This is an adapted excerpt from the Nov. 11 episode of “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
The last time Donald Trump was president, his Interior secretary was embroiled in a corruption scandal and ended up referred to the Department of Justice for a potential criminal investigation. His Transportation secretary was also embroiled in her own corruption scandal and also was referred to the Justice Department for a potential criminal investigation.
It used to be if you had one Cabinet official involved in a big ethics scandal, that would be enough to brand your whole presidency a disgraced and scandal-ridden mistake.
Trump’s Labor secretary resigned in scandal, following a ruling from a federal judge that he had broken the law when he signed a plea deal agreement with Jeffrey Epstein in 2008. Trump’s Energy secretary, head of the Environmental Protection Agency and Health and Human Services secretary all also resigned in corruption and ethics scandals.
It used to be if you had one Cabinet official involved in a big ethics and/or corruption scandal that forced them out of the job or led to them being referred for criminal investigations, that would be enough to brand your whole presidency a disgraced and scandal-ridden mistake.
Just consider Warren G. Harding — what’s remembered about his presidency? Maybe that he died in office? Or that he had an affair? No, it’s the Teapot Dome corruption scandal, which resulted in a Cabinet official being criminally charged. A century later, that one scandal involving one Cabinet official is basically all we remember about Harding’s presidency.
The first Trump term had so many Cabinet officials forced out of office in disgrace and referred to the Justice Department for criminal charges that it’s actually hard to remember them all. However, despite an unprecedented number of Cabinet officials being referred for criminal investigations, the supposedly independent DOJ decided to bring charges against precisely none of them.
One of the more memorable ethical disasters along these lines from the first Trump term was a situation involving his secretary of Veterans Affairs, Robert Wilkie. This might be the most memorable scandal because it happened right at the end of his administration, Dec. 10, 2020 — after Trump lost re-election to Joe Biden but before the Jan. 6 attack.
MaddowBlog’s headline at the time, by Steve Benen, read, “Yet another Trump Cabinet secretary caught up in scandal: As Donald Trump’s presidency comes to an ignominious end, it’s apparently not too late for one more Cabinet controversy.”
Wilkie was accused of having discredited a female veteran who said she had been sexually assaulted at a VA facility. The VA inspector general investigated those allegations against him, found evidence that he seemed to have broken the law and referred him to the Justice Department for investigation. (Wilkie has denied questioning the woman’s credibility.)
The Justice Department didn’t charge Wilkie, just like they didn’t charge any of these guys. But more than 20 different veterans groups rose up in outrage against him. Disparate veterans groups with very different takes on the world banded together — everyone from the American Legion to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America to the Veterans of Foreign Wars – all demanding that Wilkie resign or be fired.
It was just a disaster, and it was a sign that even right up to the very bitter and ultimately violent end of Trump’s first term, things weren’t merely bad. It’s not normal to have a half-dozen members of the Cabinet referred for investigations into potential crimes committed while they were serving in the Cabinet.
Now, as the nation marked Veteran’s Day, a day to honor and celebrate our veterans, we learned Trump has decided to bring Wilkie back, tapping him to lead the transition efforts for the entire Defense Department. At a time when the country is looking to the U.S. military for assurances that they won’t deploy against American civilians the way Trump has threatened, the guy charged with staffing up the Defense Department leadership for the military is same guy who left office last time while his “possible criminal conduct” was under investigation by federal prosecutors.
Wilkie is not the only one who’s been tapped for the second Trump administration in recent days. NBC News has learned Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who once memorably cast aspersions on the size of Trump’s genitals in a presidential debate, is expected to be the president-elect’s choice for secretary of state. It was a sign that even right up to the very bitter and ultimately violent end of Trump’s first term, things weren’t merely bad. Trump has also chosen Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida to be his national security adviser. Walz helped in the effort to try to overthrow the government and keep Trump in power after he lost re-election in 2020. Waltz has distinguished himself by claiming that Trump was not responsible for Jan. 6 and that Dulles Airport should be renamed the “Donald J. Trump International Airport.” So clearly, he’s checked all the boxes he needs to be national security adviser. We learned Tom Homan, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first term, will be his administration’s “border czar.” Remember when Republicans used to maintain with a straight face that it was a huge scandal and evidence of communism to call anyone the czar of anything? Well, Homan will now be Trump’s “border czar.” He’s one of the architects of the policy that had the U.S. government deliberately and systematically separating kids from their parents at the border. He’s also spent this interregnum period while Trump has been out of office barnstorming the country bragging about how he’s going to be the man mercilessly coming after immigrants if Trump gets back in power. Trump has put the other architect of family separation, Stephen Miller, in charge of all policy planning for the transition. A source tells NBC News that Miller will also serve as deputy chief of staff for policy in the second Trump White House. So anyone telling you that a second Trump administration is going to be at all moderate or normal in terms of what they’re going to do, that person is living on a nice planet that I’d like to visit sometime, but it’s not our planet. Any expectation that the most extreme things Trump talked about were just talk and that normal people would come into his administration to do normal things, well, that wishful thinking hasn’t survived one week after the election.
Rachel Maddow
Rachel Maddow is host of the Emmy Award-winning “The Rachel Maddow Show” Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on MSNBC. “The Rachel Maddow Show” features Maddow’s take on the biggest stories of the day, political and otherwise, including in-depth analysis and stories no other shows in cable news will cover.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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