Transcript of Trump determined to see Gaetz confirmed as AG despite controversies

Jessica, we are learning tonight that Donald Trump remains determined to see Matt Gates's nomination through. He is very aware of the coverage and the blowback that Gates's nomination has received since that surprising announcement. And he has heard from his allies on Capitol Hill and Republican senators who are concerned that Gates does not have the support to get to 51 votes in the Senate. But Donald Trump is not backing down. He is telling his allies that he will dig into this fight. He is, quote, 100% in on Gates. One source telling us, quote, he is not going to back off. He's all in. And as you said, Gates has been trying to build support on his own by calling members of the US Senate, trying to, in many cases, mend fences and build bridges within a body that he has done nothing but burn bridges. He's a political arsonist, really, over the past for a few years who has caused inter-party fights and has not tried to make friends. Well, now he is trying to get support as he knows that he faces a tough test ahead. Again, he does have the President's support because, as you said, Donald Trump views the attorney general as the most important position in his cabinet, and he wants someone who is closely aligned and incredibly loyal to him for that role.

He does not believe he had that loyalty from his attorney general's during his first term. And he sees Matt Gates as someone who will not only oversee the dismantling of the Justice Department that he has promised, but also will be a vocal defender of Donald Trump on the media. That is an important distinction that he sees that Matt Gates has and what gave him the leg up over some of the other names that he considered for the job.

Yeah, it is excellent report, a new reporting tonight. I also wanted to ask you what more you know about Trump's promise from the campaign trail and now push to get some civil servants out of the US government.

Well, conservative groups have been anticipating this moment for years and laying the groundwork and a roadmap of sorts for how Trump could go about finding potential partisans in the United States government. Well, how have they been doing that? By sending thousands and thousands of records requests to government agencies, asking for emails and text messages of government employees that might include partisan phrases or that might tip off that they are liberals. They've been looking for emails that contain the name Elon Musk. They've been looking for emails that have references to climate change or DE the I programs. Another group has been calling through the campaign finance contributions of members of the Department of Homeland Security, looking for people who donated to democratic causes, people who also have backgrounds and previous work experience working for groups that are sympathetic to migrants and also their social media posts, trying to find people in the Department of Homeland Security who will not go through with Donald Trump's plans for mass deportation. And that group has put on a list of 60, quote, targets that they believe should be fired by a Republican administration. Now, we don't know if the Trump administration has seen this work yet, although talking to the people involved, they believe that the Trump administration, the income The Obama administration is aware.

One person saying to us, We run in the same circles.

All right, Steve Contorno with the latest from West Palm Beach, Florida. Thank you so much for all of that reporting. I want to turn now to our panel with Republican strategist Katie Frost and Tara Setmaier, co founder and CEO of the Seneca Project. Good to have both of you here. Thanks so much for being here.

Thank you.

Yeah, good to see both of you. We know, as Steve was just reporting, a source telling us that Trump is is full steam ahead with Matt Gates, quote, 100% getting him, 100% in getting him confirmed for attorney general, despite all of the controversies around him and acknowledging that this is going to be an uphill battle to get those 51 Senate Republicans. Katie, is this how you think Trump should be using a lot of his political capital?

Well, it's great to begin with you again, Jessica. President Trump has a mandate from the American people to govern. They heard his message on the campaign trail. They know what he has promised to do. And now he's assembling the team he believes he needs in order to get that agenda through and to do what he told the American people he was going to do, to disrupt Washington and the politics as usual and bring real change for the American people. And he obviously believes the Justice Department is a critical part of that. And that's why he is seeing you there and all across these different appointments he's making. These are people who are going to bring real change to the typical Washington pics. It's going to be a little different because President Trump is going to be a different President than we've seen before. The people in the United States soundly rejected four more years of the same old politics we've always seen. That's why we have President Trump as the President-elect now. And That's why we're seeing this unique and, I believe, formidable team coming together.

Tara, Katie does have a point that President Trump didn't hold these ideas and plan secret. He told everybody what he was going to do, and Americans voted for him. How do you see this?

Well, I see this as the American people have effed around and are about to find out. The people who voted for Donald Trump that wanted change, I don't think they voted for a cabinet of people who are wholly unqualified that want to completely dismantle our democratic institutions. This is not reform. This is dismantling and destroying. I don't think the American people who voted for change, who want their eggs to be less expensive, voted for people like Matt Gates, who are potentially criminals, who are completely unqualified for someone whose ethics report is so damning that he resigned from Congress because they wanted to potentially try and hide it from the American people. I don't think the American people voted for that. I don't see how appointing Matt Gates or Pete Hegset or Tulsi Gabbard or RFK Jr, people, once again, who are wholly are qualified for these incredibly important positions, how that benefits the American people. You know who it benefits? It benefits Donald Trump. How do loyalty tests benefit the American people? How to court-marshaling people in response to Donald Trump's disagreeance with how the Afghanistan pullout was executed, which is now being reported that they're looking to court-marshal people over it.

How does that benefit the American people? I think we need to be very careful about how we counter our language and how we describe what Donald Trump is trying to do and try to hide it under the auspices for the benefit of the American people. That's not a mandate. That's not the mandate the American people voted for if we want to believe it was about the price of eggs.

Katie, staying on Gates for a second. A source has also told CNN that Gates has been reaching out directly to Republican senators to try to start a conversation with them, win them over. We know that Trump is going to put everything he's got behind this nomination. And yet you do have this ethics report that now House Speaker Mike Johnson, after saying he didn't think that a speaker should be involved, has said now he does not want that to come out. Obviously, some senators do want to see that. They want to know what they're voting for before they vote for him. Where do you come down on how much information that these Senate Republicans and these Senate Democrats who do constitutionally have a right to consent and advice here and to vote in this, how much information are they entitled to here?

I'm sure they will have access to all of the relevant information regarding all of the different candidates, because this is about, of course, the Senate has to do their job. They advise, they consent, they review. But we also have to realize that they want to give the President of the United States the team that he needs in order to do the job he was elected to do. Going back to, attorney general Merrill Garland received 16 Republican Americans voted for him because they believed that President Biden wanted him on his team to do a job, and they gave him the courtesy of voting for him across party lines in order to help the President have the team he wanted around him. I'm sure they will be willing to give that same her to say to President Trump.

Yeah, and I hear you because look, I think with Senator Marco Rubio, for example, or if you go through some of these other nominees that we're going to very likely see a lot of what you're talking about, some bipartisan votes on that. But But in the Matt Gates case, our reporting is that an attorney who represents two of the women who are witnesses in the investigation to Gates said on Friday, one of his clients saw the congressman having sex with a minor. We know that Gates was a subject of a separate DOJ, sex crimes investigation. Now, that ultimately ended without any charges. But you can appreciate that that's a different thing, right?

Like I said, I'm sure there's going to be all the relevant information will be shared with the committee. You know very well, things leak in Washington all the time. We'll see what happens when those confirmation hearings actually do come about. I'm sure we'll be talking about them now and when they happen because it will be must watch TV. Yeah.