WATCH: Top Political Insider Mark Halperin Suggests Gaetz, RFK ‘Likely’ To Be Confirmed

Mark Halperin, the well-sourced Washington, D.C. journalist who has crawled the halls of power for decades, said on Friday that he believes it is “likely” that all of President-elect Donald Trump’s most controversial appointments will be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Speaking on 2WayTV, the “Game Change” journalist cited Trump winning the popular vote as a factor that may “change the calculation” by Republican senators who rightly fear a backlash back home. “No normal president” would have nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to lead Health and Human Services following the outcry over his selecting Matt Gaetz for U.S. attorney general, Halperin stated, “but he did. And in a normal transition, the nomination of Bobby Kennedy to HHS — enormously controversial on multiple levels — would be like the biggest thing, and it would raise questions about the judgment of the operation.” However, Halperin believes Trump is being shrewd in his calculations.

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“That’s not what we’re dealing with here. We’re dealing with almost five unfathomable choices for the normal rules,” Halperin continued. “Tens of millions of Americans share Donald Trump’s beliefs about these departments and about what needs to be done.” In the span of four days, Trump has fueled a media meltdown for selecting Kennedy and Gaetz as well as Tulsi Gabbard for intelligence chief and Pete Hegseth, a veteran and Fox News host, for secretary of defense. He has called on Senate Republicans to back the concept of “recess appointments” that would effectively circumvent traditional rules, allowing for confirmations while the Senate is out of session. Regardless of how it’s done, Halperin theorized, President-elect Trump will get what he’s after.

“It now falls to John Thune (R-SD) and his fifty-two colleagues to decide what they want to do about this. There’s the prerogatives of the Senate to not be rolled by the executive branch. There’s individual senators’ views about the fitness of these five and others to serve in these jobs. But there’s also the reality that it’s an incoming Republican president who won the popular vote. You hear Democrats already saying Trump is forfeiting his mandate, he’s forfeiting his political capital, he’s dooming his term in the first one hundred days and any legislative progress by asking the senators to devote time to deciding up or down. I continue to put my finger on the side of, I think it’s more likely all five will be confirmed than most people do,” Halperin said.

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Thune, elected by Senate Republicans to lead the majority in 2025, already has his work cut out for him. Moderates like Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have expressed disgust that Gaetz, previously embroiled in an investigation into so-called sex trafficking, may become America’s top cop. Without their votes on a Trump appointee like Gaetz, Thune must marshal all other Republicans into line and allow for Vice President-elect J.D. Vance to serve as tie-breaker.