Wednesday Reads: And So It Begins . . .

Good Afternoon!!

BREAKING NEWS– We dodged a bullet! Rick Scott will not be Senate Majority Leader.

John Thune, South Dakota Senator

The Hill: Thune elected Senate majority leader.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) has been elected Senate majority leader, setting the stage for him to replace retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has held the top Senate GOP leadership job for the past 18 years.

Thune has served as Senate Republican whip, the No. 2-ranking position in the Senate GOP leadership, since 2019, and largely managed operation of the Senate floor since McConnell suffered a concussion from a fall in 2023.

Thune beat Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) by a vote of 25 to 24, according to two sources familiar.

Thune led after the first ballot. He won 25 votes while Cornyn won 15 votes and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) collected 13 votes.

“I am extremely honored to have earned the support of my colleagues to lead the Senate in the 119th Congress, and I am beyond proud of the work we have done to secure our majority and the White House,” he said in a statement after the vote. “This Republican team is united behind President Trump’s agenda, and our work starts today.”

And So It Begins . . . Trump’s appoints all the best people:

This is like 2016 only so much worse. For the past couple of days, Trump has been announcing his picks for the Cabinet and other important government posts, and his choices are even worse than we could have imagined.

Trump announced his choice of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, which I guess is sort of reasonable. But it’s likely that one reason for appointing Rubio would be to open up the Senate seat in Florida so that he can give it to Lara Trump. Eventually, Trump will likely fire Rubio in humiliating fashion.

NBC News: Trump’s Cabinet moves hand Ron DeSantis a gift — but possibly with strings attached.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will have a chance to put another stamp on state politics with a big appointment if Sen. Marco Rubio becomes secretary of state. But one major question hangs over that opportunity: How badly does President-elect Donald Trump want his daughter-in-law, Lara, to become a U.S. senator?

Lara Trump, future Senator?

DeSantis, like any Florida governor, has the ability to unilaterally appoint the person who would fill a vacant Senate seat, which may come into play following Monday’s news of Trump’s expected nomination of Rubio to lead the State Department. Trump could still change his mind, cautioned three sources familiar with the selection process, who said the decision wouldn’t be final until the president-elect makes a formal announcement.

But if Rubio’s Senate seat becomes open, there is little doubt DeSantis will face at least some pressure from Trump’s team to appoint a candidate they want, which would almost certainly be Lara Trump, according to seven people tracking deliberations around the potential vacancy.

Perhaps the worst appointment so far came yesterday with the announcement that Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth will serve as Secretary of Defense. Hegseth is the person who urged Trump to pardon war criminal Eddie Gallagher. 

Dave Philipps at The New York Times, Dec. 27, 2029, wrote about the aftermath of the Trump pardon: Anguish and Anger From the Navy SEALs Who Turned In Edward Gallagher.

The Navy SEALs showed up one by one, wearing hoodies and T-shirts instead of uniforms, to tell investigators what they had seen. Visibly nervous, they shifted in their chairs, rubbed their palms and pressed their fists against their foreheads. At times they stopped in midsentence and broke into tears.

“Sorry about this,” Special Operator First Class Craig Miller, one of the most experienced SEALs in the group, said as he looked sideways toward a blank wall, trying to hide that he was weeping. “It’s the first time — I’m really broken up about this.”

Video recordings of the interviews obtained by The New York Times, which have not been shown publicly before, were part of a trove of Navy investigative materials about the prosecution of Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher on war crimes charges including murder.

They offer the first opportunity outside the courtroom to hear directly from the men of Alpha platoon, SEAL Team 7, whose blistering testimony about their platoon chief was dismissed by President Trump when he upended the military code of justice to protect Chief Gallagher from the punishment.

Eddie Gallagher

“The guy is freaking evil,” Special Operator Miller told investigators. “The guy was toxic,” Special Operator First Class Joshua Vriens, a sniper, said in a separate interview. “You could tell he was perfectly O.K. with killing anybody that was moving,” Special Operator First Class Corey Scott, a medic in the platoon, told the investigators.

Such dire descriptions of Chief Gallagher, who had eight combat deployments and sometimes went by the nickname Blade, are in marked contrast to Mr. Trump’s portrayal of him at a recent political rally in Florida as one of “our great fighters.” [….]

Platoon members said they saw Chief Gallagher shoot civilians and fatally stab a wounded captive with a hunting knife. Chief Gallagher was acquitted by a military jury in July of all but a single relatively minor charge, and was cleared of all punishment in November by Mr. Trump.

Video from a SEAL’s helmet camera, included in the trove of materials, shows the barely conscious captive — a teenage Islamic State fighter so thin that his watch slid easily up and down his arm — being brought in to the platoon one day in May 2017. Then the helmet camera is shut off.

In the video interviews with investigators, three SEALs said they saw Chief Gallagher go on to stab the sedated captive for no reason, and then hold an impromptu re-enlistment ceremony over the body, as if it were a trophy.

“I was listening to it, and I was just thinking, like, this is the most disgraceful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Special Operator Miller, who has since been promoted to chief, told investigators.

Hegseth is famous at Fox News for announcing that for ten years he never washed his hands.

More on Hegseth from CNN: Trump picks Fox News host and Army veteran Pete Hegseth to serve as secretary of defense.

Hegseth’s selection was a surprise, as he was not among those considered as a likely pick by members of Trump’s team, sources familiar with the discussions told CNN.

Sources said that it came down to Trump having a longstanding relationship with Hegseth, noting that the president-elect always thought he was “smart” and was impressed by his career. Trump also likes that Hegseth is a military veteran and the account of his service in his book, the sources said.

While Hegseth’s name had not been on the initial shortlist, Trump was struggling to land on a choice for the job, and he liked Hegseth from Trump’s last term when he briefly considered him for leading the Department of Veterans Affairs before being warned that he may not get confirmed by the Senate, one source familiar said.

“Trump also thinks he has the look,” one source said….

Trump’s choice of Hegseth is a notable departure from his picks for defense secretary in his first term, when he selected a four-star general, James Mattis, and an Army secretary, Mark Esper, to lead the Pentagon. But Trump ultimately soured on both of those secretaries and was sharply critical of them after Mattis resigned and Esper was fired.

One defense official told CNN, “Everyone is simply shocked.” Another Pentagon official who was following the potential picks for defense secretary learned about the possibility of Hegseth only in the hours before the nomination and, like others who spoke on condition of anonymity with CNN, didn’t know how to react.

Even some former Trump officials who have remained close to former colleagues and have been in touch with the transition were caught off guard. One former Trump official also said they were “shocked” by the selection and expect there’s going to be an effort to “take him down.”

Indeed, in choosing Hegseth, Trump has likely set off what could be his first contentious confirmation fight for a Cabinet pick. While Senate Republicans newly in the majority are likely to be deferential to Trump’s selections, Trump’s nominees can only afford to lose a handful of Republicans to win confirmation.

The article notes that Hegseth opposes women serving in combat. A bit more info:

The Princeton and Harvard grad also served as CEO for veterans advocacy organization Concerned Veterans for America and holds two Bronze Stars, according to Simon & Schuster, the company that published his 2017 book “In the Arena.”

Hegseth says he was removed from inauguration duty in 2021 because of what he described as a religious tattoo.

In his book, Hegseth wrote that he had served under former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Trump. His unit was tasked to work the inauguration of Joe Biden as well on January 20, 2021.

“Ultimately, members of my unit in leadership deemed that I was an extremist or a white nationalist because of a tattoo I have, which is a religious tattoo,” Hegseth told Fox News during an interview promoting his book in June. Hegseth said the tattoo is a Jerusalem cross.

Hegseth first job will probably be to lead a purge of generals who are not sufficiently loyal to Trump.

From The New Republic: Trump’s First Executive Order May Be a Military Purge. The order could place the military under the president’s total command, like never before.

Trump’s transition team has a “warrior board” executive order ready for the president-elect’s desk.

An executive order draft is floating around MAGA world that would establish a Trump-appointed “warrior board” with the power to purge any three- or four-star generals as it sees fit. The board would send its dismissal recommendations to Trump and they would be acted upon within 30 days.

The draft executive order, which was first reported on by The Wall Street Journal, makes it easy to quickly remove military officials “lacking in requisite leadership qualities” but leaves open the question of what those requisite qualities are. The executive order draws on General George C. Marshall’s 1940 creation of a “plucking board” led by retired general officers to “remove from line promotion any officer for reasons deemed good and sufficient.” But that plucking board was to uplift young officers with high potential, not to cull anyone not perfectly aligned with MAGA.

It’s not yet clear if Trump will sign the executive order, but Trump has held vitriol toward certain military leaders for some time now. He has vowed to weaponize them against the “enemy within,” to fire anyone involved in the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and to create a task force to weed out “woke generals.”

Pete Hegseth

Here is what Hegseth has promoted in the past. The Washington Post: Pete Hegseth has said exactly how he will shake up the Pentagon.

President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Fox News host Pete Hegseth as his nominee for defense secretary would place atop the Pentagon a combat veteran and political ally who has assailed the military as ineffective and “woke,” mused about firing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,and blasted the top brass as having failed to safeguard American strength.

Hegseth’s nomination suggests a coming battle over social and personnel issues within the armed forces, historically one of the nation’s most diverse institutions. He has been among Trump’s most high-profile supporters to champion the cause of rolling back initiatives designed to promote diversity.

Throughout his campaign, Trump made a distinction between fighting generals and “woke” generals, vowing to fire the latter. Asked in a podcast interview with the “Shawn Ryan Show” published last week what he would do, Hegseth set a tone that looks ominous for senior Pentagon officials.

“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Hegseth said, referring to Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. “Any general, any admiral, whatever,” who was involved in diversity, equity and inclusion programs or “woke s—” has “got to go,” Hegseth said.

Now that Ivanka has stepped back from politics, it seems that Don Jr. has become an important adviser to Trump, according the WaPo article:

It’s difficult to believe that Senate Republicans would confirm this nomination, but Trump has demanded that the Senate stay in recess at the beginning of his term so he can put his corrupt choices in place though recess appointments.

Some more appointments that Trump announced yesterday: Mike Huckabee to be Ambassador to Israel; Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a government efficiency department.

Rolling Stone: Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy to Lead Trump’s New ‘Department of Government Efficiency.’

A month ago, billionaire Elon Musk warned that if Donald Trump won a second presidential term and gave him a role in government, Americans would need to “reduce spending to live within our means” and suffer “temporary hardship” in order to address the national debt. On Tuesday, the Tesla CEO seemed closer to achieving that goal after the president-elect announced Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE).

The two entrepreneurs will be tasked with paving the way for Trump’s administration “to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump said in a statement.

Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk

He added that DOGE could “become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time. Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of ‘DOGE’ for a very long time” and that the department would partner with the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Exactly how DOGE would “provide advice and guidance from outside of government” was not clear.

In the statement shared by Trump, Musk declared that DOGE “will send shockwaves through the system and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!”

“Importantly, we will drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 Trillion Dollars of Government Spending. They will work together to liberate our Economy, and make the U.S. Government accountable to ‘WE THE PEOPLE,’” Trump continued. The president-elect ended by stating DOGE’s work will “conclude” no later than July 4, 2026, and that a “smaller government” will be the “perfect gift” to the American people, marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Presumably, the DOGE will not tamper with all the government contracts that Musk’s companies receive.

Apparently Musk is still in Trump’s good graces, but he’s wearing out his welcome with many staff members and other Mar-a-Lago denizens. He has been horning in on Trump’s meetings and phone calls. Musk even wanted to go along with Trump for his meeting with President Joe Biden today!

The New York Times: At Mar-a-Lago, ‘Uncle’ Elon Musk Puts His Imprint on the Trump Transition.

In nearly every meeting that President-elect Donald J. Trump holds at Mar-a-Lago, alongside him is someone who has been elected to nothing, nominated to nothing and, only a few months ago, had no meaningful relationship with him.

Elon Musk.

The world’s richest person has ascended to a position of extraordinary, unofficial influence in Mr. Trump’s transition process, playing a role that makes him indisputably America’s most powerful private citizen. He has sat in on nearly every job interview with the Trump team and bonded with the Trump family, and he is trying to install his Silicon Valley friends in plum positions in the next administration.

Elon Musk jumping around like a complete idiot

Mr. Trump announced on Tuesday that Mr. Musk would help lead what he called the Department of Government Efficiency, a new body to “dismantle government bureaucracy.” But Mr. Musk’s true influence on the Trump transition effort goes well beyond that posting.

Mr. Musk has assumed an almost mythical aura in Mr. Trump’s inner circle. At Mar-a-Lago one recent evening, he walked into the dining room about 30 minutes after the president-elect did and received a similar standing ovation, according to two people who saw him enter.

Mr. Musk, often with his 4-year-old son X on his lap, has spent most of the last week at Mar-a-Lago, joining not just interviews but almost every meeting and many meals that Mr. Trump has had. He briefly shuttled back to Austin, Texas, where he has a $35 million compound, before returning on Friday, where he ate in Mar-a-Lago’s dining room and on its patio, roamed the gift shop and spent time on the golf course — all alongside the president-elect.

“I’m happy to be the first buddy!” he replied to a social-media follower this weekend.

CNBC: Elon Musk attends Trump’s first post-election meeting with House Republicans in D.C.

Elon Musk on Wednesday joined President-elect Donald Trump for his first post-election meeting with the House Republican conference in Washington, D.C., an adviser to Trump told NBC News. Trump and Musk flew to the nation’s capital together from Florida aboard Trump’s plane.

The development is the latest example of how Musk, the world’s richest man and one of the top backers of Trump’s winning campaign, has grown his presence and influence in the future president’s orbit.

Here’s Politico Playbook’s take: Playbook: Elon wears out his welcome.

ELON BUTTS IN — Later this morning, Trump travels to Washington for the first time since his sweeping presidential victory last week, where he’ll make the customary visit to the White House and huddle with allies on Capitol Hill.

Earlier this week, however, Trump’s inner circle was abuzz that he might have a traveling companion for the trip: not wife MELANIA, who is remaining in Florida, but ELON MUSK — who privately expressed interest in joining Trump for his visit with President JOE BIDEN, to the vexation of some Trump insiders.

To be fair, there have been few boundaries on Musk’s involvement in Trump’s campaign and now in his transition. Last night, Trump announced that Musk would co-lead a “Department of Government Efficiency” — a sort of meme-ified Simpson-Bowles commission — alongside MAGA hype man VIVEK RAMASWAMY.

But the notion of allowing Musk to tag along to the White House, for a hallowed ritual in the peaceful transfer of power, prompted a bewildered reaction inside Trump world: Was that even allowed? What was the protocol for such a thing?

As of last night, it appears the plan might not materialize. After appearing earlier this week on a draft manifest for this morning’s flight to D.C., we couldn’t get a clear answer last night on whether Musk is coming or not.

The bigger picture, however, is how Musk is starting to wear out his welcome with some in Trump’s orbit. After initially making a huge splash with his endorsement, made just moments after the July attempt on Trump’s life, some insiders now say he’s become almost a comical distraction, hanging around Mar-a-Lago, sidling into high-level transition meetings and giving unsolicited feedback on Trump’s personnel decisions.

“Elon is getting a little big for his britches,” one insider tells Playbook.

Trump, for his part, doesn’t seem to mind, relishing the attention he’s getting from the richest man in the world. Over the weekend, our colleagues Meridith McGraw and Natalie Allison reported, Trump was zipping Musk around in his golf cart, introducing him to club members and showing him the resort’s gift shop.

That proximity has given Musk access to some of the most intimate details of the Trump transition. For example: While much was made about Musk joining Trump’s recent call with Ukrainian President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, we’re told that the encounter was more or less a fluke: Musk happened to be in the room when Zelenskyy called, and Trump put him on the phone.

I could go on, but this post is already too long. I have no doubt there will be more horrors to deal with today. today.