WASHINGTON —  In a normal presidential transition, the president-elect spends weeks carefully considering candidates for the most important jobs in his Cabinet. Potential nominees undergo rigorous private vetting by trusted aides and lawyers, then by the FBI. It’s a painstaking process that often consumes the entire three months between the election and the inauguration.

But when has Donald Trump ever recognized any value in traditional norms?

He refused to authorize the FBI to begin its customary background checks, because he hoped to do without them or because he didn’t trust the G-men, or both.

Instead of waiting for investigations, he announced most of his nominees in three weeks — apparently imagining that the tsunami would force the Senate to confirm them quickly.

He even proposed skipping the constitutionally required step of Senate confirmation entirely, pushing to fill his Cabinet through the back door of “recess appointments.” He was apparently surprised when otherwise loyal GOP senators quietly refused to roll over for that audacious power grab.

His nominations set a new record for speed, if not for quality.

The outcome was predictable. His most controversial nominees — picked apparently with little or no private vetting — were followed by a parade of skeletons streaming out of closets. (Some of the skeletons had been strutting in public for years.)

The ensuing media leaks were embarrassing. They made the second Trump administration look just as chaotic as the first. But there were substantive political effects as well.

Most presidents use their transition, and the honeymoon period that normally follows, to build public support for their policies and programs. But Trump must now spend most of his time jawboning GOP senators to back his nominees.

Opinion polls show that his support in the public hasn’t grown since election day; he’s still stuck at the 50-50 mark in favorability.

And it was all avoidable.

“When the Senate confirmation process works properly, it’s in the best interest of the president — even though presidents are usually annoyed by it,” said Gregg Nunziata, a former Senate Republican aide who handled dozens of nominations. “There’s an existing protocol to handle allegations confidently and discreetly. If that protocol isn’t followed, the interest [in a nominee’s background] is going to spill out into other channels” — mainly the news media.

That’s what’s happening now. The vetting of Trump’s Cabinet is being done after the fact, mostly by the news media. The results have not been pretty.

Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman Trump proposed for attorney general, somehow thought he could skate past the House Ethics Committee’s evidence that he had paid a 17-year-old for sex. (The New York Times reported that Trump chose Gaetz impulsively after a meeting with Gaetz and Tesla founder Elon Musk aboard the president-elect’s private jet.)

Eight days after the nomination was announced, CNN reported that Gaetz had a second illicit encounter with the girl. His nomination was finished by nightfall.

Next up was Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host known for his opposition to women in combat roles and his war on “woke” generals. Trump proposed Hegseth for secretary of Defense, a job that entails managing almost 3 million people and an $849-billion budget, even though he had never run anything remotely comparable.

At first, the National Guard veteran looked headed for confirmation, as GOP senators fell into line. Then a whistleblower told Trump aides that a woman had accused Hegseth of raping her in a Monterey hotel in 2017, and the story promptly leaked. (Hegseth said the encounter was consensual.) Two days later, it emerged that Hegseth had paid the accuser in exchange for a nondisclosure agreement.

Skeletons continued their march. The New York Times reported that Hegseth’s mother had sent him an email scolding him for abusing women. (She disavowed the message and denounced the newspaper for revealing it.) The New Yorker reported that Hegseth’s former employees at a veterans’ organization said he had been intoxicated and disorderly at company events. NBC quoted his former Fox News colleagues saying he drank there, too. (“I never had a drinking problem,” said Hegseth, who promised to stop drinking.)

Hegseth’s support among Republican senators began to erode, with many saying he needed to undergo a full FBI investigation.

Last week, Trump mused to aides that he might replace Hegseth with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But by Friday, the president-elect turned defiant on social media: “Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!”

So the Hegseth battle will continue — at a potential further political cost.

“His confirmation hearings are going to be completely brutal,” a Republican strategist warned. “There will be weeks of coverage on cable TV, which is a medium Trump cares about. How much stomach does he have for that when he’s about to take office?”

Hegseth isn’t the only nominee who faces a struggle. Some GOP senators have expressed concern about Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democrat designated for director of national intelligence. Kash Patel, his nominee for FBI director, will have to defend his goal of using the law enforcement agency as a weapon of retribution against political opponents. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will need to explain his long-proclaimed belief that no vaccine is safe.

The scrutiny of those nominees has barely begun.

Now Trump faces an unpalatable choice: long, bruising and public fights to put controversial nominees into office, or quick decisions to cut failing candidates loose as he did with Gaetz.

It isn’t unusual for incoming presidents to lose a Cabinet nominee or two.

If they fail quickly, the damage is rarely great. Who remembers that President Biden couldn’t win confirmation for his first nominee as budget director, Neera Tanden, or that Trump couldn’t get his first-term nominee as Labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, confirmed?

But Trump has made a potentially irreparable mistake.

By proposing so many nominees with flagrantly weak qualifications beyond political loyalty, he has turned their confirmations into zero-sum tests of his ability to compel obedience from prideful senators. With only a 53-47 majority in the chamber, the loss of any four could mean defeat.

Even before his inauguration, the president-elect has already failed in two respects. His abortive proposal to finagle nominees into office without Senate confirmation alienated legislators whose help he will need over the next four years.

And he may have thought he could get the jump on his opponents by announcing his nominees early — yet another miscalculation. He merely gave the news media enough time to subject them to the scrutiny they deserved from the beginning.

President-elect Trump on Sunday nominated Harmeet K. Dhillon as the assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Justice Department.

Trump said Dhillon has consistently protected civil liberties throughout her career, including taking on Big Tech for censoring free speech, representing Christians who were not allowed to pray together during the COVID-19 pandemic, and suing corporations who use woke policies to discriminate against their employees.

“Harmeet is one of the top election lawyers in the country, fighting to ensure that all, and ONLY, legal votes are counted,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Virginia Law School and clerked in the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.”

“Harmeet is a respected member of the Sikh religious community,” he added. “In her new role at the DOJ, Harmeet will be a tireless defender of our Constitutional Rights and will enforce our Civil Rights and Election Laws FAIRLY and FIRMLY.”

GET TO KNOW DONALD TRUMP’S CABINET: WHO HAS THE PRESIDENT-ELECT PICKED SO FAR?

Trump also wrote in a separate post that Mark Paoletta will return as general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget.

In the role, Trump said, Paoletta will work closely with the Department of Government Efficiency to cut the size of “our bloated government bureaucracy and root out wasteful and anti-American spending.”

Trump called Paoletta a brilliant and tenacious lawyer, crediting him with working to advance his agenda in the first term, while leading the charge to find funding to build a wall at the southern border.

TRUMP NAMES ALINA HABBA AS COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT; REVEALS SEVERAL STATE DEPARTMENT PICKS

Mark Paoletta (Mark Paoletta)

Mark is a partner at the law firm Shaerr Jaffe LLP and a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America.

“Mark has served as a Chief Counsel for Oversight and Investigations in Congress for a decade and was a key lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office to confirm Justice Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991,” Trump wrote. “Mark is a conservative warrior who knows the ‘ins and outs’ of Government – He will help us, Make America Great Again!”

And finally, Trump announced that KC Crosbie is running to become the next co-chair of the Republican National Committee to replace Lara Trump.

TRUMP NOMINATES FORMER WISCONSIN REP. SEAN DUFFY FOR SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION

Lara Trump (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/File)

“Lara, together with Chairman Michael Whatley, transformed the RNC into a lean, focused, and powerful machine that is empowering the MAGA Movement for many years to come,” the president-elect said. “Thank you for your hard work, Lara, in MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

The incoming president also said Crosbie has helped “real” Republicans get elected across the U.S. and would make a tremendous co-chair.

“KC will work on continuing to ensure a highly functioning, fiscally responsible, and effective RNC that makes Election Integrity a highest priority,” Trump said. “KC Crosbie has my Complete and Total Endorsement to be the next Co-Chair of the RNC!”

A judge ruled Friday that a security contractor can seek punitive damages against CNN over a November 2021 report about war profiteers who charged Afghans who were trying to leave their country after the U.S. military withdrawal.

The contractor, Zachary Young, said CNN destroyed his business by including him in a segment by chief national security correspondent Alex Marquardt, which focused on how Afghans were being charged high prices by evacuation services.

The report used the term “black market” in an onscreen graphic and in a spoken introduction. Young, the only person mentioned by name in the segment, said the report gave the false impression that he was involved in illegal activity and exploited “desperate Afghans.”

Florida Judge William S. Henry had previously ruled that Young’s actions did not violate any laws and that he never took any money directly from Afghans. Young’s company sought corporate sponsors to pay for assistance in leaving Afghanistan.

“Sufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jury could find with convincing clarity that Defendant acted with actual malice,” Henry wrote in his ruling.

If the case goes to trial, a jury will be asked to determine if CNN journalists acted with actual malice, defined as the publication of false information with reckless disregard of the truth.

A CNN representative declined comment on the case.

Marquardt’s story, which first aired on “The Lead With Jake Tapper,” reported that “Afghans trying to get out of the country face a black market full of promises, demands of exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success.”

CNN removed the term “black market” from the web version of the report after Young complained, and the network issued an on-air apology on March 25, 2022, clarifying that he was not involved in illegal activity. But Young said the network fell short of a full retraction of the story.

A two-week jury trial has been scheduled for Jan. 6. If it goes forward, CNN’s journalists and producers will have to give public testimony on the internal workings in the news organization, some of it potentially embarrassing.

Evidence in the case includes text messages from CNN journalists describing Young as a “s—bag” and “a—.” There was also a text that said “we gonna nail this Young mf—.”

There are also emails from editors raising questions as to whether the story was ready to air. (The segment got approved after going through the network’s vetting process).