Donald Trump declares war with Democrats over his nominations in blunt New Year’s Eve message

Donald Trump demanded his Republican allies hold the line in a New Year’s eve message designed to rally his party and shore up his most embattled nominees. 

The message comes just days before Republicans are set to seize control of the Senate – with key nominees including his choice for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth facing potentially brutal confirmation hearings. 

Trump’s problems will come in the Senate that his party is set to control 53-47, even as it is the narrowly divided Republican House that is posing the greatest difficulties this week. Speaker Mike Johnson must lean on his narrowly divided conference to prevail on a vote to retain his post Friday, with one Republican already publicly announcing opposition. A defeat would risk starting off the new Congress with a replay of the dysfunction of the last, with Congress set to meet to count the electoral votes for Trump’s victory on January 6.

‘We just won a Historic Landslide and Mandate from the American People, but Senate Democrats are organizing to improperly stall and delay the confirmation process of many of our Great Nominees,’ Trump posted on his Truth Social web site.

‘They will try all sorts of tricks starting very soon. Republicans must not allow them to do that. We have a Country to run, and many big problems to solve, mostly created by Democrats. REPUBLICANS, BE SMART AND TOUGH!!!’

Trump didn’t specify what Democratic moves were improper. Several have been demanding hearings to vet accusations against controversial nominees including Hegseth, a former Fox News host. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department, also faces criticism over his vaccine stance and other issues. 

Senate Democrats, who have made positive noises about Sen. Marco Rubio for Secretary of State and other picks, have been brandishing their constitutional ‘advise and consent’ role – which can be code for delay or digging up dirt through committee probes and detailed questionaires.

Trump has raised the stakes by choosing for positions requiring Senate confirmation golf pals, wealthy donors, friendly news anchors, and family members.

Trump is pushing to get Kash Patel confirmed as FBI Director, after current director Chris Wray announced his retirement after Trump voiced his opposition. Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat-turned-Republican, is facing criticism for times she pushed issues that were also Kremlin talking points, and for meeting with brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was forced from power in December and fled to Russia.

Despite his demands for fellow Republicans to hang tough, the vast majority of his nominees are set to sail through based on Senate rules that allow a simple majority to confirm them. Team Trump tightened up the pressure after his pick for attorney general Matt Gaetz withdrew amid accusations of sex trafficking, which he denies.

The flameout culminated last week with the release of a damning House Ethics Committee report that found he paid $90,000 for sex including with a minor.

‘Victim A recalled receiving $400 in cash from Representative Gaetz that evening, which she understood to be payment for sex,’ according to the report by the bipartisan panel. ‘Victim A said that she did not inform Representative Gaetz that she was under 18 at the time, nor did he ask her age.’ Gaetz’ lawyers said the report included ‘untruthful and defamatory information’ and the committee no longer had jurisdiction over a former member of Congress.

Many political experts have quibbled with Trump’s claim of winning a historic landslide. He beat VP Kamala Harris by 49.8 to 48.3 percent of the popular vote, although he beat her in all seven of the battleground states that counted most.

His push to put Republicans on battle footing at the start of their term comes as leaders of both parties prepare to gather for a memorial service honoring President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at 100.

Trump’s missive came amid a brewing civil war inside the MAGA coalition over policy and who will have their hand on the tiller for key decisions. 

Billionaire Elon Musk has had extraordinary access and influence to Donald Trump, but now some influential Trump allies are calling him out as a ‘clinger’ and saying Trump is souring on his extended-stay guest.

Among those torching the world’s richest man for his outsized influence is MAGA devotee Laura Loomer, who helped fuel a MAGA civil war over visas for high-tech workers.

‘I think that a lot of people have a hard time speaking truth to power, and a lot of people are afraid of taking on billionaires,’ Loomer told Steve Bannon on his War Room Pandemic podcast. ‘He is the richest man in the world, and so he kind of orbits President Trump.’

‘As I called him the other day, I said he’s a Stage 5 clinger,’ she added. ‘It sounds like people are scared of crossing the king, the king of the world, Elon Musk, the monarch,’ she told conservative commentator Eric Bolling in another interview. ‘This is the problem when you when you when you allow for a billionaire to make a $200 million donation.’

Amid the ongoing battle for influence in Trump’s circle, some insiders are going after the billionaire with pointed blind quotes.

‘100 percent Trump is annoyed,’ a Trump insider who worked on the latest campaign told Mediaite. ‘There’s a Chinese saying: ‘two tigers cannot live on one mountaintop.’

That line points to a longtime Trump annoyance at getting upstaged – something Democrats tried to stoke before Christmas by mocking him as ‘Vice President Trump’ and claiming Musk was really in charge.

In fact Musk, who is taking on an outside and advisory role, is just one of more than a dozen billionaires Trump is bringing into government. 

But he has sometimes seemed omnipresent – both in person at Mar-a-Lago, where the New York Times reported he is paying $2,000 a night to crash at a cottage on the president-elect’s private golf club – and online on his X platform.

It is there were some of Musk’s postings have annoyed longtime MAGA adherents. Musk ripped a bipartisan spending measure to keep government open, helping tank the deal and leaving Republicans with a short-term funding extension that doesn’t meet Trump’s demand for ending or hiking the debt ceiling.

And the South Africa-born Musk issued an incendiary post Saturday defending visas for high-tech foreign workers, weeks after a campaign where Trump demanded a mass deportation operation to expel millions of migrants who came to the country illegally.

‘The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B. Take a big step back and F*** YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend,’ Musk wrote.

That prompted Bannon to call Musk a ‘toddler.’