Chapter Sixteen: Matt Gaetz and Incitatus

Qualifications Optional: How Loyalty and Lavish Stables Became the Price of Admission

Matt Gaetz is on the right.

For some unknowable reason, a number of people are surprised at Donald Trump’s selections to run the government. Robert Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, and so on. The only surprise is that anyone is surprised.

Take Matt Gaetz, Trump’s pick for attorney general. According to one report, the Gaetz nomination “has arrived like a thunderclap in Washington.”¹ It is true that the House Ethics Committee was about to issue a report about his sexual misconduct – misconduct which, by the way, he bragged about on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. But Gaetz has resigned in order to pursue his appointment, and the fate of that report is now uncertain. Indeed, Gaetz’s appointment itself, according to some reports, is now in some jeopardy because of his various misadventures.

There is a grand total of one qualification for employment in the new administration – loyalty to Trump. “I am not some ‘Lord of the Flies’ nihilist,” Gaetz said a while back.² We’ll see.

The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has explained that Gaetz is an “accomplished attorney.” “He’s a reformer in his mind and heart, and I think he’ll bring a lot to the table on that.”³ As we all know, Mike Johnson is a good Christian man. Said Trump, Gaetz played “a key role in defeating the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax.”⁴ Trump is a good Christian man also.

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) claimed that she was “shocked by the announcement [of the Gaetz appointment]. This shows why the advice-and-consent process is so important.”⁵ Collins, it should be noted, voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. “. . . [H]e has been an exemplary public servant, judge, teacher, coach, husband, and father,” she explained.⁶ Kavanaugh convinced Collins during a two-hour meeting that she could trust him to uphold Roe v. Wade. Of course, he voted with the majority to overturn that decision and to deny women the right to choose. “I feel misled,” whined Collins.⁷ Collins also thought Neil Gorsuch would not vote to overturn Roe.⁸ Wrong again. Her advice-and-consent with regard to Gaetz and the other worthy folks being nominated for high federal office will doubtless prove equally valuable.

The nomination of Gaetz brings to mind the question of whether or not Roman Emperor Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus – known to us today as Caligula – really did plan to make his beloved horse, Incitatus, a consul, one of the most exalted public positions in the Roman Empire. If you want to see a true dystopia, behold Rome during Caligula’s brief rule, 37 AD to 41 AD.

Caligula really liked “the famous Incitatus.” According to Suetonius, Caligula “used to send his soldiers on the day before the games and order silence in the neighborhood, to prevent the horse Incitatus from being disturbed. Besides a stall of marble, a manger of ivory, purple blankets and a collar of precious stones, he even gave this horse a house, a troupe of slaves and furniture, for the more elegant entertainment of the guests invited in his name. . . .”⁹ “The beast was supposedly invited to banquets.” And rumor had it that Caligula would make him either a consul or a priest.¹⁰ The “popular notion that Caligula made his horse consul . . . [became] a byword for the promotion of incompetents, especially in the political sphere.”¹¹

What will happen if the Gaetz nomination is somehow derailed? Is it possible that Trump would propose a horse as his next nominee? If so, will the redoubtable Senator Collins meet with the horse and receive the necessary assurances that he would be a good attorney general?

But, you ask, what would happen if the horse was confirmed as attorney general and proceeded to misbehave? Not to worry.

Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, has been nominated to run Homeland Security; so she will be near at hand. Noem is well known for one act and one act only. She killed her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, because the dog annoyed her. This she did, and this she boasted of in order to prove her toughness. “It was not a pleasant job, but it had to be done,” she explained. She also gunned down a goat.¹²

If Kristi could murder a dog and a goat, she could obviously slaughter a horse. All will be well in the Trump administration.

1. Anthony Zurcher, “Trump picking Gaetz to head justice sends shockwaves – and a strong message,” BBC.com News, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2k0472q8v0o

2. Robert Draper, “Matt Gaetz, a Bomb-Thrower for the Justice Department,” New York Times, November 14, 2024.

3. Anthony Zurcher, “Trump picking Gaetz to head justice sends shockwaves – and a strong message,” BBC.com News, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2k0472q8v0o

4. Heather Cox Richardson, “Letters from an American,” Substack, November 13, 2024.

5. Riley Board, “Susan Collins ‘shocked’ at Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general,” Portland Press Herald, November 13, 2024.

6. Carl Hulse, “Susan Collins, Standing Alone, Makes Her Case for Kavanaugh,” New York Times, October 5, 2018.

7. Carl Hulse, “Kavanaugh Gave Private Assurances. Collins Says He ‘Misled’ Her,” New York Times, June 24, 2022.

8. Eli Watkins, “Collins: Won’t support SCOTUS pick hostile to abortion rights, CNN, July 1, 2018.

9. Quoted in David Woods, “Caligula, Incitatus, and the Consulship,” Classical Quarterly, 64.2 pg. 772. (2014)

10. Anthony A. Barrett, Caligula: The Abuse of Power (London: Routledge, 2015) p. 66.

11. Barrett, Caligula, pp. 288-289.

12. Clarissa-Jan Lim, “Gov. Kristi Noem wants you to know how she killed a dog — and a goat,” MSNBC, April 26, 2024.