You don't have to watch the confirmation hearings

There, I said it. You're not likely to find that advice on many politics-oriented websites, but it's the truth of it and you don't need to beat yourself up about not knowing every single new outrage within a few minutes of it happening.

I can fill you in. Each of Trump's most controversial and ridiculous nominees has been shoved in front of a Republican-controlled Senate confirmation hearing, upon which they are showered with lavish praise while it is left to Democrats to point out things like "so, you realize you have absolutely no qualifications for this position, and not only do you have no qualifications for this position, you almost certainly wouldn't even be able to pass the background checks necessary to set foot in the building" or "I can't help but notice that you tried to overturn a valid United States election by lying your amazingly crooked ass off and spreading hoaxes that helped lead to an insurrection attempt, how the hell do you have the audacity to even show up here you pathetic crime-enabling lickspittle" and then a Republican introduces a letter from the nominee's uncle's favorite car dealer to say "oh no, this person is fantastic, if I wanted to run a military or do some big-boy crimes I would totally want this person in my camp" and the cycle continues.

Pete Hegseth, the B-tier Fox News morning host infamous for day drinking, white nationalist tattoos and alleged rape, got the treatment on Tuesday. The sum total of the day's news was that he was dressed like a Young Republican who'd been caught mid-act sodomizing a flagpole, he both insisted that none of the things he was accused of were true and that he was a completely changed man since those earlier "struggles" that didn't happen. Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin both made a point at the hearing and scuttled onto as many news programs as he could manage afterwards to angrily insist that the Senate was absolutely full of day-drinking incompetent white-nationalism-backing torture-supporting rapists so it was an outrage that anyone would try to hold an incoming Secretary of Fking Defense to any higher standard, and none of his Republican colleagues tried to push back on that so it's safe to say it's true.

While Mullin did his damnedest to skirt the actual accusations and focus solely on the presumptive new defense secretary's uncontrolled alcoholism, among the acts that Mullin was insisting was not disqualifying was an allegation (and resulting legal settlement with the victim) that Hegseth raped a woman at a Republican conference, possibly after drugging her into unconsciousness. Who among us hasn't been there, say Hegseth's Senate defenders. If you're going to disqualify someone for that, who among us should even be here right now?

Well, we already knew who they were, so I expect we should believe them.

But the hearing itself was only theater. All the senators knew how they would vote before they showed up to work that day, and they all played their roles and then cut questioning short rather than subjecting the man to further exposure of his complete lack of knowledge and humiliating (ongoing) life choices, and that was that. Today's hearings have been the same theatrics; the unqualified nominees remain unqualified, the coup backers remain coup backers (here's a tip for you: nobody either gets or accepts a nomination to be part of The Criminal's new inner circle unless they are able to look the other way on violent insurrection), and it's the broad understanding of everyone in the room that these nominees are there because Donald Trump wants to commit certain crimes, during his new administration, and these are the Republican allies who he believes are most likely to help him commit those crimes even after even the hardest-right members of his past administration refused.

Dispatching the military to shoot protesters. Creating a new system of internment camps not only for undocumented immigrants, but native-born Americans with immigrant parents. Taking barely-veiled bribes from foreign governments while president. Stealing national secrets. Overturning the next election, with military assistance if necessary, if whoever's puppeting Donald around at that point wants it overturned. And, of course, immunizing Trump's allies from whatever crimes they themselves want to pursue.

Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi's performance is so far the low point of today's theater. Pam Bondi was born just yesterday; Trump found her in a cardboard box on the side of the road. She has no recollection of any past scandal and can't say whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 election—there is voluminous television footage of her claiming at the time that he was the true winner because something-something fraud—because she has amnesiaaaa.

If there was one, even just one, Republican senator with a bit of integrity they would laugh the Pete Hegseths and Pam Bondis out of the room, quickly voting down their nominations and breaking for an early day-drinking staff-drugging lunch. But there isn't even just one, and that's what makes all of this a farce that's not worth dignifying as anything more than a farce. Every senator understands these nominees are here because Donald Trump has very specific crimes he wants to commit—such as jailing his political opponents in both parties—and these are the ever-toadying, unrelentingly ambitious screwups whose past promises to do crimes for him sounded the most authentic.

And they're going to let it happen, because confronting The Criminal on this will make The Criminal angry, and that will make Fox News angry, and that makes the base angry, and it's better to brush the problem aside and wait to see which specific crimes these nominees have in mind. Maybe the crimes will be little, forgivable crimes, ones like violent attempted coups that leave the senators running for their lives because Donald's transparent mental illnesses leave him convinced that any failure on his own part was due to a conspiracy by whoever he last got angry about when watching television.

If so, they'll brush those off too. Maybe the first time the drunken Fox News host orders the U.S. military to shoot protesters the more "moderate" Republican senators who voted for him will issue a terse press release expressing their sorrow that it has come to this, and maybe they won't.

But no, you don't have to watch these hearings and make yourself sick watching the full extent of their pathetic fall into rote sycophancy. Just imagine the Republicans on the panel being the most craven, pathetic lickspittles you can dream of them being—no, no, much more than that.

There. You now know how every single confirmation hearing has gone. Don't worry, if a Republican shows even 30 seconds of backbone before caving and voting for even the worst of the nominees, you'll see footage of it played everywhere as part of media efforts to boost the performative drama of it all.

Matt Gaetz is probably kicking himself right now for resigning, though. From what we've seen so far it's a near-certainty that Markwayne Mullin and the other Republican senators would forgive a pattern of sex trafficking, drug use and raping high schoolers. Who among us, those senators would say, and nod to each other.