Aside from the Liberty-loving brother- and sisterhood here at The Patriot Post, one of the things that sets us apart is our willingness to disagree on the issues of the day.

Donald Trump, more than anyone or anything, puts this tolerance to the test. He’s a disruptor, and he leaves little room for indifference. Take National Review, for example: Is there anyone in that esteemed house who dares to support that fire-breathing, knuckle-dragging Trump?

Here, though, our boss, Mark Alexander, gives us a bit of a leash, even if he might disagree with our particular take. And that makes for a stronger, more vibrant editorial shop.

Consider Trump’s nomination yesterday of Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general. “Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department,” said Trump in a Truth Social post.

My boss, to put it kindly, isn’t a Gaetz fan, and he rejects the Gaetz appointment wholesale. He writes:

In 2017, as Trump was entering office, I praised him for being a bomb dropper. “The day he arrived in DC, he dropped a bomb on the Beltway status quo in Congress and its special interests. He dropped a bomb on the regulatory behemoths and their bureaucratic bottlenecks. He dropped a bomb on the trade and national security institutions and alliances that had failed miserably over the previous eight years. And he dropped a bomb on all the pundits and mainstream media outlets.” This is what the Beltway needed then, and needs again now.

I was tracking with Trump’s appointments until yesterday, with the farcical nomination of Gaetz for attorney general. Trump needs to clean up the DOJ and its pockets of corrupt deep state actors. But that will take somebody with impeccable character and gravitas, and I believe Gaetz has substantial deficits on both counts.

Gaetz has been under investigation by the REPUBLICAN House Ethics Committee since they took control of the House for list of issues. Among the allegations is the case of a minor who may have been sexually trafficked by Gaetz. His close friend Joel Greenberg has already pled guilty in that case. I do not know the facts, but Gaetz resignation from Congress in order to close the investigation and prevent release of the ethics report, is at best, suspect, given that the victim and witnesses testified before that committee.

So, why Gaetz? Trump wants a bomb dropper at DOJ, I get that. But Gaetz mirrors the worst of Trump’s character and personality flaws, and perhaps Trump, in his righteous indignation toward those corrupt actors at DOJ who have targeted him, has a blind spot when it comes to his own reflection. There are far more qualified bomb-droppers. Gaetz is not a bomb; he’s a dud.

If Gaetz had an ounce of integrity and humility, he would have withdrawn his name from consideration.

I disagree. I think Matt Gaetz could be the ultimate disruptor of the Democrat-dominated DOJ. As for the charges against him, they aren’t insignificant. But I believe in the principle of presumed innocence. And I also believe, like a handful of brave whistleblowers, that the FBI is corrupt, and that it has targeted Donald Trump and his supporters particularly, and conservatives generally.

We in our shop agree on this much: Donald Trump couldn’t possibly have made a more controversial selection for AG. Gaetz might be the most hated man in Washington — not only because he loves the camera but also because he seems to be an equal-opportunity critic of both Republicans and Democrats.

But it’s not just Gaetz’s iconoclasm. That “child sexual trafficker” thing has been hanging over his head for a couple of years now, courtesy of the FBI. But The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway put the lie to this vile smear campaign a long time ago.

What? You can’t believe the FBI would do such a thing? Please. This is the same FBI, after all, that slow-walked its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s internationally compromised homebrew email server; that concocted the Russia collusion hoax out of thin air; that lied on a FISA warrant application so it could spy on Donald Trump and his entire campaign team; that entrapped a bunch of “pro-Trump” rabble in a phony kidnapping plot against Michigan’s Democrat governor less than a month before the 2020 election; that sat on Hunter Biden’s laptop for nearly a year before the 2020 election; that colluded with Facebook and pre-Musk Twitter to censor the New York Post’s laptop bombshell two weeks before the election; that helped push the Gang of 51’s “Russian disinformation” letter even though it had already authenticated the laptop; that targeted parents who attended school board meetings because they were concerned about CRT and other hard-left ideologies being taught in their children’s schools; that targeted “radical-traditionalist Catholics” in their churches; that repeatedly targeted peaceful pro-life activists; that unlawfully seized the cellphone of a Trump-allied congressman and retired brigadier general; that gave two Republican senators a phony “defensive briefing” about Russian disinformation when they were investigating Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Ukraine and other countries; that placed numerous agents provocateur at the January 6 protest-turned-riot and continues to stonewall Congress about it; that conducted an armed raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and rifled through the first lady’s underwear drawer because of a documents dispute with the National Archives; that intentionally screened out conservatives and Trump supporters in its hiring practices; and that cracked down on pro-Trump agents and patriotic whistleblowers within the Bureau.

If you still think the Bureau would never, not in a million years, concoct a child sex-trafficking smear to silence a staunch Trump defender and a harsh early critic of the Russia collusion hoax, well, I can’t help you.

Put another way: We know for a fact that the FBI is corrupt and that it targets conservatives. And yet we’re willing to take the Bureau’s word for it that a fearless and sharp-elbowed Trump defender and Russia collusion critic with an American Conservative Union lifetime rating of 91.6 is a child sex trafficker? Doesn’t anyone else think that if the Bureau had a real case against Gaetz, he’d have been indicted long ago? Or at least drummed out of Congress?

As Hemingway reported more than two years ago: “18 months after he was accused of being a pedophile and child sex trafficker, the Washington Post published another anonymously sourced report. ‘Career prosecutors recommend no charges for Matt Gaetz,’ said the article, published quietly on a Friday. … The damage was already done by the initial report, written by reporters who regularly regurgitate political leaks from Department of Justice and FBI sources.”

Remarkably, though, Gaetz keeps being resoundingly reelected by the people of Florida’s 1st Congressional District. Maybe, instead of reflexively believing what the FBI and the Democrats and the Leftmedia are serving us, we should ask ourselves: If Gaetz is such a creepy child sex trafficker, why did the people of FL1 just reelect him by a 66-34 margin?

What is it that they know about Matt Gaetz that the rest of us don’t?

Having said all this, I’m as shocked as anyone by the Gaetz pick. I think we can all agree that Trump will burn a LOT of political capital here. But I don’t like convicting a man on such flimsy evidence. If we’ve learned anything about Trump, it’s that he doesn’t play it safe. He obviously thinks Gaetz is worth the risk. He must believe that Gaetz can help him drain the DOJ swamp. Either that, or Trump is playing 3-D chess so that his backup pick, former Missouri AG and current Senator Josh Hawley, sails through without a fuss.

Or perhaps the Gaetz gambit is Trump’s way of shining a bright light on the weaponization of government — which Gaetz will surely do at his confirmation hearings — while at the same time removing Gaetz from Congress and thereby removing the foremost legislative thorn in the side of the man he gave his full-throated endorsement to yesterday, Speaker Mike Johnson.

Or maybe Trump just thinks this take-no-prisoners throat-puncher is exactly the right chemotherapy for the corrupt and swampy DOJ.

In any case, Gaetz tendered his resignation from Congress yesterday, which puts an official end to the ethics probe he’s been under since 2021, when Democrats controlled the House Ethics Committee. As if that’ll help. I put the odds of an ethics report leak at 99.9%.

I thought Trump’s nominee for CIA director, John Ratcliffe, would’ve been a great attorney general. But Trump obviously thought he needed him to clean up the intelligence services. Utah Senator Mike Lee, too. And Hawley. But no matter. Gaetz is Trump’s guy.

Eight years ago, Trump picked Jeff Sessions for AG. Multiple fake scandals and two impeachments later, we might ask: How’d that work out? Ultimately, he replaced Sessions with Bill Barr, a solid conservative and a brilliant legal mind who came up through the Reagan and Bush administrations, who warned about a fraudulent election on the horizon, and who did absolutely nothing about it.

Here in our humble shop, we’ve spent the last few years railing against the weaponization of government. Now, finally, we have a chance to do something about it. And we have a guy whom Donald Trump chose above all other candidates, despite all his apparent baggage.

🔥 WATCH: This is Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz absolutely SCORCHING current AG Garland and the DOJ for its insane political weaponization.

Swamp is about to be totally DRAINED.pic.twitter.com/owIbBQ7cO2

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 13, 2024

Ask yourself: Why would a pragmatic builder like Trump burn so much political capital on such a controversial pick? Answer: Because he knows we’re at war with the Left and because he knows that he needs a wartime consigliere.

Wartime consigliere, n., a wingman. See Obama, Barack; and Holder, Eric.

Or, like Bill Clinton says: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Trump isn’t inclined to be fooled again.

Donald Trump won a national election in colossal fashion nine days ago. He deserves to put together his cabinet as he sees fit. And, at the very least, his pick for attorney general will have a chance to clear his name and make his case. Getting Matt Gaetz confirmed by the Senate is going to be a very heavy lift. But, if it somehow happens, Gaetz will then get on with his own heavy lifting — that of de-weaponizing the Department of Justice.

For that reason alone, we should hope it so.

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Updated with additional insights about the Gaetz pick, both pro and con.