Trump World’s Confirmation Playbook: Speak Loudly and Unleash the MAGA Dogs

IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG FOR SEN. JONI ERNST (R-Iowa) to realize she had stepped in it.

Shortly after Ernst offered a chilly reception to Pete Hegseth’s nomination to head the department of defense, she recognized she was in trouble politically, with grassroots Republicans calling for her head.

“How do I make this go away?” a flabbergasted Ernst said to an intermediary, according to a top Donald Trump adviser who received the message.

The answer was obvious to everyone involved. All Ernst had to do was back away from her tacit opposition to Hegseth and the MAGA dogs would stop baying. Sure enough, on Monday, Ernst changed her tune—not explicitly saying she’d vote for Hegseth’s confirmation but saying she supported him in the process. By then, the Trump team was feeling good, not just about her vote but about the slate of confirmations to come.

“It sent a message,” according to a top Trump adviser involved in the discussions with Ernst who relayed them to The Bulwark. “Nobody wants to be Joni.”

The desire not to get in MAGA’s crosshairs has spread throughout much of the Senate Republican conference in recent days. It’s the result of both a remarkable swelling of grassroots energy to demand party loyalty from GOP officials and the belief—among some members themselves—that it would send a bad message to see a second Trump nominee go down after Matt Gaetz’s failed bid for attorney general.

Leading that charge has been Sen. Tom Cotton, the GOP conference chair, who’s tasked with charting the course for his party’s messaging in the chamber (a post for which he beat Ernst last month). Cotton, a vet like Ernst and Hegseth, was increasingly annoyed with political chatter that the Senate was essentially duty-bound to vote down one of Trump’s picks because of tradition (Gaetz never made it to a vote).

So Cotton directed staff to research the history of Senate confirmations and he quickly concluded that the GOP conference needed to support not just Hegseth, but all of Trump’s controversial nominees.

“I expect our Republican Senate is going to confirm all of President Trump’s nominees,” he said Monday morning. In a separate post, he added: “Of the 72 cabinet secretary nominees since the Clinton transition, only 2 nominees have ever received NO votes from the president-elect’s party. No one should be surprised that the Republican Senate will confirm President Trump’s nominees.”

Cotton’s bravado and Ernst’s buckling underscored the choice facing 53 Republican senators in the weeks ahead: board the Trump train or get tied to the tracks. As of early this week, an emboldened Trump team and top supporters believe that 50-plus members will get on board not just for Hegseth’s confirmation but for Tulsi Gabbard (director of national intelligence), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (secretary of health and human services), and Kash Patel (FBI director) as well.

“They’re all going to get confirmed,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fl.) told The Bulwark. “We’re going to respect the fact that he [Trump] got 77 million votes, respect the fact that he won in a landslide, respect that he’s the president.”

Scott said he wasn’t sure if the grassroots blowback against Ernst—which included unmistakable threats of a primary campaign against her—sent a message to other Republican senators. But he said it showed that rank-and-file voters are watching. And they’re mad.

“There are a lot of people now that are very focused on making sure Trump’s agenda gets accomplished and his nominees get confirmed,” he said. “This is pretty consistent, on a daily basis, that the grassroots is showing up.”

For Trump and the MAGA base, the ouster of Gaetz as Trump’s attorney general pick was enough.

“I wasn’t going to make them [the Senate] walk the plank on Matt,” Trump told a confidant, in remarks whose subtext was unmistakable: He wants all of his other nominees approved.

As for the online anger and calls to primary Ernst in 2026, Trump transition officials insist that was all organic.

“There wasn’t direction from us. Our allies already know what to do. They know what their north star is and they have since the primary,” said another Trump adviser who complimented Cotton for adding extra help by pointing out how rare it is for a president’s party to reject his nominees.

“It’s a huge message point,” the adviser said. “He gives us a lot of weight.”

As Trump tries to keep his party in line and avoid some of the missteps of his first term in office, his team is eager to see a new class of GOP lawmakers—one more aligned with their mission—take on leadership roles.

Chief among them is Cotton, who is seen by some on Trump’s team as a bridge between the old guard under former Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and the new “America First wing” of Ohio’s JD Vance, the vice president-elect. As a member of the Intelligence Committee, Cotton’s views on Gabbard in particular were the subject of intense interest among Senate insiders. On Monday, Cotton offered a statement of support for the DNI pick, whose past remarks about now-deposed Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad have alarmed the intelligence community.

“Without Cotton, we’re fucked. But Cotton is with us,” said a Trump confidant involved with Gabbard’s nomination. “It’s big.”

The turning point in the confirmation fights came last Thursday, Trump advisers said, when Hegseth scolded the press over its coverage of allegations, which he denies, of sexual misconduct and issues with alcoholism. The following day, Hegseth began finding common ground with Ernst, a decorated combat vet who disliked his opposition to women serving under fire. Hegseth claimed he hadn’t actually said he opposed such service (despite being on camera doing so), giving Ernst room to claim victory.

One fear in Trump world remains that individual senators may find it easier to vote against one cabinet pick while supporting the others—but with different opposition alliances forming in such a way that several go down. For that reason Trump transition officials have adjusted their messaging to package the nominees as one, so that they come together like Voltron, making it harder for senators to oppose any single one.

Trump advisers still expect Gabbard or Kennedy will get the most negative attention, because some of their batty views might be unacceptable even for Republicans. But they also expect Trump to fight hardest for their confirmations because of the unique role they played in his campaign as former Democrats who validated his cross-partisan political appeal.

“Trump has all these guys. It’s all over but the shoutin’,” a senior aide to a Republican senator said. “Unless the unexpected happens, Trump is getting his picks. . . . My boss is very popular in his state, but he knows that if it becomes a choice between him and Trump, he’s going to lose and he’s going to lose badly.”

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