I think what we have going on with Trump is a lot of The Art of the Deal and a good sign of how he’s going to handle things in this next term.  This is the difference between a successful business guy and a bunch of people who sought political life because they couldn’t do anything else.  Over the years, this has been a real problem. Our current Senate has a lot of new people who lean toward the MAGA view of the world, but there are still RINO holdovers, and when J.D. Vance walked the proposed Matt Gaetz around to interview all the senators ahead of confirmation, it was like playing poker and walking around the table to see what kind of hands the other players had.  I thought Matt Gaetz was an excellent pick for Attorney General.  Probably the best pick.  But immediately after touring the Senate, Matt Gaetz mysteriously withdrew his name, and Trump announced that Pam Bondi would be the new pick, almost as if that were Trump’s plans all along.  He had talked to Pam about it, and a plan was playing out.  And what Trump learned was that there were 4 or 5 senators like Mitch McConnell who were hard no’s on Matt Gaetz and would not be convinced otherwise.  So rather than fight that uphill battle with great media fanfare, Trump just changed tactics and put a woman in that place to take off the edge for the more progressive senators and Democrats on the confirmation vote. 

Pam Bondi has done the Attorney General job in Florida during the Rick Scott as governor years.  Before that, Florida politics was a lot different as Jeb Bush set the standard, so these days, with Ron DeSantis, it’s a much different place, a much more conservative state.  When Pam Bondi was Attorney General there, she was pretty good.  My opinion is that she was more talk than action.  However, she has been loyal to President Trump and stood by an America First agenda, no matter what happened.  Is she the person who will kick down doors and drag the bad guys out for a hanging? I don’t think so.  But I think she will take on Trump’s personality in his administration, and I think that was always the gig.  I think Trump and Matt Gaetz have other plans looming in the background since he so quickly announced that he was leaving Congress during the next term.  His district is conservative, so that shouldn’t hurt during a special election.  But what we have going on here is a lot of poker playing that is not normal.  And the media doesn’t know how to report it.  And the political machines are not smart enough to understand what is happening.  Trump has a lot of senator confirmations that are going to be tough, but essentially, he put forth his most controversial pick, making all the rest seem very normal by comparison, and paraded him around to see how the Beltway would bet.  And he got his answer and gave the rest of his picks the ammunition they needed to pass confirmation in the Senate.  Although I was looking to Gaetz, Pam Bondi is about as good as we can get for a position like that, but it comes down to the Art of Making a Deal, which has always been Trump’s thing.  We will see a lot of deal-making that will come out very good for all of us.  Trump and the private sector are beating down the political machines of K-Street in a way they have never experienced before.

And that’s the name of the game in most things in life, especially poker.  I think it’s a great game, especially Texas Hold Em’ because it teaches players how to make a good hand win and how to recognize a good hand from a bad one.  Or, how to play a bad hand and still win.  Poker is about strengths and weaknesses and making the most out of personal circumstances.  It’s not about luck as much as manipulating the other players.  A player at the table could have the best hand in the world, and the person holding the bad hand can still beat them by coaxing them to fold.  And I think that’s what Trump did to the entire Senate, now led by John Thune, and appeasing the Mitch McConnell holdovers.  Trump looked at their hands and saw what he needed to do.  Matt Gaetz will be involved in something that does not require Senate confirmation but that won’t be announced until all the confirmations happen.  Once the Senate angers Trump, he’ll pull out Matt Gaetz and get things moving again.  If you are a fan of The Art of the Deal books or Poker, this is shaping up to be an exciting four years, and the established order of things is not ready.  The many media members who have learned to report political news a certain way are about to have the tops ripped off their business; there will be so much every day that nobody will understand how to process it all.  But this Matt Gaetz situation is just a hint of things to come.

You don’t always get things the way you want them.  But what’s important is that you turn unfortunate circumstances into victories however you can.  Seldom does anything work out the way you envision them.  And putting Matt Gaetz up for an AG nomination was an over-the-top bold move.  But not for the reasons people thought.  Rather than place him in a very contentious position as Attorney General, he used him to discover what the other players at the table were holding as cards.  Once J.D. Vance and Matt Gaetz learned who had what at the table, Trump put down his hand to blow them all out of the water.  And that was Pam Bondi, a pick just as good as Matt Gaetz, but she appears much more reasonable because of her polished personality after years of working in established administrations under challenging conditions.  She is the kind of person even RINO members of the Senate can vote for, if not for her politics, but because she’s a strong woman, and nobody wants to be on record going against that.  So Trump played the hand he had to best effect once he knew what the other players had.  And that’s how you win in these games, whether with a more substantial hand or a bluff.  Winning is the goal, and when it comes to getting Pam Bondi confirmed by the Senate in a way that will not harm his other picks, Trump just showed why we voted for him as the best option to Make America Great Again and why he was so successful throughout his life.  This is how business is done, and the world of useless politicians won’t be able to compete with him.  This is only the start of a lot of deals that will be made, and as Trump has shown over and over again in the past, making deals is his favorite thing to do in the world.  And he’s good at it.  And this nomination of Pam Bondi for Attorney General is just the beginning of many great things to come. 

Rich Hoffman

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