The vast majority of Donald Trump nominees face an easy path to confirmation. The president tells Senate Republicans to approve his picks, regardless of merit, and GOP senators obey.
There are, however, occasional exceptions. Earlier this week, for example, E.J. Antoni’s outlandish nomination to become the next commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics failed in the face of bipartisan opposition. And while his failure generated a lot of headlines, another nomination failure happened on the same day that you might not have heard about. Politico reported:
The White House withdrew Brian Quintenz’s nomination to chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission late Tuesday, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the decision ahead of a public announcement. A small but powerful agency, the CFTC oversees a broad swath of financial markets including those tied to the cryptocurrency industry.
Quintenz appeared well positioned to be confirmed, but over the summer, crypto billionaires Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss reportedly raised concerns about the nominee to the president.
That appears to have made an enormous difference. As Punchbowl News summarized, Quintenz was withdrawn “after facing opposition” from the crypto leaders.
This is, oddly enough, an unprecedented development. We’ve seen some Trump nominees fail because they lacked the votes on Capitol Hill (Matt Gaetz and Ed Martin). We’ve seen other nominees fail because the White House neglected to do its due diligence (Antoni and Jared Isaacman). We’ve seen instances in which nominees failed because of objections from the president’s MAGA base (Dr. Janette Nesheiwat). We’ve even seen one nominee fail because of Republican concerns about Democrats making potential gains in Congress (Elise Stefanik).
But Quintenz appears to be the first nominee ever to be derailed by objections from prominent cryptocurrency advocates.
The developments, Politico noted, were “an illustration of the new balance of power in Trump’s Washington.” Indeed, the demise of Quintenz’s nomination came about a month after Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee who’s currently leading the National Republican Senatorial Committee, appeared at a crypto conference in Jackson Hole, where he thanked the industry for “getting rid of” former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. As Scott characterized it, crypto advocates created a super PAC that spent roughly $40 million to tear down the Ohio senator, and that made the difference between winning and losing. “Literally, the [crypto] industry put Bernie Moreno in the Senate, and he’s on the Banking Committee,” the South Carolina Republican said. A month later, prominent crypto advocates are being credited with derailing a Trump nominee who was otherwise likely to be confirmed.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
