Anyone paying attention knew that a Donald Trump White House would be packed with flunkies, fanboys, and yes men. But Trump’s selection of Matt Gaetz for attorney general is an incendiary stunt that still manages to shock—and is a huge slap in the face for women.
Gaetz, a 42-year-old congressman from Florida, is one of the most extreme members of the House of Representatives. He’s also been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for sex trafficking, a probe that stems from allegations Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old girl.
The Department of Justice looked into the allegations as well, but that investigation was reportedly closed with no charges—and Gaetz denies all wrongdoing.
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But just over a year later, Gaetz has been nominated to lead that very same department.
The move also sends a strong signal that Trump is all about revenge against his perceived enemies—and that he is willing to appoint the dumbest, meanest, most harshly partisan people in America to get his way.
It’s not a single set of troubling legal accusations that make Gaetz such an insulting pick for women in particular. The Florida firebrand has made a series of viciously misogynist comments, insulting women who advocate for women’s rights as fat and ugly, and even directing his ire at a teenage girl (who subsequently raised $700,000 for abortion care).
He has pushed the MAGA strategy of marginalizing female voters, arguing that it helps secure the more important votes of men (“for every Karen we lose, there’s a Julio and a Jamal ready to sign up for the MAGA movement,” he told Newsmax, using a derogatory term for middle-aged white women and two stereotyped names for Latino and Black men). After a leaked Supreme Court decision suggested that the court was set to overturn Roe v. Wade and women protested for abortion rights, Gaetz tweeted, “How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?”
In addition, Gaetz is a staunch opponent of abortion rights, cosponsoring a bill that would have banned abortion after six weeks. He has supported federal rule-changes that would allow government dollars to be redirected from clinics that provide contraception and other actual healthcare to faith-based organizations that offer Bible study. If he is the attorney general, he will have the power to bring the full weight of the federal government down on abortion providers, abortion rights activists, doctors, and women seeking abortions.
An Attorney General Gaetz could, for example, attempt to prosecute adults who help teenagers cross state lines for abortion care. He could target abortion funds and abortion care networks. He could focus on the mailing of abortion pills, or enforce the Comstock Act and criminalize those who mail or receive abortion pills. He also seems likely to target LGBTQ people, and trans people in particular: He has opposed anti-discrimination bills that would protect LGBTQ people, and has mocked trans people for simply existing.
He’s also never practiced as a government attorney or been a judge, making him a pretty unqualified pick for attorney general. His sole credential seems to be that he’s a die-hard Trump loyalist and he’s just as vindictive and venomous as the president-elect.
In selecting Gaetz, Trump is also jettisoning any election-season promises to female voters. The Donald Trump who vowed to moderate on abortion and who scaled back his most blatantly misogynist language in 2024 barely saw the ink on the ballots dry before he did this particular 180 and selected a man—in, it should be said, a sea of mostly male and nearly all-white Cabinet picks—who has spent his career puffing himself up while degrading and insulting women.
His appointment is certainly about Trump’s desire to install a loyalist above all else. But it’s also predictive of what’s to come: an administration that directly attacks women and our rights, and that at best simply deems women so entirely unimportant that the men who demean and detest us are handed vast power over our lives.
