President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet selections continue to arrive—and to spark controversy.
Barring sharp turns or Senate-confirmation problems, Trump’s national-security team has taken its likely shape: Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state, veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense, Rep. Mike Waltz as national security adviser, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, former congressman and director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe as CIA director, and Rep. Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador. A particularly controversial pick is only adjacent to foreign policy: Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general. Perhaps most controversial is the noted vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whom Trump has tapped to run the Department of Health and Human Services.
What to make of these choices? Some analysts are concerned about experience—and, in several cases, out-of-mainstream tendencies. The New York Times writes in an editorial, of Trump’s AG pick: “Yes, that Matt Gaetz. The one who called for the abolishment of the F.B.I. and the entire Justice Department if they didn’t stop investigating Mr. Trump. The one who was among the loudest congressional voices in denying the results of the 2020 election, who said he was ‘proud of the work’ that he and other deniers did on Jan. 6, 2021, and who praised the Capitol rioters as ‘patriotic Americans’ who had no intention of committing violence. The one whose move to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023 paralyzed his own party’s leadership of the House for nearly a month.” Gaetz has been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, including over allegations of sexual misconduct, which Gaetz has denied repeatedly. Defense One’s The D Brief newsletter writes: “Gabbard, 43, has no direct experience in intelligence work, nor in running large organizations, and has held no senior government roles. She served two years on the House Committee on Homeland Security. She has been noted for speeches and social-media posts that align with Russian propaganda and espouse conspiracy theories.” (Perhaps most controversially, Gabbard met with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in Damascus in 2017.)
Others foresee trouble winning Senate approval. The New Yorker’s Marc Fisher writes that defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth’s “résumé is so thin that Senator Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican and loyal Trump supporter, responded to the news with one word: ‘Who?’ … ‘Oh, really?’ the Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville said, when informed of the pick. ‘I’d have to think about that.’”
If the Reagan-era slogan “personnel is policy” holds true, what can we say about this incoming team and where it will steer things? At The Washington Post, Cate Cadell and Ellen Nakashima write that Rubio, Waltz and Stefanik are all China hawks. Rubio is more supportive of NATO than Trump is, Natasha Lindstaedt writes for The Conversation; at Foreign Policy, Allison Meakem notes Rubio’s hawkishness toward Cuba and Venezuela. Hegseth appears inclined to pursue Trump’s promised campaign to rid the military of “woke” generals, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board writes.
A Pattern in the Picks?
As expected, Trump’s top foreign-policy aides have a Trumpier flavor this time around. “One former Trump adviser said the president-elect was a moderate in his own MAGA movement,” the Economist writes. “This time the true believers have the upper hand.”
The Economist writes elsewhere: “There is a pattern here” in Trump’s personnel selections. “When Mr Trump has the whip hand—over the State Department, say—he appoints conventional candidates. When he suspects that the bureaucracy will resist him, he favours people who will fight the institutions they are supposed to be running.”
Musk Factor
Aside from tapping Gaetz as attorney general and RFK, Jr. as secretary of health and human services, Trump’s wildest move has been to promise a “Department of Government Efficiency,” an advisory entity to be headed by Elon Musk and former GOP primary-campaign rival Vivek Ramaswamy. Its acronym, DOGE, is a play on the dog-related internet meme that inspired Musk’s favored cryptocurrency.
Musk already is a prominent voice in Trump’s orbit, writes New York Times Silicon Valley reporter Theodore Schleifer: “The world’s richest person has ascended to a position of extraordinary, unofficial influence in Mr. Trump’s transition process, playing a role that makes him indisputably America’s most powerful private citizen. He has sat in on nearly every job interview with the Trump team and bonded with the Trump family, and he is trying to install his Silicon Valley friends in plum positions in the next administration.”
The Times’ Schleifer will join fill-in host Bianna Golodryga on this Sunday’s GPS to discuss Musk’s influence.
Musk had previously discussed leading an initiative to reform government. Now that such an effort is coming to pass, critics are shaking their heads vigorously. The Atlantic’s David A. Graham writes: “Trump has not provided a great deal of detail about how DOGE would work, though Musk has, naturally, already produced a dank meme. Ironically, we don’t know how DOGE will work or how it will be funded. … Will it successfully achieve the stated policy goal of reconfiguring the federal workforce to reduce waste and fraud and improve the provision of services? Almost certainly not. Will it work to drive out dedicated employees? Probably. The surest bet is that it will be a highly effective vehicle for furthering Musk and Trump’s political agenda. Such winning. Very chaos. Much bleak.”
Fareed on the Hill Democrats Failed to Climb
Why did Donald Trump win the White House so convincingly? On a new episode of Freakonomics Radio, Fareed notes that we are living through significant backlash to broad economic and cultural shifts. Democrats failed to address some of the concerns that have come along with those changes. At the same time, Fareed says, inflation and a global anti-incumbency wave meant Democrats’ reasonably good—but a bit too cautious and traditional—campaign effort wasn’t strong enough in such a difficult context.