Sarah Matthews, a former White House aide to Donald Trump, brushed off talk of the president-elect playing “4D chess” with his Cabinet picks as “kind of hilarious” on Friday before explaining why that’s far from the case.
Matthews, in an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Jansing about Trump’s controversial nominations, dismissed “discourse” that the president-elect is making “crazy” picks knowing they’ll fail in hopes the Senate will confirm his second choices.
“That’s not what’s happening,” said Matthews, who was a White House deputy press secretary in Trump’s first term and resigned after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“He knows that he is drunk on power right now because he feels like he was given a mandate by winning the popular vote,” she said.
She added that Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the president-elect “doesn’t have to worry about running for reelection.”
“So, in this term, he wants to put up the people that he wants,” Matthews said. “So it is not some 4D game of chess that he’s playing of trying to put out a sacrificial lamb, like a Matt Gaetz for AG, and so that way his other nominees can squeak through.”
Matthews made the comments after Jansingplayed a clip of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy predicting that the Senate won’t confirm former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to be Trump’s attorney general.
“You can talk to [the] president, but it’s a good deflection from others,” McCarthy said in an interview with Bloomberg’s Haslinda Amin on Thursday.
Trump’s AG pick has sparked bipartisan callsfor the House Ethics Committee to release the findings of its probe on Gaetz, who has faced allegations of sexual misconduct and illegal drug use.
After Trump announced his AG pick, Gaetz immediately resigned from Congress, a move that promptly ended the committee’s probe.
The committee was reportedly just days away from voting on releasing its “highly damaging” report on the investigation.
Matthews said she thinks Trump “genuinely” wants Gaetz to be his AG but some senators still “might not go for it.”
Earlier in the MSNBC appearance, she said the pushback is probably making Trump “even more sure” that he wants Gaetz for the job.
“Because he doesn’t want someone who’s going to please the establishment. He wants someone who is going to be a loyalist and who’s going to do his bidding at the Department of Justice. He doesn’t want an independent DOJ,” she said.
