News that Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz will make the U.S. Cabinet roster under President-elect Donald Trump’s second-term administration is drawing backlash from politicians and the public.
On Wednesday, Trump announced that Gaetz would fill the key executive role of U.S. Attorney General, replacing Merrick Garland.
The announcement drew criticism and apprehension from both Democrats and Republicans. In an appearance on CNN’s “Laura Coates Live,” U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett challenged Gaetz’s appointment and said it is part of a bigger issue as Trump prepares to retake Washington.
“We are just in unchartered territory, but if anybody is surprised, then I say you haven’t been paying attention. Because the reality is that we have someone that is not qualified morally or otherwise to be president of the United States. So why would his appointments be qualified?” Crockett asked.
To round out her critique, she recalled the problem many right-wingers have with DEI efforts across the nation, arguing that the aim to fill homogeneously white institutions and offices with a more diverse workforce will lead to the recruitment of underqualified individuals and dilute the talent in these spaces. Yet, Crockett suggests that Trump appointing his loyalists rather than the most experienced people to fill Cabinet positions will undercut and weaken the government’s service to the American people.
“These are people who have railed against diversity equity and inclusion, trying to say that diverse candidates are somehow unqualified, but the reality is that what they want to do is … put people that are not qualified in and say, ‘Well, you know what, because he’s my homeboy, he is qualified.’ That’s not enough,” the Texas congresswoman asserted.
“That is what the ‘good ol’ boy’ system has always been about, and it’s why we have not ever reached our maximum potential because we do take the real qualified people out of the running because they don’t bend the knee or because, culturally, their background is a little different.”
Gaetz is widely known as a conservative firebrand and Trump devotee who has echoed the belief that Trump’s criminal cases are part of a ploy to humiliate and undermine the president-elect. He was among the hardliners who opposed former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s bid in 2023 to renew his leadership position and contrived a vote that led to his removal.
He has faced alarming accusations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, accepting improper gifts, and obstructing government investigations of his conduct. In 2020, he was at the center of a federal sex-trafficking investigation that examined whether he paid for sex with a then-17-year-old girl. He stoked tensions in Congress after blaming McCarthy for the probe, which ended 2022 with no charges against him.
The House Ethics Committee was set to release a report on Friday about these allegations, but their investigation swiftly ended once Gaetz resigned from Congress on Wednesday after news of his appointment was announced.
Filling the role of U.S. Attorney General means that Gaetz will head the Department of Justice and serve as the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government. He graduated from William & Mary Law School in 2007 and went on to work in a private firm in Florida before becoming a lawmaker, but he lacks prosecutorial experience.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle were shocked by the selection.
“I don’t think it’s a serious nomination for the attorney general,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski told USA Today. “This one was not on my bingo card.”
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, the head of the Judiciary Committee, said Gaetz’s appointment means that Trump “plans to use the Justice Department to seek revenge on his political enemies.”
“I can’t imagine a worse pick for Attorney General than Matt Gaetz,” Ed Whelan, a deputy assistant attorney general under former president George W. Bush, wrote on X.