassuringly normal—and made a lot of the overblown preelection rhetoric about Trump being an existential threat to democracy seem completely absurd. 

• A CIA official was charged with two counts of violating the Espionage Act after leaking highly classified documents related to Iran. The papers detailed Israel’s planned retaliation against Iran in the wake of missile bombardment and included classified interpretations of satellite imagery of potential strikes. Asif Rahman was arrested in Cambodia and will be arraigned in Guam, ending weeks of speculation over the source of the leak.

• Republican senators selected John Thune to be the next majority leader in a closed ballot vote Wednesday. Thune’s win is a reminder that it’s not just MAGA all the way down in Republican politics. Ahead of the vote, some of Trump’s biggest allies, including Elon Musk, had backed Florida senator Rick Scott. But Scott didn’t make it past the first round of voting—and Thune (R-SD), an establishment figure and close ally of Mitch McConnell, came out on top. One important detail, though: This was a secret ballot. 

• Al Sharpton was one of the few journalists to whom Kamala Harris granted an interview during the election—and when the Democratic candidate appeared on his MSNBC show, he lobbed her a bunch of softball questions. It is in that context that we present, without comment, reporting from The Washington Free Beacon showing that Harris’s campaign donated $500K to Sharpton’s charity shortly before the interview. Sharpton did not disclose these payments—which were part of a $5.4 million group of donations from the campaign targeting black and Latino nonprofits—during Harris’s segment.
  

• There are many ideological divides in the Trump coalition. Doves vs. hawks, free-marketeers vs. protectionists, and so on. But don’t sleep on the split that goes to the very top of the MAGA tree: health freaks vs. fast-food fanatics. This rift has been brought into the open in a new interview with RFK Jr. The Kennedy scion—who lifts, eschews seed oils, and wants to Make America Healthy Again—was asked what he thought of Trump’s penchant for fast food. “Like poison,” he said. “The stuff that he eats is really, like, bad.”

Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Follow him on X @ollywiseman.