| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, the sacrificial lamb of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. On Sundays, we look at the major themes of the week past and how they will define the week ahead. Sign up for the daily newsletter here. Watching last week's Senate hearings for President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet nominees was almost enough to make one nostalgic for John Tower. Tower, as not many of my readers and none of Jessica's likely remember, was President George H.W. Bush's selection to be secretary of defense in 1989. Despite having served two and a half decades in the Senate, he was rejected by his former colleagues. The knocks against him were heavy drinking and what we then called "womanizing" — including (unconfirmed) rumors of his dancing on a piano with a Russian ballerina and chasing a secretary around a desk. Given the tolerance for such things in that day and age, I doubt it was the allegations that derailed his path to the Pentagon. More likely, it was the sharp elbows he had swung in the Senate, his criticisms of President Ronald Reagan in the Iran-Contra investigation he led, and the ambition of his fellow Republican and bête noir, Sam Nunn.  John Tower, "womanizer"? Photographer: Nancy Shia/Hulton Archive via Getty Images At the time, and mostly since, I've felt that presidents should be pretty much given carte blanche in choosing their department heads and top advisers. Pretty much. And then there is Matt Gaetz. Trump's short-lived first pick for attorney general was found to have violated House Rules "prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress," according to a report released during the Christmas lull. Gaetz was widely viewed as a sacrificial lamb, put forth to make other Trump nominees (and perhaps the president-elect himself) seems sensible, sane and squeaky clean in comparison. If so, did it work? Let's start with the man who may follow Tower's path to ignominy, Pete Hegseth. Nia-Malika Henderson thinks we've seen a sea change not just since 1989, but over the last eight years. "As he prepared to take office in 2017, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of defense was Jim Mattis, a four-star general who mandated that Marines who were deployed to Iraq undergo cultural sensitivity training," she writes. "In 2024, Trump's nominee for the same post is Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend anchor and Army National Guard officer who has said that women should not be in combat roles. The vast difference in these picks shows how much the GOP has shifted under Trump. But Hegseth seems likely to be luckier than Tower, Nia-Malika adds: "Republicans have essentially said that the allegations of sexual assault and public drunkenness are simply hearsay and not enough to sink his nomination. Mary Ellen Klas can't imagine a more important role in Trump's administration than attorney general. Hard to disagree: Trump hasn't been coy in letting us know he will use his Supreme Court-confirmed more or less total powers over law enforcement to persecute his enemies. [1] So out with Gaetz and in with another fun Floridian, Pam Bondi. "Bondi's years of promoting Trump's election falsehoods and defending his legal and ethical improprieties raise one of the most critical questions facing senators," writes Mary Ellen. "Does Bondi consider it her duty to exact retribution for investigations into Trump? What are her intentions for using the special counsel powers? Who specifically does she intend to target? And how is this not exactly what Trump has repeatedly said he would fight — the 'weaponization' of federal law enforcement?" Trump also weaponized immigration during the campaign, with claims about busloads of Venezuelan criminals, a plot to take over Colorado, hundreds of thousands of dead children and, of course, deep-fried Fido in Ohio. Yet by using immigration as a wedge issue, Trump may be the one getting sliced. "The skilled worker visa program known as H-1B is heavily flawed — and has only grown more so since its inception in 1990. It has also cracked open a major schism in the MAGA movement, which has long been defined by President-elect Donald Trump's opposition to immigration," Patricia Lopez wrote on Thursday. "The split has revealed the fragility of Trump's coalition, which now straddles anti-immigrant MAGA faithful and Silicon Valley tech globalists." A few of Trump's picks, though, are expected to sail through the Senate. There is Scott Bessent, the hedge-fund manager the president-elect chose for Treasury, whom the Editorial Board considers "competent and qualified," which counts as high praise among this bunch of nominees. Unfortunately, competence doesn't necessarily mean sagacity. "Bessent had a comfortable existence as a low-profile hedge fund manager, but he decided to enter public life to help rein in America's soaring debt and deficits," writes Jonathan Levin. "Unfortunately, his remarks at a confirmation hearing Thursday suggest that he's unwilling to take the difficult steps necessary to accomplish that. Instead, he's proposing fantasy nostrums that score Republican political points but will ultimately kick the debt can down the road to future generations." Here is a visualization of a can being kicked: Likely joining Bessent on the confirmation cruise is secretary of state designee Marco Rubio, whose hearing "had the air of an Ivy-League PhD seminar," according to Andreas Kluth: "Boy does Rubio know his stuff. At one point he casually riffed, as one does, on the implications of Kazakhstan co-hosting a ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization a few years back." But knowledge and wisdom are different things. Rubio used to be for open trade, defending Taiwan and Ukraine, backing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a whole bunch of other things Trump isn't so keen on. "Rubio the wonk has to be careful," Andreas predicts. "He could use his prodigious intellect to flow with Trump's whims, in effect articulating whatever the president does, whether it makes sense or not, whether Rubio agrees or not. In that malleable way he could hold on to his job, as other famous diplomats have done. Alternatively, he could keep sounding smart and occasionally hew to principle, but be out of a job before long." Remember all those qualified folks Trump surrounded himself with the first time around — James Mattis, Rex Tillerson, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster? [2] They were known as the "adults in the room." Pretty soon, we're gonna find out if Bessent and Rubio are out of their adolescence. Bonus Adults Are Talking Reading : - Europe, Don't Bow to Trump on Tech — Parmy Olson
- Trump Gets a Break From Final Biden Inflation Data — John Authers
- Gaza Ceasefire Deal Is a Win for Trump — Marc Champion
- The Navy Is in Trouble. Trump's Secretary Needs to Rescue It. — James Stavridis
- Trump's Folly? Greenland for Critical Minerals Is Utter Nonsense — Javier Blas
- The Trump Trade Looks Like a Trap — Jonathan Levin
The problem for Rubio is that as he flips to sync up with his new boss, the new boss might always flop the other way. As I wrote last week, in the context of the richest man on earth: Sure: Flip on US Steel. Flip on TikTok. Flip on SALT. Flip on weed. Flip on the filibuster. Flip on crypto. Flip on your own vice president. The Donald can flip on whatever and whoever he wants. And while I find Trump's shifting whims as maddening as anybody else, there is one change of heart that I — resident of the highest-taxed place in America — should probably be all for: Raising the SALT cap, the limit on the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted on a federal return. It currently stands at $10,000, courtesy of Trump's 2017 tax-cut act. I work hard, often show up on time and try to use my stand-up desk half the day, so I deserve a break, right? Wrong, says Justin Fox — I apparently already got one. "Except among the very highest earners in New York, federal income taxes are not on balance any higher than they were before the SALT cap went into effect. Federal tax rates went down from 2017 to 2018 for every income group except those making $1 million or more a year and stayed below 2017 levels through 2021, the most recent year for which the Internal Revenue Service has released the data," Justin explains. "The biggest tax-rate declines were for those with adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 to $500,000, taxpayers who are not exactly middle class but are often portrayed sympathetically in the financial media as HENRYs, for high earners, not rich yet." [3]  "The role of taxes in causing people to move from New York and California to Florida and Texas is often exaggerated — housing costs seem to have been a much bigger driver," adds Justin. "But it's not nothing, and the 2017 tax law thus made it a little harder for states such as New York, Connecticut and California to hold on to the high earners whose income taxes keep their state governments afloat. Any increase in the SALT cap would thus make it a little easier for such states to maintain their high-tax, high-spending ways. This does seem like kind of an odd thing for Republican members of Congress to be fighting for, and for frequent blue-state basher Trump to be agreeing to. Not that anybody in Albany, Hartford, Sacramento, Trenton or Annapolis is going to complain." So I guess I shouldn't be upset I missed out on this baby in relatively low-tax North Carolina: [4]  Source: Homes.com Notes: Please send Kalas sea SALT and feedback to Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net. |
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