The expression “The worse, the better” is often attributed to Vladimir Lenin, and captures a sort of messianic nihilism — the dream that escalating misery will hasten the fall of a corrupt order. Usually, I find this ethos despicable; in my experience, suffering only begets more suffering. I’m making an exception, however, for Donald Trump’s nomination of the former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz to be attorney general, a flagrant provocation that is, like a pulpy B movie, so bad it’s good.
“越坏越好”这句话经常被归咎于弗拉基米尔·列宁（Vladimir Lenin），它捕捉到了一种救世主式的虚无主义——即不断升级的苦难将加速腐败秩序的垮台。通常，我觉得这种精神很卑鄙;根据我的经验，痛苦只会带来更多的痛苦。然而，对于唐纳德·特朗普提名前佛罗里达州众议员马特·盖茨（Matt Gaetz）担任司法部长，我破例了，这是一个公然的挑衅，就像一部低俗的B级电影一样，糟糕到好。

While Trump’s choice of Gaetz to lead the Justice Department is a clear sign that his second administration will be catastrophically chaotic, vengeful and corrupt, that should never have been in doubt. Trump made no secret during his campaign of his desire to persecute his political enemies. Anyone he chose as attorney general would share his interest in turning the justice system into the enforcement arm of the MAGA movement. The selection of Gaetz just rips the mask off. With it, Trump is trolling not just his defeated opponents but many of his craven establishment supporters. It’s like Caligula trying to make his horse a consul.
虽然特朗普选择盖茨领导司法部是一个明确的信号，表明他的第二届政府将是灾难性的混乱、报复和腐败，但这不应该受到怀疑。特朗普在竞选期间毫不掩饰他想要迫害他的政敌。他选择担任司法部长的任何人都会和他一样有兴趣将司法系统变成 MAGA 运动的执法部门。Gaetz 的选择只是撕下了面具。有了它，特朗普不仅在挑衅他被击败的对手，而且在挑衅他的许多懦弱的建制派支持者。这就像卡利古拉试图让他的马成为执政官。

Of all the people Trump was considering for A.G., Gaetz is unique mainly for how much he is hated by other Republicans, and not just moderate ones. In the final months of the last Trump administration, the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether Gaetz had a relationship with an underage girl that violated federal sex trafficking laws. Though that inquiry was closed without charges, the House opened an ethics investigation into him. It was reportedly set to vote on releasing a damning report on Friday, which Gaetz may have tried to pre-empt by resigning, though it could still become public.
在特朗普考虑的所有人中，盖茨是独一无二的，主要是因为他被其他共和党人所憎恨，而不仅仅是温和派。在上届特朗普政府的最后几个月，司法部对盖茨是否与一名未成年女孩有违反联邦性贩运法的关系展开调查。尽管该调查在没有指控的情况下结束，但众议院对他展开了道德调查。据报道，该委员会原定于周五就发布一份谴责性报告进行投票，盖茨可能试图通过辞职来抢占先机，尽管该报告仍可能公开。

When Gaetz was accused of sleeping with the girl, “there’s a reason why no one in the conference came and defended him,” Markwayne Mullin, a very conservative Republican senator from Oklahoma, told CNN last year. His colleagues, said Mullin, had seen videos “of the girls that he had slept with,” which Gaetz allegedly showed off on the House floor. After Gaetz forced Kevin McCarthy out as House speaker, throwing his party into disorder, Mike Rogers, a Republican congressman from Alabama, seemed ready to physically attack him and had to be restrained by colleagues.
当盖茨被指控与女孩上床时，“会议中没有人来为他辩护是有原因的，”来自俄克拉荷马州的非常保守的共和党参议员马克韦恩·穆林（Markwayne Mullin）去年告诉CNN。穆林说，他的同事们看过“他睡过的女孩”的视频，据称盖茨在众议院地板上炫耀了这些视频。在盖茨迫使凯文·麦卡锡（Kevin McCarthy）辞去众议院议长一职，使他的政党陷入混乱后，来自阿拉巴马州的共和党众议员迈克·罗杰斯（Mike Rogers）似乎准备对他进行人身攻击，不得不被同事制服。

It should go without saying that Gaetz is not, by any normal standards, even a tiny bit qualified to be attorney general. He practiced law for only about two years before running for office, handling small-time civil matters, like suing an old woman for money she owed his father’s caregiving company.
不言而喻，按照任何正常标准，盖茨甚至没有一点点资格担任司法部长。在竞选公职之前，他只从事了大约两年的法律工作，处理一些小的民事事务，比如起诉一位老妇人，要求她欠他父亲的护理公司的钱。

His chief credential is not his mastery of the law but his contempt for it. “We’re proud of the work we did on Jan. 6 to make legitimate arguments about election integrity,” he told Steve Bannon in 2022. He’s called for abolishing both the F.B.I. and the Justice Department unless they “come to heel.” If confirmed, he will be single-minded in his devotion to carrying out Trump’s will without concern for legal niceties.
他的主要资历不是他对法律的掌握，而是他对法律的蔑视。“我们为我们在 1 月 6 日所做的工作感到自豪，这些工作为选举的完整性提出了合理的论点，”他在 2022 年告诉史蒂夫·班农 （Steve Bannon）。他呼吁废除联邦调查局（FBI）和司法部（Justice Department），除非它们“屈服”。如果得到确认，他将一心一意地致力于执行特朗普的遗嘱，而不关心法律细节。

Gaetz is not the only Trump nominee who seems to have been chosen precisely for his hostility to the values of the organization he’s supposed to lead. On Thursday, Trump announced plans to make Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s leading anti-vaxxer, secretary of health and human services. Pete Hegseth, the Fox News weekend host whom Trump wants to put atop the Pentagon — an institution that is supposed to be scrupulously apolitical — wrote a book describing “social justice saboteurs” as more dangerous to America than any external enemy. During his first administration, when Trump sought to turn the military against left-wing protesters, his defense officials thwarted him. Hegseth, who accused “progressive storm troopers” of turning our cities into “little Samaras,” a reference to an Iraqi city besieged by ISIS, would almost certainly have fewer qualms.
盖茨并不是唯一一个似乎正是因为他对他应该领导的组织的价值观怀有敌意而被选中的特朗普提名人。周四，特朗普宣布计划让美国领先的反疫苗人士小罗伯特·肯尼迪（Robert F. Kennedy Jr.）担任卫生与公众服务部长。特朗普希望将福克斯新闻（Fox News）周末主持人皮特·赫格塞斯（Pete Hegseth）放在五角大楼（一个本应一丝不苟地不参与政治的机构）之上，他写了一本书，称“社会正义破坏者”对美国来说比任何外部敌人都更危险。在他的第一届政府期间，当特朗普试图让军队对付左翼抗议者时，他的国防官员挫败了他。赫格塞斯指责“进步的冲锋队”把我们的城市变成了“小萨马拉斯”，指的是一个被ISIS围困的伊拉克城市，他几乎可以肯定不会有那么多的顾虑。

“It’s the enemy from within,” Trump said of his opponents at a rally last month. “All the scum that we have to deal with that hate our country. That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia.” Some of his supporters thrilled to this language, but others convinced themselves that he didn’t really mean it. By tapping Gaetz to be the highest law enforcement official in the land, Trump has done us the favor of stripping away whatever plausible deniability remained about his intentions. It’s a show of dominance directed more at Republicans than Democrats, meant to make them abase themselves by acquiescing to a nomination they know is indefensible.
“这是来自内部的敌人，”特朗普在上个月的一次集会上谈到他的对手时说。“我们必须处理的所有仇恨我们国家的败类。那是一个比中国和俄罗斯更大的敌人。他的一些支持者对这种说法感到兴奋，但其他人则说服自己，他并不是真的。通过让盖茨成为美国最高执法官员，特朗普帮了我们一个忙，让我们消除了关于他意图的任何似是而非的否认。这是一场针对共和党人而不是民主党人的统治表演，旨在通过默许他们知道站不住脚的提名来使他们卑躬屈膝。

Some social conservatives are aghast: The Christian legal group Liberty Counsel put out a press releasing describing the choice of Gaetz as “shocking and disappointing,” and Ben Domenech, a co-founder of the right-wing website The Federalist, called him “absolutely vile,” among other insults I can’t repeat here. If Gaetz makes it all the way to the confirmation hearings, the proceedings will be a popcorn-worthy carnival of scandal and backbiting. Having won the presidency and both houses of Congress, Trump could have launched his new administration in an atmosphere of confident Republican unity. Instead, it will commence with the crisis, degradation and melodrama that is his natural habitat.
一些社会保守派人士感到震惊：基督教法律团体自由律师（Liberty Counsel）发表了一份新闻稿，称盖茨的选择“令人震惊和失望”，右翼网站《联邦党人》（The Federalist）的联合创始人本·多梅内克（Ben Domenech）称他“绝对卑鄙”，以及其他我不能在这里重复的侮辱。如果盖茨一路走到确认听证会上，诉讼程序将是一场充斥着丑闻和诽谤的爆米花狂欢。在赢得总统大选和国会两院后，特朗普本可以在充满信心的共和党团结氛围中启动他的新政府。相反，它将从危机、堕落和情节剧开始，这是他的自然栖息地。

In the end, I’d expect almost all Republican senators to fall in line and humiliate themselves by voting for Gaetz. “I completely trust President Trump’s decision making on this one,” Mullin said on CNN on Wednesday, though he added that Gaetz would need to sell himself to the Senate. Even if a small number of senators find the fortitude to reject such a preposterous candidate, Trump may attempt to go around them by employing a never-used constitutional provision to force the Senate into recess so he can make appointments without its consent.

And if that doesn’t work, whoever Trump chooses instead of Gaetz will almost certainly be just as destructive, if less flamboyant in his immorality and lust for attention. Trump picked Gaetz, after all, because he’s an excellent representative of the MAGA movement.

Once Trump won, decent outcomes for the country were probably off the table. The institutions are unlikely to hold. Establishment Republicans cannot be counted on to protect us. The best we can hope for is that our new rulers will be stymied by incompetence, infighting and self-sabotage. In that respect, Gaetz may be just the man for the job.

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