Friday Mailbag!

It's here.

Happy Friday.

We made it.

And, it has been a week.

Donald Trump continues to fill out his Cabinet at breakneck pace. The Democratic blame game continues to simmer. Rahm Emanuel is considering a return stateside to fix what ails his party. The 2026 Senate landscape is already getting clearer.

Politics just never stops.

I got lots and lots of questions this week — and below I did my level best to answer them. If your question didn’t get answered, make sure to head over to my weekly YouTube livestream where I will take a bunch more. It’s at 1 pm eastern at my YouTube channel!

The Mailbag is one of the posts that I put behind the paywall. Free subscribers will be able to see the first few questions and answers. But to see the full Mailbag, you’ll need to become a paid subscriber. Which is easy! It’s $6 a month or $60 for the whole year. If you want to know more about what I am doing — and why I am doing it — read this profile of me by

Simon Owens

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To the Mailbag!

Q: Any chance Republican Senators will have the guts to say no to Trump's nominees?

A: TBD.

I don’t think that Republican Senators are going to vote down a whole bunch of Trump’s picks. Because, let’s be honest — what evidence do we have over the last decade that suggests any GOP elected officials will suddenly decide to stand up to Trump?

The political reality is that he won. And won convincingly. Which means he gets to pick who he wants. Republican Senators are very aware of that fact and have seen what happens to people who publicly cross Trump.

My guess is that they choose one nominee — I think Matt Gaetz will be the guy — to try to put their collective foot down. And I am not even totally sure that will work, to be honest.

There’s no way that if Gaetz goes down, Senate GOPers also tank RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth. No way.

Q: I can count at least four Republican Senators who will push back: Collins, Murkowski, Romney, and I think McConnell. Do any of them really have anything to lose?

A: Well, Romney is out of the Senate. He retired this year. Other than that I think your list is solid. Murkowski and Collins are absolutely the two most likely to resist Trump’s priorities. McConnell is a wild card but I am skeptical he suddenly turns into a Trump antagonist. A few other names to watch on that front: North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, Indiana Sen. Todd Young, Utah Sen. John Curtis and Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy.

Q: Gaetz, Hegseth, Gabbard, Musk, RFK - do these appointments change your view on how the next Trump administration will govern?

A: Not really.

As I wrote last night, Trump ran expressly on a belief that Washington experts — and experts more broadly — are frauds. And that the only way to really fix things is to bring people in who the Washington establishment doesn’t accept.

Which is exactly what he is doing. That the DC crowd gasped when Gaetz or RFK Jr. were announced is sort of the point to Trump.

Trump wants people in critical jobs who, like him, think we need radical change in the way Washington works. And who will, largely, do his bidding. We knew that. And the people he’s picked so far reflect that.

Q: Chris, is Trump pulling what he did last time where he knows some of his selections won’t go anywhere and he can have another cabinet full of “acting” fill in any role here?