Clip: After Gaetz dropout, Senate scrutiny moves to Trump's other Cabinet picks

Jeffrey Goldberg: So, Matt Gaetz is out and Pam Bondi, an America First diehard, is Donald Trump's newest pick to be the nation's top law enforcement officer. Gaetz was too much for Trump's Republican allies, and some of his other selections are so controversial that it's an open question if their nominations will also survive. We'll look at some of the most important and most surprising cabinet picks tonight.

Joining me at the table, Laura Barron-Lopez, the White House correspondent for PBS News Hour, Andrew Desiderio is the senior Congressional reporter at Punchbowl News, Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent at The New York Times, and Ashley Parker is a senior national political correspondent with The Washington Post. Thank you all for joining me tonight.

Before we start, I want to note that this is a live show and what we're getting over our phones right now is that one new nomination every 30 seconds from the president-elect's office, a couple of notable people just in the last 10 or 15 minutes, Sebastian Gorka to be the chief counterterrorism adviser in the National Security Council. That's an America first diehard, and a little while ago Russ Vought, who ran or was one of the leading architects of Project 2025, which apparently, according to Donald Trump, had nothing to do with anything. But now the guy who basically ran it is nominated to run the OMB, Office of Management and Budget, which is obviously a central very important role. So, that's interesting and we're going to try to absorb this new data as we go forward.

But I want to start, Laura, with Matt Gaetz. So, it seems like, you know, the chaos is back. You know, I'm trying to figure out what happened here. You know, Trump nominates someone who's plainly unfit and plainly unconfirmable for a very important job, this is the second time Trump has been president. Is there no learning curve here or what happened? Why did it go so sideways so quickly for him?

Laura Barron-Lopez, White House Correspondent, PBS News Hour: Well, this time Donald Trump wanted pure loyalists, people that would do exactly what he wanted. And Matt Gaetz had promised that he would go in, he would chop off heads, he would do anything that the president asked him to. But, ultimately, Matt Gaetz is not necessarily well liked by his colleagues, including a number of Republican colleagues.

Jeffrey Goldberg: That was very diplomatic, I think.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Well, we are on live T.V.

Jeffrey Goldberg: We are.

Laura Barron-Lopez: So, he's not well liked by a number of his colleagues. I mean, one Republican texted me yesterday, problem solved, when he was -- when he withdrew. But it ultimately also came down to the sexual misconduct allegations and the drip, drip from the House Ethics Committee and the fact that there were clearly, potentially more things coming out even after he met with senators and he met with senators this week.

And it was essentially a day later that he realized that the votes were not there. He wasn't going to gain the support, that there were a number of Republican senators that were not going to line up for this nominee. And a lot of it had to do with those sexual misconduct allegations, which, you know, are pretty -- I mean, they're bad. It's detailed that he had sex -- there was women who testified that he had sex with a 17-year-old. And a source close to the committee told me that there was even more in the report that has not come out.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Andrew, quickly, so Gaetz is out not because of his qualifications or lack of qualifications to be attorney general, not because of anything ideological, it's purely the record here that Laura is describing combined with the active dislike on the part of many Republicans for Gaetz, right? This is not ideological and not about experience.

Andrew Desiderio, Senior Congressional Reporter, Punchbowl News: Well, I don't know about that. What I heard from Republican senators in the immediate aftermath of him withdrawing was, number one, relief, that they wouldn't have to take a vote on such a controversial nomination on the floor.

But even some of Donald Trump's closest allies who had been meeting with Gaetz, had been meeting with J.D. Vance, the vice president-elect, who was accompanying Gaetz for those meetings, felt like they were being hung out to dry, essentially, forced to go out there and stump on behalf of a nominee that they knew, that the transition team knew, was not confirmable, right?

And so took a lot of time. Less than 24 hours by the time those meetings wrapped and the time that Matt Gaetz, of course, announced that he was going to withdraw. But this is what you're seeing Senate Republicans do to -- you know, this is their blueprint to try to, I guess, kill a nomination, is not come out publicly against the nominee, not do anything that would anger Donald Trump necessarily, but do these maneuvers behind the scenes and make it clear to Trump either wink, wink nod, nod, or more directly to those in her, in his inner circle that this person is not confirmable, is not going to get 50 votes and let me tell you why. This was a blueprint for Republicans on how to kill a controversial nomination without having to actually vote on it.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, it's a nice transition to the subject of Pete Hegseth who's nominated to be secretary of defense. Ashley, I want to ask you about this. But I want to start by noting that this is, in my humble opinion, the most important job in the cabinet for a very simple reason. This person is the president's principal nuclear adviser. The president has sold unilateral authority to use nuclear weapons but the defense secretary is supposed to be right there advising.

And so, you know, you -- this is an area where you want somebody with maximum experience, maximum judgment, prudence, knowledge. And, you know, people don't understand this anymore, I think, but, you know, a president would have ten minutes from the time that NORAD alerts you that there's an actual attack happening to the decision to use nuclear weapons or not.

And so, you know, we're talking about a president, A, who almost got us into a real jam with North Korea by referring to its authoritarian nuclear armed leader as little rocket man, right, and the person that this person wants to be his nuclear adviser, among other things, a defense adviser, is a television morning show host.

Now, there's nothing wrong with hosting a television show, I want to note, but what is the possible argument for this nomination? When they go up to the hill and say, this is the guy, this is the best guy for the most important job in the cabinet, what are they telling senators?

Ashley Parker, Senior National Political Correspondent, The Washington Post: So, bits and pieces, which we're hearing, their argument in part is that he has military experience himself. He's been on the ground, he understands it from sort of a grunt level, and because of that is willing to blow things up, and because we're talking about defense, I don't mean literally, although potentially that as well, but to sort of upend the entire system in a way that Donald Trump wants.

And he has also been public about wanting to get rid of wokism in the military, and that's something that is very appealing. It's not necessarily a qualification, but it's something that is a very compelling argument to a number of Republican senators.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Talk about that. How important was this war against wokism in the military for Trump?

Zolan Kanno-Youngs, White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Very important, right? I mean, and also when it comes to whether or not he can get confirmed, like the big factor is also Trump picked him, right? And sort of showing that loyalty towards Trump is going to be a factor.

Hegseth's statements, you know, weren't just limited also to sort of targeting DEI and wokism. In his writings, he also describes that Marxism also is an enemy that really he has to bring the fight to. The issue is he basically calls everyone a Marxist from those working in public education, to journalists as well.

You know, the president-elect during the campaign wasn't shy about proposing and wanting to use the military against within the United States and targeting political enemies. And when you have someone like Hegseth, who has been so open also in describing people within the country as political enemies, you can see a direct sort of mirroring there of what the president-elect wants.

Jeffrey Goldberg: We've had good defense secretaries and bad defense secretaries throughout modern history. How do you place Hegseth on the experience continuum and knowledge continuum?

Andrew Desiderio: I mean, as low as you could possibly go, to be honest with you. And Republican senators, again, to Zolan's point and Ashley's point, they are focused on this idea that you are going to root out some of the corruption and wokism, as they call it, in the federal bureaucracy, and that that's the most important thing.

Now, I will note that there are a lot of national security hawks in the Senate Republican Conference, Mitch McConnell being one of them, and what they're looking for in a nomination like this is someone who wants to boost defense spending, someone who wants to continue to provide lethal aid to Ukraine. Those are questions that Pete Hegseth is going to face during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, which, by the way, is stacked with a lot of national security hawks both on the left and on the right.

Laura Barron-Lopez: And also Pete Hegseth may now be facing a lot of the attention. I mean, all the attention was focused on Matt Gaetz with his sexual misconduct allegations. Pete Hegseth has his own sexual assault allegations coming out of Monterey. And he says that he was cleared, but that there, again, it appears to be a steady details coming out about that in terms of the sexual assault allegations, and the question is, does that start to make senators or are senators able to use that, to your point, Andrew, as an excuse to not vote for him?

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Let's -- yes, go ahead.

Ashley Parker: Briefly, I was going to say, President-elect Trump is unhappy about that. Not so much the allegations, necessarily, it's the fact that he didn't know about them when he nominated Hegseth.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, let's listen to for a minute Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, who was speaking on this subject.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND): It's a pretty big problem given that we have you know, we have a sexual assault problem in our military. I'm not going to prejudge them, but, yes, it's a pretty concerning accusation.

Pete Hegseth, Nominated for Defense Secretary: As far as the media is concerned, I'll keep it very simple, the matter was fully investigated and I was completely clear and that's where I'm going to leave it.

Jeffrey Goldberg: So, Andrew, does he get through?

Andrew Desiderio: Look, I think the senators to watch on this nomination are going to be not just the National Security Hawks, but female Republican senators, like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, who are always the wild cards, but also someone like Senator Joni Ernst, for example. She has so far been quite complimentary of Pete Hegseth as the defense secretary nominee, but she herself has opened up as being a victim of sexual assault when she was in the military.

She served in a combat role. She's very open about her support for women in combat roles. Pete Hegseth is on the record espousing the complete opposite position. She's been asked about that. She's said simply, you know, I'll have to talk to him about that issue, but we'll see if that rises to the level of being a problem for someone like Joni Ernst, who, by the way, does sit on the Armed Services Committee. So, when you think about it at the committee level as well, these nominations have to be favorably reported to the Senate floor first.