President-elect Trump has enjoyed — and exploited — an aura of invincibility since Election Day that few Republicans have been willing to challenge publicly.

• The bubble has finally popped, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

👎 For an otherwise pliant group of Senate Republicans, former Rep. Matt Gaetz's nomination as attorney general was a bridge too far.

• There are scores of MAGA loyalists who could have sailed through Senate confirmation — plenty of whom were on the shortlist compiled by Trump's transition team.
• Trump ultimately went that route, announcing last night that his new AG pick is former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
• But only after a damaging, chaotic whirlwind.

🌪️ The chaos isn't likely to relent, even after Trump is sworn in and has his Cabinet in place.

• Trump's first term saw record levels of staff turnover: National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigned 23 days in. Trump routinely fired top officials via tweet over the next four years.
• He frequently engaged in Twitter diplomacy — threatening North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un with nuclear war at one point — and made news virtually every time he stepped in front of a microphone.

💥 The bottom line: The Trump who won 312 electoral votes a few weeks ago is the same Trump who exhausted many Americans with nonstop political drama from 2017 to 2021.

• He may be more prepared, focused and surrounded by loyalists this time around. But chaos will always be part and parcel of the Trump experience.

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Above: Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth leaves a meeting on Capitol Hill yesterday. "As Gaetz withdraws, GOP warms to Hegseth," today's print Washington Post lead story says:

"Republican senators suggested that Hegseth — unlike Gaetz — would be a natural fit to implement Trump's national security vision, along with Trump's selection of Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Florida) as national security adviser and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) as secretary of state."

Pam Bondi gives President-elect Trump most of the same things he wanted from Gaetz — namely, a die-hard loyalist — but with less baggage, fewer enemies and more relevant experience.

• After her tenure as Florida's AG, she was part of Trump's legal team during his first impeachment. She then worked for America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned nonprofit.

🐘 Bondi has been a Trump loyalist for years. But her time in Florida, particularly leading the legal challenges to Obamacare, also earned her a whole lot more credibility than Gaetz ever had among the GOP rank and file.

• Go deeper.

The average American says a salary of just over $270,000 a year qualifies them as "financially successful," Axios Markets co-author Emily Peck reports from a new study.

• But there are huge disparities between generations,

🏦 By the numbers: Baby Boomers generally think they can be a success on salaries just under $100,000 a year.

• But Gen Z workers think they have to earn almost $600,000 a year (!) to really make it.

Even with those lofty targets, 71% of Gen Z respondents said they expected to achieve financial success in their lifetimes — more than any other age group.

Left-leaning apps, news websites and social networks are experiencing a spike in engagement, further dividing the internet along political lines, Axios Media Trends author Sara Fischer writes.

• Bluesky, an alternative to Elon Musk's X, has seen a 519% spike in daily users in the weeks after the election.
• Lefty, a dating app for progressives, has experienced a 453% surge in downloads in the two weeks since the election, founder and CEO Alex Felipelli told Axios.
• Slate and The Guardian both saw significant new numbers of paid subscribers, as people who supported Vice President Harris look for more explicitly liberal takes on the news.

🖥️ Flashback: Conservatives were the ones trying to build their own internet ecosystem toward the end of the Trump administration — particularly after Jan. 6, when most of the internet's biggest platforms de-platformed then-President Trump.

• Musk bought X. Peter Thiel and Vice President-elect JD Vance invested in Rumble, a YouTube alternative for conservatives, which has since gone public. Trump launched Truth Social, which is now public.
• Thiel backed the creation of The Right Stuff, a conservative dating app that now has 3.4 million followers on TikTok.

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It's a rocky moment for electric vehicles. But car companies have a tried-and-true solution: Make 'em bigger.

• Automakers are rolling out several three-row, family-friendly electric SUVs at the L.A. Auto Show, Axios' Nathan Bomey and Alex Fitzpatrick report.

🚙 Why it matters: Many of today's EVs are sedans or crossovers. But American car buyers love big SUVs and trucks.

• Cadillac, Hyundai and Kia are all introducing new models with three rows of seats, designed mainly for families.

🛑 The catch: The debut of these honking SUVs comes as early-adopter interest is waning.

• And President-elect Trump has signaled he'll likely pursue the demise of the federal EV tax credit.

Plus they're expensive: The Cadillac Vistiq starts at $77,395.

Using AI to trawl through 38,358 posts by Elon Musk on Twitter/X since December 2013, The Economist found he's posting vastly more often since becoming the proprietor (graphic at right above):

• "From December 2013 to the middle of 2018, he tweeted just over a dozen times a week, on average. Between then and October 27th 2022, when he completed the purchase of X, he was posting 50 times a week. Since the takeover, that has risen to around 220 a week."

Climate change and clean energy used to be his most common policy topics. Now it's more immigration and free speech.

• ⏰ And as you can see above, he posts around the clock!

Butterball has debuted a new turkey that it says can go into the oven while still frozen, eliminating the need to thaw it out.

• 🧊 Why it matters: Thawing a turkey is time-consuming, and making sure you allow enough time to thaw can be stressful, Axios' Ashley May writes.

A frozen 16-pound turkey (the most common size) will need at least four days in the refrigerator to thaw — and then can only stay in the refrigerator for up to two days once it's thawed.

• More on Butterball's "Cook from Frozen."

It's "Glick-ed" weekend — the opening for both "Gladiator 2" and "Wicked," the film adaptation of the Broadway musical.

• The portmanteau is Hollywood's effort to recapture the magic of "Barbenheimer" — two big but seemingly dissimilar releases feeding into each other's success.
• Even if "Gladiator 2" and "Wicked" don't quite reach the same level as "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer," it's still expected to be a huge weekend at the box office — perhaps as high as $165 million between the two movies.

🎶 Word to the wise: A singalong version of "Wicked" is slated for theaters later this year, so fans of the musical are being asked not to sing along with this weekend's release, Axios' Kelly Tyko reports.

• Just for good measure ... you also should not sing out loud in your "Gladiator 2" screening.

Go deeper: Some early "Wicked" fans are singing along with their favorite characters, annoying other "Wicked" enthusiasts. (N.Y. Times gift link)