We all knew this was going to happen.
Todd Blanche narrowly confirmed as Trump’s attorney general in overnight vote:
The Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general in a vote early Saturday morning, cementing President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney’s command of a Justice Department the Republican president has sought to bend to his will.
The Republican-led Senate voted 50-49 to make Blanche the second confirmed attorney general since Trump returned to the White House last year with a stated desire to use the law enforcement agency to investigate his political enemies. While Blanche has already been leading the department in an acting capacity, his confirmation could free him to pursue the Trump administration’s agenda even more aggressively.
During a discussion on this Friday's NewsNight with Abby Phillip on CNN prior to the vote, Politics Girl, a.k.a. Leigh McGowan put the whole farce in proper perspective after her fellow guest, National Review's Caroline Downey said none of it mattered anyway since Blanche could serve as acting AG regardless of their votes:
MCGOWAN: Todd Blanche should have been disqualified from the very beginning. The President's personal defense attorney should not be the attorney general of the United States. That is a blatant conflict of interest.
The man who ignored the Epstein victims and then moved Ghislaine Maxwell from a maximum security prison to where she is now should not be the attorney general of the United States. It's disrespectful to every single sexual abuse survivor that has been waiting to be heard.
I think Bill Cassidy is a spineless coward. I can't believe he did this.
He already wrecked it for us with the HHS confirmation of RFK Jr. He's a doctor, he knows better. Our health is worse because of that decision.
I think it doesn't matter if Bill Cassidy voted yes or no. If he decided to vote no, they would have got Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins to vote yes. I mean, they had the votes to begin with.
John Thune needed this vote because he wasn't going to vote for the SAVE Act and he has to throw Trump a bone. But this is pathetic.
I think this whole thing is theater. And I think that Todd Blanche has absolutely no business being attorney general of the United States.
The whole thing was theater, but no one should be surprised by Cassidy's actions after what he did with RFK Jr.
Later in the segment after Asa Hutchinson tried to defend Cassidy, McGowan put her finger on Cassidy's motivation:
MCGOWAN: I think Bill Cassidy knows that he's out of the job because of Donald Trump. And if he wants to get another job out of this job, it's going to be at the behest of Donald Trump. We're going to get a lot of people here somewhere else.
Yep. They're all worried about their lobbying or pundit jobs once they leave Congress, so they don't want to completely fall out of Trump's good graces. And yes, they're all spineless cowards.
