“It’s often said that the Amazon is the lungs of the world,” Mr. Biden said during a brief stop in Manaus, a bustling city of two million nestled in the heart of the rainforest. "But in my view, our forest and national wonders are the heart and soul of the world,” he added. “The Amazon rainforest was built up over 15 million years. Fifteen million years history is literally watching us now.”

Flying low in his Marine One helicopter across the vast canopy of trees, Mr. Biden traveled along the Rio Negro, where its dark waters met the murky brown of the main Amazon River. From his helicopter, the president could see a wildlife refuge, shore erosion, fire damage and grounded ships, according to a map of the area provided by the White House.

But his initiatives may be short-lived. Environmental activists are bracing for a drastic shake-up in U.S. foreign policy under Mr. Trump, who has loudly opposed international cooperation on climate change. He has vowed to abandon global commitments and undo many of Mr. Biden’s environmental pledges.

Mr. Trump has said he will withdraw the United States — for a second time — from the landmark Paris climate accord, which aims to curb planet-warming emissions and rein in rising temperatures. He has promised to “drill, drill, drill” for oil and gas and nominated Chris Wright, a fossil fuels executive who has claimed “there is no climate crisis,” to lead the Department of Energy.

Top White House environmental officials said Sunday that some of the federal financing to protect the Amazon would go forward before Mr. Trump takes office, but not all of it.

In his remarks, Mr. Biden acknowledged the threat from Mr. Trump without using his name directly. But he expressed confidence that even his successor would not be able to stop efforts to protect the climate that also promote jobs and help make life better for people around the world.

“It’s true that some may seek to deny or delay the clean energy revolution that’s underway in America,” Mr. Biden said. “But nobody — nobody — can reverse. Nobody.”

“The question now,” he said, “is which government will stand in the way and which will seize the enormous economic opportunity.”

A U.S. rejection of the global climate agenda would come at a crucial time in the struggle to contain rising temperatures. Research shows that the earth has already warmed significantly, with the last decade being the hottest on record.

Mr. Biden has urged wealthy countries responsible for the bulk of the world’s emissions to help fund programs in poorer countries, where the effects of climate changes are often at their most severe.

In 2021, the United States was among more than 140 countries that vowed to end deforestation by 2030. Last year, Mr. Biden also pledged $500 million over five years to fight deforestation in Brazil, although the plan has met resistance from Congress and, so far, the South American nation has received only about 10 percent of the funding.

“The president has spoken frequently about the importance of U.S. leadership in protecting the Amazon and other tropical forests,” said Nigel Purvis, chief executive of Climate Advisers, a consulting firm.

The Amazon rainforest plays a crucial role in regulating the planet’s climate. Likened by scientists to a “giant air-conditioner,” the Amazon lowers temperatures, generates rainfall and stores vast quantities of planet-warming gasses.

After Mr. Biden landed in Manaus on Sunday, he came off the plane under scorching midday sun, looking relaxed and upbeat. He was accompanied by his daughter, granddaughter and aides and lingered on the tarmac before boarding one of seven helicopters waiting to take him on the aerial tour.

Mr. Biden took in the vastness of the rainforest, and the impact of climate change, at the Museum of the Amazon, an exhibition space and botanical garden in Manaus. He was greeted by three Indigenous women in traditional headdresses who chanted and shook rattles to the beat of an ancestral song. Overhead, macaws swept over the canopy, their noisy squawks echoing across the rainforest.

In recent decades, swaths of the Amazon have been razed and burned to make way for cattle ranches and soy farms. This both releases carbon and reduces the rainforest’s ability to capture it, dealing a double blow to efforts to rein in emissions.

As the destruction has advanced, parts of the rainforest have begun emitting more carbon that they store. And a glimpse into a future of recurrent droughts has rattled countries in the Amazon basin, parching stretches of the world’s largest river, triggering electricity shortages and stranding Indigenous villages.

A growing body of research warns that, if left unchecked, deforestation could push the Amazon to a tipping point that would transform it from a lush rainforest into a grassland savanna.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil has also been vocal about the need for wealthier countries to pitch in funds to help preserve the Amazon rainforest, about two-thirds of which lies within Brazil. He has been open about his anxieties about a U.S. pullback from the climate agenda, urging Mr. Trump during an interview with CNN this month to “think like an inhabitant of Planet Earth” when shaping his climate policies.

From Manaus, Mr. Biden is headed to Rio de Janeiro, where he will join a summit of leaders of the Group of 20 nations.

There, Mr. Biden’s allies will probably use the president’s last tour abroad to lock in partnerships on climate and other common goals — even if only as symbolic gestures that may be wiped out once Mr. Trump returns to power.

Catrin Einhorn contributed reporting.

Officials at the time said they hoped that Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s most influential country in geopolitics, would eventually also sign and recognize Israel — a goal that President Biden also pursued without success.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s Middle East agenda remains unclear, but what is certain is that he will inherit a geopolitical landscape in the Middle East that is significantly different compared with that of four years ago.

Alliances have shifted, and priorities have changed. Age-old tensions have deepened in some places and thawed in others, while the Hamas attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza, could convulse the region for years.

Last week, Mr. Trump appointed Steven Witkoff, a real estate magnate and campaign donor, as his special envoy to the Middle East. Mr. Witkoff, a staunch defender of Israel, was in attendance when Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, addressed Congress in July. The president-elect’s choice for secretary of state, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, and for U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, have also offered unwavering support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

It has long been a mantra of Mr. Trump’s that in foreign affairs, as in business, he can “make a deal.” For many countries in the Middle East, transactional foreign policy is a way of life, and even last week Elon Musk, the billionaire businessman and Trump adviser, met privately with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations.

But compared to four years ago, the space for any deal has shrunk for numerous reasons.

“If the Trump 2.0 people think they can just pick up where they left off in 2020, they are completely misreading the situation,” said Kristian Ulrichsen, a Middle East expert at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “That will become very apparent very quickly.”

Palestinians can no longer be sidelined.

Palestinians were mostly sidelined when Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, led the White House effort to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states during the last administration.

The Arab states made no demands for concrete steps toward a Palestinian state as a prerequisite for a diplomatic pact with Israel. As a result, Mr. Netanyahu gave up almost nothing to achieve a signature diplomatic victory — several of Israel’s historical adversaries officially recognized its right to exist.

The Biden administration pursued a similar strategy in 2023 during an effort to achieve a diplomatic pact between Israel and Saudi Arabia, but the Oct. 7 attacks and war in Gaza upended any prospects for a deal. In short, Saudi Arabia’s price for a deal went up, given the domestic furor in the kingdom and in other Arab countries over the bloodshed in Gaza. Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, has said publicly that Israel must commit to a Palestinian state before Saudi Arabia recognizes Israel.

“The kingdom will not cease its tireless efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and we affirm that the kingdom will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without one,” the crown prince said in a public speech to his advisers in September.

There is always the possibility that Prince Mohammed softens his demand, or drops it for the right price. This is a leader who, during negotiations before the Oct. 7 attacks, told American officials that a state for the Palestinians was not a high priority for him, and there is little question among Middle East experts that the Saudi crown prince sees Western investment in the kingdom as one of his main priorities toward his goal of modernizing Saudi Arabia’s economy.

But in the current environment, such a move would bring greater risk to his standing both in the kingdom and across the Arab world.

Israel’s ultraright government is unlikely to bargain.

The Saudis may now want more out of a deal with Israel, but Israel is now willing to give less.

Since Mr. Trump was last in office, Mr. Netanyahu returned to power leading the most right-wing government in the nation’s history. Ultranationalist ministers in the governing coalition have spent the past two years calling for more Israeli settlements in the West Bank and stoking settler violence against Palestinians there. Since the Oct. 7 attacks, politicians like Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, have publicly advocated pushing Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip and reclaiming the territory for Israelis.

To keep his coalition government together, and to delay elections that might bring his defeat as well as his reckoning over the Oct. 7 attacks, Mr. Netanyahu is beholden to Israel’s far right. As a result, he is in no position to make any meaningful concessions to Palestinians as part of any grand bargain in the Middle East.

Indeed, Mr. Smotrich boasted publicly last week that the election of Mr. Trump paved the way for the opposite to take place. Next year, he said, Israel will take back the West Bank and bring “sovereignty” for Jews there.

The Middle East is realigning, without the U.S. and Israel.

The last Trump administration viewed deals between Israel and the Arab states as part of a long-term strategy against Iran, which for years has waged bloody proxy wars for regional supremacy with Gulf Arab nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

But relations between Iran and the Gulf States are now thawing. Over the past year, Iranian diplomats have met directly with officials from Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and other Gulf nations. Last month, Iran’s foreign minister traveled to several Gulf countries with the goal, according to Iranian state media, of stopping Israel’s “crimes” in Gaza and Lebanon.

It is, at best, a tenuous détente. But for these Arab states, it is one born partly from pragmatism — a realization that the United States has for years been trying to disengage from the Middle East, at least militarily.

Saudi officials use one episode from the last Trump administration to reinforce this point: Iran’s 2019 drone and missile attacks on Aramco oil facilities deep inside the kingdom. After the attacks, the White House chose not to retaliate.

For its part, Saudi Arabia might push the next Trump administration to make a formal defense pact, which would commit the United States to defending the kingdom if it comes under attack. Chip Usher, a former top Middle East analyst, said that the Saudis would be happy to have “a foot in both camps.” They could have “rapprochement with Iran, even if it’s half sincere, even as they vigorously pursue security commitments with the United States.”

A defense pact would require ratification by two-thirds of the U.S. Senate, a high bar that is unlikely to be reached if the Saudis don’t also agree to formally recognize Israel as part of the deal.

So the Saudis and other Gulf countries are likely to continue to hedge their bets. “Gulf leaders are making their calculations looking 10 to 15 years forward about how U.S. disengagement might change the balance of power,” Mr. Ulrichsen said.

“That is the reality that the Trump team is going to have to live with.”

A correction was made on

Nov. 17, 2024

:

An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to be special envoy to the Middle East. He is Steven Witkoff, not Witcoff.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

Ease the antitrust crackdown on big tech companies.

Buy more military drones. And don’t raise taxes on billionaires.

The to-do list for President-elect Donald J. Trump from Marc Andreessen, the venture capital billionaire from California, is long, but quite specific.

Now, after donating big money to Mr. Trump, Mr. Andreessen is eager to see his candidate work through the list.

“It felt like a boot off the throat,” Mr. Andreessen said about Mr. Trump’s victory during a podcast conversation this month with his business partner. “Every morning I wake up happier than the day before.”

Mr. Andreessen’s excitement is a hint of just how broadly the victory by Mr. Trump has resonated with business executives who invested millions of dollars in his candidacy and now stand to profit from his policies.

Theirs is a circle of deep-pocketed industry winners that extends far beyond Elon Musk. It is a more diverse group, at least in terms of business interests, than the one that surrounded Mr. Trump in his first administration, where executives from the oil, gas and coal industries were particularly dominant.

Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder of the Oklahoma-based oil and gas giant Continental Resources, is still in a position to benefit, from regulatory rollbacks that he and an affiliated trade association are already pushing.

But the list also includes:

Joe Lonsdale, a defense technology executive who wants to help the Pentagon revamp the way it fights wars;

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twins who were known for their battle with Facebook, then became cryptocurrency investors and now want to shape the industry’s rules;

Brian Evans, the chief executive of Geo Group, the private prison giant that could benefit if Mr. Trump carries out his promise of large-scale deportations;

John Paulson, the hedge fund billionaire who could cash out of his investment in the federal government’s housing finance companies, Freddie and Fannie, if they are privatized under Mr. Trump.

“It will be a billionaires’ ball,” said Robert Reich, who served as secretary of labor during the Clinton administration and who has long been critical of the income disparity in the United States.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Andreessen, who donated at least $4.5 million to a super PAC named Right for America that supported Mr. Trump, illustrates the alignment of corporate and political agendas.

For more than a year now, Mr. Andreessen, who was a big Democratic fund-raiser during Al Gore’s presidential campaign, has made his frustration clear with many Biden administration policies that affect his tech-sector investments.

Perhaps most fundamentally, Mr. Andreessen believes that Biden-era regulators, in their zeal to fight dominant tech giants, have complicated the ability of start-up companies to return profits to their investors by selling off their growing businesses to larger tech companies.

“Bad government policies are now the #1 threat to Little Tech,” Mr. Andreessen wrote on Substack in July, adding later in the post: “Regulatory agencies have been green lit to use brute force investigations, prosecutions, intimidation, and threats to hobble new industries.”

Mr. Andreessen and his firm, Andreessen Horowitz, declined requests to comment.

Death of Biden-era Rules

Mr. Andreessen, whose venture capital firm has invested billions of dollars in start-ups that specialize in artificial intelligence tools, also criticized President Biden’s executive order late last year that requires companies to file reports to the government about risks that their A.I. systems could help countries or terrorists make weapons of mass destruction.

Mr. Trump, at a rally late last year, vowed to “cancel Biden’s artificial intelligence executive order.” That led Mr. Andreessen, after Mr. Trump’s victory this month to indicate that the Biden-era rules were effectively dead: “Stick a fork in it, it’s over.”

Mr. Andreessen, along with other billionaire backers of Mr. Trump’s re-election, including the Winklevosses and Howard Lutnick, a Wall Street financier, has separately pushed for the president-elect and newly elected members of Congress to use a light touch when it comes to regulating the cryptocurrency industry. They want regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission and elsewhere who will be more friendly to the sector. (Mr. Lutnick is also a chairman of Mr. Trump’s transition team.)

“The shackles are off,” Tyler Winklevoss wrote on X last week.

The price of bitcoin has already surged to record levels in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s election. Even before he was elected, Mr. Trump had promised to embrace a pro-crypto agenda, including removing Gary Gensler, who as head of the S.E.C. has repeatedly used the agency’s enforcement powers to crack down on crypto companies.

“On Day 1, I will fire Gary Gensler,” Mr. Trump said in July, at a cryptocurrency conference in Nashville.

More Demand for Detention Beds

Brian Evans and George Zoley, the two top executives at Geo Group, the private prison company, made contributions directly to Mr. Trump’s campaign, to his super PAC and to other political groups that support him, and have said they expect Mr. Trump’s re-election to drive up demand for empty beds at detention centers the company runs for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Mr. Zoley has already profited handsomely from Mr. Trump’s re-election.

This summer, as the election was approaching, he spent over $3 million to buy up large chunks of the company’s own stock, or a total of 250,000 shares, federal filings show. The average price he paid for that stock: $12.28. As of Friday, that stock was trading at $26.60, as Geo Group saw the largest surge in its stock price since 2016, after Mr. Trump was elected to his first term. The bounce this month alone would generate a $3.6 million profit for Mr. Zoley, if sold at the new price.

The executives told Wall Street analysts during a recent earnings call that Mr. Trump’s election could help Geo Group fill as many as 18,000 empty beds at its facilities, which would generate as much as $400 million in annual business.

“This is to us an unprecedented opportunity to assist the federal government and the incoming Trump administration toward achieving a much more aggressive immigration policy,” Mr. Evans told the Wall Street analysts.

Embrace of Defense Tech Newcomers

Venture capital executives like Joe Lonsdale are also well positioned to profit. A founder of the A.I.-powered data analytics giant Palantir Technologies, he has more recently delivered billions of dollars to defense sector start-ups such as Anduril and Epirus and Saronic.

Executives at these defense technology firms have been frustrated at the slow pace of the Pentagon’s shift away from traditional contractors like Lockheed Martin to venture-capital-backed start-ups selling cutting-edge tools like A.I.-powered drones.

“Current regulatory regime still favors the legacy defense corporations and crowds out upstarts,” Mr. Lonsdale, who donated more than $1 million to Mr. Trump’s affiliated political groups, said in an email to The New York Times.

Trae Stephens, another defense-tech venture capitalist and donor to Mr. Trump, said that the open question will be if the president-elect can limit turnover in leadership at the Pentagon, which was a problem during his first term.

“You need to have enough stability that someone can come in and take a leadership position and drive to a better outcome,” Mr. Stephens, who works at Founders Fund and is a founder of Anduril, said in an interview last week.

Mr. Hamm and his company, Continental Resources, donated more than $4 million to political groups that supported Mr. Trump. Most of it came after Mr. Hamm and other oil-industry executives attended an April dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Florida residence and club, where he pressed the executives to contribute to his campaign, suggesting they would save far more than that in avoided taxes and legal fees after he repealed environmental regulations.

More recently, Mr. Hamm has been part of Mr. Trump’s transition team, which is pushing to eliminate a ban on new natural-gas export terminals and to abolish the Biden-era tax credit on electric vehicles — meaning more continued demand for oil and gas, as Reuters first reported last week.

“The mineral wealth of the U.S. government is tremendous, but you have to develop that,” Mr. Hamm said in an interview last week with an industry trade publication, Hart Energy. “Certainly, Trump will do that.” Mr. Hamm declined a request to comment.

Hopes for Privatizing Freddie and Fannie

Mr. Paulson, the hedge fund billionaire, could score big if the federal government’s housing finance companies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, are privatized.

He and Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Holdings, another supporter of Mr. Trump’s, each purchased stakes in Fannie and Freddie, which the federal government spent $187 billion to bail out in 2008.

There is no formal public accounting of just how many preferred shares Mr. Paulson still controls, and a spokesman for Mr. Paulson declined to discuss the matter. Mr. Ackman’s investment in Fannie Mae common stock alone included 115.5 million shares, or 10 percent of the total.

What is clear is that Freddie and Fannie stocks surged at least 140 percent since Mr. Trump was elected, a hint of profits that could soon be secured if the privatization goes ahead. Advisers and former aides to Mr. Trump have already predicted that the companies are likely to go private during his new term, although it might require bypassing approval by Congress.

Mr. Paulson declined requests to comment. In an interview with Bloomberg Television in September, he agreed the time had come for the federal government to unload Fannie and Freddie. “They are now in a position where they’re fairly well capitalized,” Mr. Paulson said, “which would make privatization logical.”

Theodore Schleifer and Lisa Friedman contributed reporting

In a video posted on LinkedIn last year, Mr. Wright declared, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.”

Mr. Wright, who has no government experience, caught the attention of Mr. Trump in part through his appearances on Fox News. He also appears frequently on podcasts and social media videos, often using language and imagery associated with progressive causes to link oil and gas with issues like the fight for women’s equality.

Mr. Trump announced Mr. Wright’s appointment in a statement and praised him as a “leading technologist and entrepreneur in energy.” He said in addition to leading the Energy Department, Mr. Wright would also be a member of the newly formed council of national energy.

“He has worked in nuclear, solar, geothermal, and oil and gas,” Mr. Trump wrote, referring to Mr. Wright. “Most significantly, Chris was one of the pioneers who helped launch the American shale revolution that fueled American energy independence, and transformed the global energy markets and geopolitics.”

Mr. Wright is close to Harold G. Hamm, the billionaire founder of Continental Resources who donated nearly $5 million to Mr. Trump since 2023 and is playing a role in the transition.

Mr. Wright was a director of the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance, a lobbying group that Mr. Hamm founded. The Wall Street Journal described the alliance as a “counterweight” to larger oil industry groups that recognize that climate change is caused by human activity and support some action to address it.

Mr. Hamm told Hart Energy, an online publication, that Mr. Wright was his top choice to lead the Energy Department.

In August, Mr. Wright’s wife, Liz Wright, co-hosted a fund-raiser in Montana for Mr. Trump. Campaign finance records show that Chris Wright and Liz Wright donated $175,000 apiece to Mr. Trump’s joint fund-raising campaign committee, called Trump 47.

The core mission of the Energy Department is ensuring the safety of the country’s nuclear arsenal. But under President Biden, the agency has also played a large role in leading the energy transition away from fossil fuels and toward wind, solar, nuclear and other forms of noncarbon energy.

As one of his first tasks, Mr. Wright is expected to end a Biden administration pause on new liquefied natural gas export terminals. A judge blocked the pause and the Biden administration did approve at least one export permit, but Republicans and the oil and gas industry have accused the administration of deliberately stalling new approvals.

“We look forward to working with him once confirmed to bolster American geopolitical strength by lifting D.O.E.’s pause on L.N.G. permits and ensuring the open access of American energy for our allies around the world,” said Mike Sommers, the president of the American Petroleum Institute, which represents oil companies, in a statement.

Climate activists criticized the selection of a fossil fuel executive at a time when they say the country needs to invest more heavily in clean energy.

“Like his new boss, Donald Trump, Wright denies the threat of the scientifically proven climate crisis,” said Lori Lodes, the executive director of Climate Power, an environmental nonprofit group. She noted that renewable energy was cheaper to produce than fossil fuels, in part because of the Inflation Reduction Act, a 2022 law pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into wind, solar and other clean energy. Mr. Trump wants Congress to repeal it.

“No matter who they voted for, Americans want cheaper, cleaner energy options,” Ms. Lodes said.

Earlier this week Mr. Trump named Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota to lead the Interior Department and chair the new national energy council. Mr. Trump said the team “will drive U.S. energy dominance, which will drive down inflation, win the A.I. arms race with China (and others) and expand American diplomatic power to end wars all across the world.”

The image of Mr. Wright, who often appears in videos wearing button-down shirts, designer sneakers and no jacket or tie, runs counter to the stereotype of the conservative oil executive.

Yet Mr. Wright’s underlying message lines up almost exactly with Mr. Trump’s: fossil fuels are the critical to growing the economy and climate change is a hoax — or at least, fears of it are overblown.

The president-elect has pledged to “drill, baby drill,” called climate change a scam and promised to erase regulations designed to curb the fossil fuel pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.

Mr. Wright’s rhetoric is less provocative but essentially conveys the same ideas.

On an episode of the podcast “Flipping the Barrel,” Mr. Wright suggested that oil and gas could liberate poor, rural women in developing economies from having to spend hours gathering fuel, including dung, for cookstoves.

“I‘ve been to 55 countries,” he said. “Low income, poor rural areas and traditional societies. Those humans have the same hearts and dreams, want to take care of their kids.”

“A third of humanity doesn’t have access to modern energy, and what’s the biggest impediment to that last third of humanity getting energy right now?” he said. “An irrational and way exaggerated fear of climate change.”

At the United Nations climate summit currently taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan, the main topic is how to help developing nations invest in solar, wind and other clean energy and avoid a reliance on fossil fuels.

Scientists have said that the United States and other major economies must stop developing new oil and gas projects to avert the most catastrophic effects of global warming. The burning of oil, gas and coal is the main driver of climate change.

The current year is shaping up to be the hottest on record, and researchers say the world is on track for dangerous levels of warming this century. Extreme weather linked to climate change is no longer a distant threat; heat waves, floods, drought and hurricanes have caused death and destruction across the globe this year.

People familiar with the thinking of Mr. Trump’s transition team said that among Mr. Wright’s appealing qualities was his oft-told “conversion” story about how he grew up believing that consuming too much oil and gas could be dangerous to humanity — and then later discovered the virtues of abundant oil and gas.

In the podcast, he described being told by a physics professor in high school that oil and gas were running out. Later, however, as an engineering student in graduate school, he learned about hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the technology of injecting water, chemicals and sand at high pressure into rock to release oil and gas inaccessible through conventional drilling. Over the past decade, fracking has created an American oil and gas boom. Environmentalists worry that fracking can contaminate groundwater.

“There’s a whole lot more oil and gas underground than I certainly thought there was,” said Mr. Wright.

Mr. Wright, who studied engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founded Pinnacle Technologies in 1992, a company focused on providing shale gas extraction services. From 2000 to 2006 he was chairman of Stroud Energy, an early shale gas producer, according to his website. And in 2011, he founded Liberty Energy, a $2.8 billion company that provides fracking equipment and services.

He has also turned his megaphone on Republican senators who are now in charge of the effort to vet and confirm him. Given the G.O.P.’s slim Senate majority, Mr. Gaetz can afford to lose the support of only three Republicans (assuming all Democrats vote against him) if he wants to be confirmed.

So far, at least five have indicated they are skeptical that Mr. Gaetz could win confirmation. They include Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Additionally, Senator John Cornyn of Texas called on Thursday for the release of a House Ethics Committee report into allegations of sexual misconduct, illegal drug use and other accusations against Mr. Gaetz (all of which the former congressman has denied).

Here are the senators who have been the targets of Mr. Gaetz’s jabs, critiques and insults, which could come back to haunt him as he seeks their votes.

Gaetz called Senator Mitch McConnell “dangerous” and “McFailure,” and cheered his retirement from Republican leadership.

Mr. Gaetz has made no secret of his disdain for establishment Republicans, chief among them Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader. In 2021, after Mr. McConnell gave a speech castigating Mr. Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that year, Mr. Gaetz called Mr. McConnell “dangerous,” saying during an interview on Fox News that he was trying to “purge Trumpism from our movement.”

This year, the former Florida congressman branded Mr. McConnell “McFailure” and even suggested that Senate Republicans should stage a coup of their leader as he had done of Mr. McCarthy.

When Mr. McConnell announced he would be stepping down from his leadership post, Mr. Gaetz rejoiced on social media.

Mr. McConnell has not publicly stated whether he would support a Gaetz nomination.

Gaetz called Senator Markwayne Mullin “a disgrace to the Republican Party.”

Mr. Gaetz has quarreled publicly numerous times with Senator Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican and former House colleague who has accused Mr. Gaetz of showing sexually explicit photos and videos of underage girls to colleagues on the House floor. Mr. Gaetz has denied it.

The two men have traded insults in TV interviews and on social media. Mr. Mullin has described Mr. Gaetz as not “a principled individual” and asserted that, “Matt Gaetz is about watching out for himself, and that’s it.”

In a separate tiff over allegations that Mr. Mullin had violated insider trading rules, Mr. Gaetz called him a “disgrace to the Republican Party.”

But since the news of Mr. Gaetz’s nomination broke, Mr. Mullin has made an about-face. He said that even though the two men had their differences, “I completely trust President Trump’s decision making on this one,” Mr. Mullin told CNN’s Jake Tapper. At the same time though, Mr. Mullin said Mr. Gaetz would have to “sell himself” to the Senate.

“There’s a lot of questions that are going to be out there. He’s got to answer those questions, and hopefully he’s able to answer the questions right. And if he can, then we’ll go through the confirmation process.”

Gaetz suggested that Senator Thom Tillis had been untruthful.

Mr. Gaetz in 2020 heavily criticized Mr. Tillis, the Republican Senator from North Carolina, for refusing to call for the resignation of Richard Burr, then a fellow senator from North Carolina who has since left Congress, after Mr. Burr was accused of violating insider trading laws.

“Real leaders tell the truth, Senator Tillis,” Mr. Gaetz wrote on social media.

Mr. Tillis said this week that he was doubtful Mr. Gaetz could get confirmed.

“I think he’s got a lot of work to do to get 50” votes, Mr. Tillis said of Mr. Gaetz, The Associated Press reported. “I’m sure it will make for a popcorn-eating confirmation hearing. Mr. Gaetz and I have jousted on certain issues between the House and the Senate.”

Gaetz opposed Senator-elect Tim Sheehy of Montana for being McConnell’s pick.

Mr. Gaetz came out against Republican Tim Sheehy in Montana’s Senate primary, deriding him as “Mitch McConnell’s choice” to challenge the Democrat, Senator, Jon Tester.

Mr. Gaetz instead backed his House colleague, Representative Matt Rosendale, who dropped his bid not long after starting it.

Mr. Sheehy has not spoken publicly about whether he would vote to confirm Mr. Gaetz.

Gaetz mocked Senator-elect John Curtis of Utah as “Mitt Romney without good hair.”

Mr. Gaetz also campaigned against Representative John Curtis of Utah in the Republican primary for Senate in that state for the seat vacated by Senator Mitt Romney, who is retiring.

“John Curtis is Mitt Romney without good hair,” Gaetz said at a campaign event in Riverton, Utah, where he endorsed the mayor, Trent Staggs as the “America First” conservative who should win.

“I need Republicans who will actually fight,” Mr. Gaetz told The Salt Lake Tribune after the event. “And what I’ve seen in John Curtis for the last several years in the House has been weakness — or a willingness to prioritize foreign interests abroad, special interests in the halls of Washington.”

Mr. Curtis has also made no public comment about Mr. Gaetz’s nomination.

Gaetz backed Senator Rick Scott but is now cozying up to Senator John Thune.

In recent days, Mr. Gaetz has changed his tone considerably in what appears to be a last-ditch effort at diplomacy and courtesy. On Friday, Mr. Gaetz took to social media to praise Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, who was elected this week as majority leader for the new Congress.

Days earlier, Mr. Gaetz had urged senators to vote for Senator Rick Scott, a fellow Floridian and the preferred candidate of the MAGA right, as their next leader. He implied that a vote for Mr. Thune or Mr. Cornyn, the two establishment figures in the race to succeed Mr. McConnell, would mean more of the same in the Senate.

Neither Mr. Thune nor Mr. Cornyn has said whether they will support Mr. Gaetz. Mr. Cornyn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over Justice Department nominees, has said that in order to properly vet Mr. Gaetz for the post, senators must see the House Ethics Committee report, and that he would be open to issuing a subpoena for it if necessary.