Rep. Elise Stefanik gave up so much to be Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. She departed her position in the House Republican leadership. She said goodbye to much of her staff and a congressional seat that she surely would hold far longer than an ambassadorial post. She lost friendship after friendship over her unwavering loyalty to the president.
On Thursday, Trump repaid Stefanik’s loyalty as only he could: by kicking her nomination to the curb — notably, not because of anything she did, but because of his own mistakes.
Joining the MAGA White House was supposed to be the culmination of a political makeover years in the making.
Stefanik has completely recast her public persona since 2014, when she became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. In 2016, she voted for John Kasich in the Republican primary, skipped that year’s GOP convention and criticized Trump’s language on the “Access Hollywood” tape. Early in Trump’s first term, she opposed his tax cut plan and even backed Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian influence and the 2016 election.
But after the 2018 midterms, as The New York Times’ Nicholas Confessore wrote, Stefanik “embarked on one of the most brazen political transformations of the Trump era.” Perhaps the Democrats’ first impeachment of Trump “radicalized” her, as multiple aides told The Washington Post’s Ruby Cramer. Perhaps the proceedings were a convenient excuse for an ambitious politician who recognized Trump’s tightening grip on her party.
Whatever the motivation, Stefanik became one of the president’s most loyal soldiers. Nothing Trump said or did was indefensible; every Democrat and media outlet was “vicious” or “radical.” The president noticed: “This young woman from upstate New York — she has become a star,” he gushed to Fox News.
The old moderate still pokes through occasionally: In late 2022, Stefanik broke with most House Republicans to back the Respect for Marriage Act, which codified protections for same-sex marriage in federal law. But, by and large, Stefanik is “ultra MAGA” and “proud of it.” Joining the MAGA White House was supposed to be the culmination of a political makeover years in the making.
But in the midst of Stefanik posting a retrospective of her congressional career on Instagram, Trump announced he was withdrawing her nomination. “It is essential that we maintain EVERY Republican seat in Congress,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. “With a very tight Majority, I don’t want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat.”
While for Trump there is no quality in a subordinate more important than loyalty, that loyalty runs only one way.
The president may have bankrupted multiple casinos, but for once he is right about the odds. In the 14 special elections held this year, former FiveThirtyEight editor G. Elliot Morris calculates that Democrats “beat Harris’s margin vs Trump with the same voters last November by 10 percentage points on average.” That swing is almost exactly the same as it was at this point in the 2018 election cycle, which ended with House Republicans being routed in the midterms. Just this week, Pennsylvania Democrats flipped a state Senate district that just five months ago went for Trump by 15 points.
House Republicans hold only a 218-213 majority in the chamber, with four empty seats. On paper, those vacancies are evenly split: two heavily Democratic districts and two heavily Republican districts. But the GOP pair, Florida’s 1st and 6th Congressional districts, suddenly look a lot less red ahead of their special elections next week. In the latter district, which Republicans won by 30 percentage points in November, a recent internal GOP poll shows Democrat Josh Weil up 3%. As Trump himself implied in his Truth Social post, plowing ahead with Stefanik’s nomination risked losing her seat as well.
This fiasco, as is so often the case with Trump, is entirely self-inflicted. Just as in his first term, a disastrous start to his term has boosted Democratic voters’ enthusiasm for even low-turnout special elections. And whereas the Democratic-leaning vacancies came about because the representatives died while in office, Trump himself created the Florida vacancies by choosing those two representatives for his Cabinet. The first was Mike Waltz, now best known for his struggles with Signal. The second was Matt Gaetz, whose nomination as attorney general lasted just eight days.
The president tried to soften the blow by noting that Stefanik would “rejoin the House Leadership Team.” But Stefanik’s old position as Republican Conference chair was filled weeks ago, and it’s not clear how Speaker Mike Johnson could give her a position that isn’t entirely ceremonial. “I will invite her to return to the leadership table immediately,” Johnson said, without specifying what her seat would be.
“She must be so disappointed,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said of Stefanik after news broke of the withdrawn nomination. If that’s true, Stefanik isn’t showing it. “I have been proud to be a team player,” she told Fox News. “This is about stepping up as a team.”
But it is fitting that this most devoted “team player” has so little to show for her fealty. Because, while for Trump, there is no quality in a subordinate more important than loyalty, that loyalty runs only one way. Just ask Mike Pence or John Kelly or the countless other former Trump allies and staffers whom the president has callously thrown under the proverbial bus. For Trump, only his own interests matter. Everyone and everything else, whether it’s Elise Stefanik or the entire country, is expendable.
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