Transcript of Will Republicans Reject Gaetz?

What does Beauty have to do with sports or advanced technology or the economy? I am Isabella Rossellini, and in each episode of This is not a Beauty podcast, I uncover stories that explain beauty's fascinating and often hidden role in modern life. Listen to This is not a Beauty podcast now on your favorite podcast platform. Brought to you by L'Oréal Group. From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily.

Another Trump appointment, and this is one that is probably going to surprise a lot of people.

Last week, President-elect Donald Trump chose the firebrand congressman, Matt Gates, to be his attorney general. Blindsided. That's how many Senate Republicans feel by Donald Trump. I was shocked that he has been nominated. Trump's choice shocked Washington.

It must be the worst nomination for a cabinet position in American history.

And raised questions about whether the Senate would approve it.

He is entitled to his nomination, but he's not entitled to a confirmation of, literally, any nomination.

Today, my colleague Robert Draper on what the nomination reveals about Trump's promise for retribution and how far Republicans are willing to go to help him get it. It's Monday, November 18th. Robert, welcome to The Daily.

Thanks for having me on.

Happy Sunday.

You as well.

President-elect Donald Trump announced a series of pretty controversial nominations for his cabinet last week. Chief among them was Matt Gates, the hard-right member of Congress from Florida for attorney general. Gates is someone you've written a lot about, and we wanted to turn to you to talk about this pick of Gates and why it's so controversial.

The pick is controversial, Sabrina, in part because of who Matt Gates is. He comes from what I suppose you could say is the performance art wing of the Republican Party, so he's very adroit at getting attention, but someone who does not have an accomplished track record as a legislator. So he would seem to be not an altogether serious pick and not a particularly qualified one as well. But he's also controversial as a pick because of the particular office, the Department of Justice. Of course, he would be America's Chief Law Enforcement Officer, which is interesting and ironic given that Gates himself has been defiant of the law has a trail of investigations following him, both on the federal level and within Congress. On top of that, the attorney general has tended to be an office that operates more or less independently from the president. The attorney general will often do things that might even offend the president, might even investigate members of the administration. To pick someone like Matt Gates, who is an unflagging loyalist to Donald Trump, would seem to suggest that the DOJ will under Trump's presidency, become completely co-opted so that a President Trump would himself be in many ways, beyond the reach of the law.

So all of this sets in motion a showdown between Trump and the Republican Party, writ large, and a test of whether or not the legislative branch will offer any constraints over that authority of his.

Okay, so let's talk about who Matt Gates is and how he became such an important figure in Trump world. Tell me about him.

Sure. Matt Gates is from Northwestern Florida. He grew up in a town called Nisville. His father owned a chain of hospices that he ultimately sold in the early 2000s for something like $400 million.

So a wealthy family.

Very wealthy family. His father found a second career in politics. He ran for state senate in one, ultimately becoming president of the Senate in the state of Florida. The younger Gates, after being a high school debate champion, went on to college, then got a law degree and joined a commercial litigation firm where he stayed for a couple of years. But then after that, joined the new family business of politics and ran for a vacant seating the State House of Florida in 2010.

So he pretty much immediately jumps into politics after being in this law practice.

Yeah, that's right. Then Matt Gates ran for the first Congressional district of Florida, his local Congressional seat, which is very conservative, very dominated by a couple of military bases. He ran, of course, at the same time that Donald Trump was running for President.

So this was the 2016 cycle. This is when he gets to Congress.

Yeah, that's right. Matt Gates was an early supporter of the former Florida governor, Jeb Bush, but it did not take terribly long before Bush was faltering in his debate performances and his fundraising and in every other way against this outsider candidate, Donald Trump, and Gates quickly threw in with him as well.

Why did he throw his lot in with Trump?

I think for a couple of reasons, Sabrina. The first was that he was punching a winning ticket. Though Trump was an outsider, he dominated the Republican primaries and really was at the top of the polls. It was evident that the center of gravity within the Republican Party was moving towards Trump. Gates could clearly see that. But there was also a pugilistic streak to Trump that Gates himself, as a resident smart aleck in his high school as a debate nerd, that he could very much identify with. Matt Gates himself, a guy who was given to a sarcasm, was given to insults, was given to be outside looking into the political establishment, found himself very much to be a kindred spirit of Trump. Almost from the beginning of Trump's presidency. Joining us now, Florida Congressman Matt Gates. Republican congressman Matt Gates. Congressman Matt Gates. And congressman Matt Gates represents the state of Florida. He joins us today. Congressman, thanks a lot for coming on. Matt Gates was on every conservative outlet, praising everything that Trump did.

I support this travel ban because I think it will enhance the security of Americans.

From the Muslim ban.

The foundation for Obamacare is crumbling, and that means we might be able to actually start on health care worthy of the great people in this country.

To his attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare.

I think if you just look at the bias on the Mueller team, these are not people in search of the truth. They are people in search of an impeachment charge.

Everyone was still trying to take their measure of Trump, and he did not have a deep bench of cheerleaders, but Matt Gates was unambiguously one of them. Mr. President. I'm proud of you.

I think we won the day, sir.

Gates was frequently, as a result of this, called on the phone by Trump. President Trump would offer his thanks to Gates. And so it became this self-licking ice cream cone where Gates would say something, Trump would love it, Gates would want to please him even more, and on and on it went.

So outside of these interviews and TV appearances, were there other ways that Gates was trying to show his loyalty?

Yeah, I think The most flamboyant example occurred in 2019 when the House Intelligence Committee was having an impeachment inquiry into Trump's conduct towards the President of Ukraine and his apparent attempt to get President Zelensky to dig up dirt on Trump's 2020 opponent, Joe Biden. The Intelligence Committee was having this impeachment inquiry in a secure facility in the basement of the Capitol. Classified information was being discussed. This was not something that just anybody could go into. That includes any person who has a congressperson's badge. But Matt Gates led a group of about two dozen Republican members of Congress to this facility, followed by a bunch of reporters.

I'm gathered here with dozens of my congressional colleagues underground in the basement of the Capitol.

Stan Coming outside the doors of this conference room that was secure, Gates and the others proceeded to have an ad hoc press conference.

Because if behind those doors, they intend to overturn the results of an American presidential election, we want to know what's going on.

In which Gates talked about how outrageous it was that this Sham investigation was taking place against President Trump. Then at the very end-We're going to go and see if we can get inside.

Let's see if we can get in.

We're going in. He said, Okay, we're going in. They barged into the facility, effectively bringing the proceedings to a halt. The idea that any closed hearing would be disrupted by anybody was generally unheard of. But for an actual legislator, an actual member of Congress, to storm in and start making accusations that this was some deep state undertaking where they were hatching up, damning testimony from scratch was without precedent.

It showed just how far he was willing to go for Trump, it sounds like.

Yeah, that's right. Another thing that I think stands out about Gates's support of Trump was in the waning moments of Trump's presidency on January the sixth, when Matt Gates Far from expressing outrage that Trump had stirred up the mob that had stormed the Capitol, was questioning the composition of the mob itself and saying that these weren't Trump supporters. These must be left wingers. These are members of Antifa. The far left group that had been involved in protests, not all of them peaceful protests, during the summer of 2020, for example.

We should say, was pretty much conclusively not part of the riot at the Capitol on January sixth.

That's right. There was zero evidence to suggest that what took place at the Capitol on January the sixth was instigated by or even that there were Antifa participants in it. But there was Gates from the get-go basically saying, These couldn't be Trump supporters. Then in the days to follow the January the sixth riot, there were calls to impeach Donald Trump. While Gates did not say he should not be impeached, and certainly did not say that he should be impeached, he did immediately denounce those people who denounced Donald Trump and called for his impeachment. So Gates was one of the very first people to decry them, House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney calling for Trump's impeachment. And in fact, within a couple of weeks after Trump left office on January the 20th- I love Wyoming. There's Matt Gates on the steps of the capital of Wyoming.

I'll confess to you, this is my first time in Wyoming. I've been here for about an hour, and I feel like I already know the place a lot better than your misguided representative, Liz Cheney.

Leading a protest against the Congresswoman representing the state of Wyoming, Liz Cheney, and saying that she's the one who needs to be pushed out.

The truth is that the establishment in both political parties have teamed up to screw our fellow Americans for generations.

This is a very aggressive going after Trump's enemies.

Yes, that's right. Of course, it's Matt Gates being clever enough, recognizing that not all the facts are in. Not to say Donald Trump absolutely did nothing wrong, but instead to say that the people who are saying that Donald Trump did something wrong are themselves wrong. It's a bank shot of denouncing denouncers that is the thing that the Lawyer League, Gates, is a special was then.

So this is a guy who's time and time again shown that he's willing to defend Trump at all costs, which I guess answers the question of why Trump might want this guy as his attorney general.

That's right. I mean, Gates was a Essentially, setting himself up as the person that Donald Trump needed. Someone who had his bombastic combative style, someone who was an unflagging loyalist, that's the guy a Donald Trump would want to have around. But something else is happening, too, which is that Matt Gates is landing in hot water, and as a result of that, needs Donald Trump, at least as much as Donald Trump needs Matt Gates.

We'll be right back.

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Robert, you said that Gates needs Trump in some ways just as much as Trump needs Gates. Explain that.

Yes, Matt Gates was in trouble with the federal authorities and had been really since 2017 or so when he was a freshman member of Congress. Here's what was taking place. Gates had become friends with a guy named Joel Greenberg, who was a political gadfly with political ambitions of his own, was thinking of running for Congress, and he'd collected a bunch of lobbyists and other political muckety-mucks in Florida to hang out with. He would help throw these parties. Gates began to cohort around with Greenberg and with Greenberg's friends to show up to these parties. There would be recreational drugs of these parties. There would be sex at these parties. In addition to the lobbyists and elected officials, there would be women who were not of politics who were there. Some of them were from an escort service, and at least one of them was under the age of 18. This is what attracted the attention of the feds when Joel Greenberg was nabbed by federal authorities for a variety of things, including having sex, apparently with a 17-year-old girl, Greenberg, pled guilty to this offense and right away began to supply them with information to the effect that Gates was doing the same thing.

So the feds began to conduct a federal inquiry into gates. But ultimately, they dropped the case. Why? They dropped it, apparently, because of two things. First, that they couldn't get enough information and the information that they could get was coming from people who might not look so great before a jury, either because they were involved in the crimes themselves or had criminal records of their own. It just became a heavy lift. Now, this is informed speculation, Sabrina, because the reality is that the Department of Justice never announced, We are closing this case, and we are closing this case for the following reasons. So this is the best we've been able to infer from justice's behavior, but close it, they did.

Okay, so the DOJ effectively shutters its case against Gates, but we don't really know whether there was a crime or what ultimately was the rub there. Was that the end of it?

It was not the end of it. No, Congress picked up where the federal government left off. The major political headline, New Trouble for Florida congressman Matt Gates, tonight already under federal investigation. Now, the House Ethics Committee is also investigating its own set of allegations. There is in Congress something called the House Ethics Committee, and it is a committee composed of members of both parties. It meets secret to examine potential misconduct by sitting members of Congress. It has its own fact-gathering apparatus, and it's pretty deliberative. It takes a while for them to come around on their stuff. This is what happened then with the Gates matter. The House Ethics Committee began to take a look at it, reliant to some degree on the information that the Department of Justice had already gathered, but also not limited to that.

The House Ethics Committee launching a bipartisan is an investigation, examining allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use.

Because there were allegations that Gates had been on the floor of the house showing videos and still photographs on his iPhone of nude women.

Whether Gates shared inappropriate images or videos on the house floor.

Allegations as well that he was having a relationship with a member of his staff, and as well, allegations that he was using federal campaign funds for his own personal use. These were the kinds of things that were incoming for the Ethics Committee to consider.

A wide-ranging investigation with some pretty sordid allegations. How does Gates respond to all of this? Does he speak out?

Yes. They're saying there is a 17-year-old girl who you had a relationship with. Is that true? Who is this girl? What are they talking about at the New York Times?

The person doesn't exist. I have not had a relationship with a 17-year-old. That is totally false.

As Gates always does, he spoke out vociferously, indicating not only that these charges were false, but that these charges were politically motivated. Though this time not by Democrats so much as by Republican leaders with whom Gates had gotten crosswise, one of them in particular, Kevin McCarthy.

Why did Gates think that McCarthy was behind this investigation?

Those two had problems for a I mean, McCarthy had donated to Gates' first couple of congressional campaigns, but they never liked each other. Mccarthy, this gladhander, very much a member of the establishment, so not Gates' guy to begin with, and Gates, for that matter, as this fly in the ointment who's always coming out against Republican leadership, not McCarthy's guy. Then when word surfaced that there was an investigation into Gates' behavior by the federal government, far from Kevin McCarthy saying, I'm sure that these are unwarned investigations, he just said- Those are serious implications. If it comes out to be true, yes, we would remove them if that was the case.

But right now, as Matt Gates says, it is not true, and we don't have any information.

So let's get all the information. I don't really have any comment. We'll just simply have to see what the federal government got to do. It was as lukewarm a statement of support as could be imagined. And Gates filed that one away. This all comes to a head in January of 2023 when Congress convenes to elect a speaker, which is a pro-former thing that usually lasts a couple of hours. We are now in a situation where this Congress will make history. We will have at least one more vote to see who the next speaker will be in the 118th Congress. But in this case became this protracted five-day melodrama. Six votes later, and the Republican majority is still scrambling to pick someone, anyone, to serve as speaker of the House. And why was this the case? Because Matt Gates didn't like Kevin McCarthy. After three days and hundreds of votes cast, the House has still not elected a speaker. And was determined, if not to completely stop McCarthy from becoming speaker, then to at least drag it out.

Four days in, 12th round of voting, and still no speaker of the House.

On Tuesday, Kevin McCarthy tried to get elected speaker, but he lost three times. But then on Wednesday, lost three more times. It was really, really melodratic, and it played out on national television, where Gates at one point was nearly assaulted. To mediate something here. It is getting really heated on the floor of the House. Mccarthy looks angry. By a Republican member of Congress, Mike Rogers, who was a McCarthy ally. Stay civil. I hear someone saying, Stay civil. Where Gates at various junctures-I'm nominating Jim Jordan.nominated people, including Donald Trump, to be the speaker instead of McCarthy.

Mr. Speaker, my friend from Oklahoma says that my colleagues and I who don't support Kevin McCarthy would plunge the house and the country into chaos. Chaos is Speaker McCarthy.

And after a successive balloting, McCarthy would go into a room with groups of Republicans, and they would manage to get him to agree on this or that thing, for example, the allowance of a member of Congress to call for a snap vote, known as a motion to vacate. As one Democrat put it, it's like they'll have a spokesperson, but not an actual speaker in the house. So he was coming in as really the weakest speaker imaginable. Meanwhile, there's Gates clearly enjoying this theater. And even as McCarthy, by the end of it all, at the end of the five-day stretch, emerges victorious, really, the triumph is as much Matt Gates as anyone else's.

What I really remember about that whole episode between Gates and McCarthy was just the way that Gates went about it. He withheld his vote from McCarthy over the speakership in this very ostentatious way. It's like he was humiliating him almost. It was this incredible act of dominance, this power move against him.

That's right. It was a total Trump move. It was the thing that Trump would remember. As this is a guy who's got cojones. This is a guy who will stand up to everyone.

What became of the ethics investigation in the end?

Well, it moved slowly, slowly because Gates continued effectively to delay it by responding only at the last minute to inquiries and then doing so with the usual bombast being non-responsive. The Ethics Committee was having some difficulty getting traction, getting further information. It had produced a report, roughly in late July, I believe, is when it did, at least the best that we can tell. But there are rules in the house that govern when you can release a negative ethics report, as this one was. You can't do it close to an election. So Gates had a primary in August. They couldn't do it near then. And then Gates was facing a general election in November, so they couldn't do it then. So they kept missing all these windows. And now suddenly it is after the election. Trump is elected President. The Republicans regain control of the Senate, continue to have control over the House. And meanwhile, there is this Ethics Committee report that's been sitting there that's understood to be highly negative and therefore very damaging involving criminal charges that could almost certainly lead to Gates' expulsion from Congress.

Wow. There's that bomb just sitting there. What happens with it?

Well, what happens with it is that Donald Trump, before this can be released- Today, major surprises among Donald Trump's latest pics to fill his cabinet, including Matt Gates, a fierce and loyal defender of Mr. Trump in Congress. Now, his choice to become the next attorney general. Decides on Wednesday that he wants Matt Gates to be his attorney general. Trump today describing one of his strongest defenders as a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney. Who will end the partisan weaponization of our justice system. He makes this announcement, and within a matter of hours, Gates resigns from the House of Representatives. He resigns. Yeah, he resigns. In so doing, he's no longer a member of the House, and an Ethics Committee investigation into a House member is no longer pertinent. You can't, in other words, release information about someone who's no longer a member of Congress. It would seem then that the Ethics Report dies the death.

The timing is quite interesting, right? Gates is about to be the subject of this potentially hugely damaging report, could very well end his career. Then at this critical hour for Gates, Trump names him to the position that allows him to resign from the House, effectively stopping the report and becoming potentially the top law enforcement agent in the country. A role that beyond all of this potential legal trouble, he seems to be pretty unqualified for. Yeah.

I mean, it's this remarkable zero-sum moment where he goes from a guy of maximum exposure, potentially even criminal exposure, since after all, the feds did not find him not guilty. They didn't decide he was innocent. They just decided not to pursue it anymore. If all of these allegations surface, he's expelled from Congress, then he's himself criminally vulnerable. He goes from that to now being the nominee to be the chief law enforcement officer in the land. And so, yeah, it's this moment where a guy goes from really, really being in a deep, dark place to a guy who may be sitting on top of the world, referring to Matt Gates.

And why do you think it is that Trump named him? Is it because Having him on the hook, so to speak, means he would just do his bidding?

I don't think it's that, Sabrina. I don't think that he's doing it to do a solid for Gates or to own Gates. I think that Gates's loyalty to Trump is not what's at issue here. That's always been unquestioned. It's instead an external signal that Trump is sending. First of all, that he will select exactly who he wants to select. He knows how audacious a choice this is, and he doesn't care. Secondly, for this particular position, for the Department of Justice to have at the top of it a Matt Gates sends a signal that, yes, I do mean good on what I said during the campaign, that I, Donald Trump, will be your, his voters, retribution, that I will use the Department of Justice in exactly the way that you would imagine it would be used if Matt Gates were at the top of it. It will be used as a weapon. It will be used as the spear point to ward off any investigations into the President by the FBI or by the opposition, and that it will be used as a means of attack against Trump's opponents, be they a sitting senator like Adam Schiff, who'd been the head of the intelligence community and had brought the first impeachment inquiry, a former member of Congress, Liz Cheney, who became his most vocal Republican opponent, members of the press, or any number of individuals.

Matt Gates will be at the very top of a Department of Justice that will be the justice that Donald Trump wants justice to mean. He will redefine the concept of justice through the personage of Gates as his attack dog.

But of course, there is a Senate confirmation process for his appointment. So what are the senators saying about his nomination?

This one was not on my bill card. Elections have consequences. He chose Matt Gates. Matt will come before the committee, and he will be asked hard questions, and we'll see how he does. Well, there's been a collective groan and/or statements of shock. Look, I barely know Gates. All I I know is he likes picking fights on social media. He'll have to deal with that in committees, but I don't know his background. I'm going to look at it and give him a fair hearing. I think there should not be any limitation on the Senate Judiciary Committee's investigation, including whatever the House Ethics Committee has generated None of them has come right out and said that they would oppose it, but there's clearly some friction and clearly some visceral opposition. Now, there's been some talk about the possibility of recess appointments, which would essentially mean the Senate majority leader calling a 10-day recess and letting Trump push these nominations through without a confirmation. But right now, that seems pretty unlikely. I think that what's much more likely is that this will go to an actual vote.

What if this ethics report does end up somehow getting out, either leaked or actually released? I would imagine there would be a pretty big public outcry. It's explosive. Do we think Trump might blink and say, never mind?

It seems really unlikely that Trump is going to be in any way concerned by the release of the report or for that matter, the contents of the report. I think he's been fully briefed on what likely is in it, and Trump knows who Gates is. I don't think he will be in the least bit cowed by the prospect of unseemly contents. I think he's expecting it. I think that they'll essentially It's hard to describe it as fake news by political opponents of Gates's.

We're talking on Sunday morning. As of now, it seems likely that this is actually heading to a confirmation hearing in a Republican-controlled Senate where On the one hand, Gates has a lot of enemies, but on the other, this group of senators is pretty afraid of crossing Trump. So this sets up a pretty interesting showdown.

It certainly does because it is an audacious move for Trump to pick someone who is not only unqualified for the job, it would seem, who not only is so disliked by members of his own party, but also is so encumbered. For Trump to basically be saying to the Senate, Yeah, I know he's got all those problems. I don't care. Confirm him anyway, is a very early test of just how willing the Republican Party is to offer any check on the President-elect. It cannot be emphasized enough, Sabrina, that Republicans have been paying close attention over the years to what's happened to those Republicans who have attempted to thwart Trump's will, prominently Liz Cheney. And none of them wants to suffer the Liz Cheney treatment. So they recognize that standing up to Trump not only carries costs in terms of a basic discomfort, but really can be a career-ending proposition. And so we'll see whether Republicans are willing to say, Look, we'll give you all of these other nominations. This is just a bridge too far. Or if they, in essence, say, The Bridge Too Far is also a bridge that we're going to be willing to give you.

Robert, thank you.

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Sabrina.

We'll be right back.

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Here's what else you should know today. On Sunday, for the first time, President Biden gave Ukraine permission to use a American long-range missiles to hit targets inside Russia. The weapons are likely to be employed against Russian and North Korean troops in defense of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region of Western Russia, an area that Ukraine invaded in a surprise move in late October. Biden's authorisation was a major change in US policy and comes just two months before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump has vow to limit support for Ukraine. Today's episode was produced by Will Reid, Michael Simon Johnson, Mujd Zady, and Mary Wilson. It was edited by Devon Taylor and Michael Benoît, contains original music by Dan Powell, Alicia beetup, Diane Wong, and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansberg of WNDYRLE. Special Special thanks to Katie Edmondson. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.