The Bulwark this morning takes a moment for some preparatory panic, which is probably wise, just as a bracer. It asks what Trump's first 100 days might look like. Although some, including The Bulwark, say we have only our best guesses and speculation, I say we know as an empirical fact that those initial three months — and, doubtless, the next three years and nine months+, possibly — would be a period of uninterrupted, unmitigated, and currently almost unimaginable chaos and ruin.
The publication looks at several themes of Trump's post-inaugural mayhem, one of them being how many and in what way he can cram his cabinet and other high-ranking officials as loony as he is into their appointed offices. As I was reading its post, momentarily I thought The Bulwark might overlook the most obvious method, but it did at last make note of it: "dispens[ing] with the entire Senate confirmation process entirely" — that would be, altogether, in case you missed the double reference to entireties.
Before arriving at this more probable method of "officially" surrounding himself with former felons, future felons, crackpots and wannabe S.S. officers, The Bulwark ponders the difficulties Trump might have obtaining Senate confirmations with "a simple Republican majority." He had trouble in his first term with Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, thus something larger than "simple" would be required. That, however, is a probable unprobability, at least according to polls.
So we're back to ignoring the Senate and going Trump's preferred route — interim appointments; "acting" secretaries and all their little acting subordinates. The question then arises, just how interim does interim mean? To answer this, I visited everyone's favorite reading room, the independent federal agency, the Administrative Conference of the United States, and found its Bulletin — No. 003, if you're interested — titled "Acting Officials Under the Vacancies Act."
The reader almost immediately recognizes that the words acting and interim are a trifle loosey-goosey in definition. From Bulletin No. 003: "Acting officials may serve for 210 days from the vacancy date." As I read it, a president can wait these nearly 18 months before even submitting the name of the acting official to the Senate. He or she may continue serving while the Senate's snails ponder the affair. If the nomination is rejected or returned, or if the president withdraws it, the same acting official may serve for another 210 days "from the date of the rejection, return, or withdrawal."
Under these rules, then, Trump's attorney general, let's say — perhaps one the former felons he adores because of the Trump-unfriendly laws they broke — could serve roughly three years out of four as the nation's highest law enforcetment officer, possibly even longer, since there's the additional time allowed for the Senate to weigh all its considerations. And we know the rapidity with which any Senate moves on any given issue.
To my mind, though, there's no rule, bulletin, law or known constitution fffthat would particularly bedevil Herr Trump and prevent him from doing whatever he damn well wants to do. Goodness me, if nothing else his fellow dictators would all gather, giggle and make fun him if he were to reveal his hand as anything but iron, like theirs. What's more, he already played the run-around game with appointments in his first term precisely because he desired the company of the crackpots who had no chance of Senate confirmation. In 2019, The NY Times took note of his attraction to acting this and acting that.
In April, his next homeland security secretary would be securing the homeland on an acting basis only, given the resignation of the confirmed secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen. She had nearly resigned in 2018; Trump had lambasted and humiliated her in a cabinet meeting for allowing too many border crossings. Also, Trump wanted a big p.r. push on immigrant crackdowns two weeks before the 2018 midterms, so various officials recommended deploying a military-designed "heat ray" against immigrants; it would "make people’s skin feel as if it is burning." The device had already fallen into "morality"-concerns disuse, Nielsen said no way at the ray-gun meeting, and added that it"should never be brought up again in her presence." All told, goodbye Kirstjen.
In 2019 Trump's secretaries of defense and interior were serving on an interim basis, as were the directors of the Office of Management and Budget and the Small Business Administration, and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Even Trump's Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney was acting as a temp worker, though no confirmation was needed for that office. "I like acting," said the world's most ignorant man to the press in January 2019. "It gives me more flexibility. Do you understand that?" We do. He could threaten them with instant unemployment and avoid the rigorous process of Senate confirmation.
It's worth noting that Paul Light, a New York University professor of public service and authority on the procedure, said at the time that "we haven’t heard a word from the Senate on the Trump administration’s abuse of its acting authority." Added law professor Stephen Vladeck of the University of Texas, Trump's avoidance of Senate confirmations was because either he knew his proposed officials would never make the cut, "or because he’s worried about the kinds of questions they’d have to answer.... Either way, that’s an alarming argument for bypassing a Senate controlled by his own party."
If Trump makes his way back into power, I'll take any odds offered and bet whatever amount suggested that he in his second term will make himself in his first term look like Dudley Do-Right. In the next manifestation of Trumpism, the cronyism — much of it through acting officials, the corruption, the incompetence and chaos will so outstrip the depravity and malevolence of all that once transpired in the White House name of Trump, neither we nor the world will any longer recognize America.
The United States will have joined the putrid, festering ranks of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — and Western civilization as a whole will be rendered defenseless.