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Playbook: “For years, the conventional wisdom around Trump is that he has a sweet tooth for chaos and that his appetite is bottomless as long as he ultimately gets the outcome he desires.

Politico: “Rather than showcasing Trump’s absolute power over his GOP allies, it revealed his limits. The doomed nomination lasted just eight days — and its failure is an unwelcome lesson for the president-elect, who has been projecting invincibility and claiming a historic mandate despite his reed-thin popular vote victory.”

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Matt Gaetz gives up after just eight days. What does that say about power and politics in America?

“Ben Carson — the former neurosurgeon who helmed the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the first Trump administration — is a favorite to return to the role if he wants it,” Politico reports.

“President-elect Donald Trump has floated selecting the financier Kevin Warsh as his Treasury secretary with the understanding that he could later be nominated to lead the Federal Reserve when Jerome Powell’s term as chair ends in 2026,“ the Wall Street Journal reports.

Semafor: “On top of their small majority, Republicans may also have two troublesome tasks to handle next year: funding the government for the rest of the fiscal year and raising the debt limit.”

Axios: “Trump won’t be inaugurated for another two months, but MAGA mayhem is already dominating the news cycle in the same ways it did throughout his first term…”

“If past is prologue, the pace of chaos is unlikely to relent even after Trump gets his Cabinet in place.”

Washington Post: “Biden and his aides have concluded that they have few ways to block President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to upend agencies and shatter norms, but there is one big thing they can do: focus their final weeks on getting billions of dollars out the door to finish implementing Biden’s signature pieces of legislation.”

Just published: Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021 by former German chancellor Angela Merkel.

“This is good, actually. She barely shows up and doesn’t do the reading. To borrow a phrase I saw elsewhere, it’s like giving someone an unplugged controller.”
— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), commenting on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) chairing a new subcommittee on government efficiency.