Hello, everyone, I'm Major Garrett in Washington.

Welcome to The Takeout.

We love facts and we love words here.

As such, we play games with neither.

What I'm about to do is not a word game.

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general,

will be nominated attorney general.

Blanche is a surname.

It is also a verb.

An instructive one in this particular moment

of President Trump's second term.

As a transitive verb, Blanche means to take the color out of

or to bleach, possibly with the use of scalding hot water.

As an intransitive verb, Blanche means to go pale with shock or dismay or to simply recoil from something upsetting.

Within the Senate Republican conference, where Todd Blanche's confirmation fate will reside, there was a bit of blanching today, transitive and

intransitive. When asked if Blanche would be confirmed, Senate Majority Leader John Thune gave

this tepid response, and I quote, hard to say, this is an environment where nothing is a safe

or sure bet.

North Carolina Republican Senator Tom Tillis is skeptical of Blanche's confirmation.

Texas Senator John Cornyn said, according to CNN, that he is withholding judgment.

Both sit on the Judiciary Committee, Blanche's first stop in the confirmation process.

Tillis, by the way, is the leading GOP antagonist of the so-called anti-weaponization fund that Blanche

...