In his Joe Rogan interview, President Trump said that his biggest mistake from his first term came from appointing “disloyal” people to important positions based on advice from career Republican politicians. So naturally this time around he’s picking people based in large measure on personal loyalty to him. The result is a much better cabinet than his first, but not a perfect one. I’ll go through the top picks with quick reaction on each.
Secretary of State: Marco Rubio. Meh. Marco has always struck me as an intellectual lightweight. He will doubtless be a much better Secretary of State than Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first choice, as well as all Democratic secretaries of state back to at least Cyrus Vance (if not further), but in terms of actual ability I’m not sure he’s better than Trump’s second Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. I would prefer someone like Victor Davis Hanson. Or even (dare I say it?) Rick Perry. This also starts the run of “Sure is a lot of people from Florida on this list.”
Secretary of Defense: Pete Hegseth. “Before joining Fox in 2014, Hegseth served as an Army National Guard captain in Afghanistan and Iraq and earned the Bronze Star medal for his service in the latter.” I don’t watch Fox (or network or cable news in general), so I wasn’t previously aware of him, but he wants to completely purge wokeness and DEI, so I’m firmly on Team Hegseth now.
Attorney General: Florida congressman Matt Gaetz. Boy, this one really has the left freaking out. As well it should. While I’m confident Gaetz has the steel to launch investigations of the Russian collusion hoax, the Trump assassination attempts, the lawfare waged against him, censorship efforts, January 6, etc., I worry that he hasn’t run a state attorney generals office, and thus won’t know how best to bring “resistance” staffers to heel. I suspect a seasoned Republican state attorney general like Ken Paxton might have been a better choice, but Texas conservatives won’t complain about getting to keep Paxton in his current job.
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security: South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. Meh. I liked Noem back when she kept her state open during the Flu Manchu panic, but then she went off tranny pandering by vetoing a bill banning men from women’s sports she had promised to sign. She later made amends, but the initial pander of caving to radical social justice pressure makes me worry that she doesn’t have the necessary gumption for such an important job.
Department Of Government Efficiency: Elon Musk And Vivek Ramaswamy. Putting aside why this isn’t simply the Office of Management and Budget (maybe to staff a new department from the ground up without “resisters”), this one Trump hit out of the park. Both Musk and Ramaswamy are going to bring outsider energy from two guys who simply don’t care what the MSM and the DC chattering classes have to say about them. Ramaswamy is the ideological firebrand that won’t be diverted from the task, and Musk is the radical innovator who’s not afraid to to make rapid, radical changes. Every Republican President since Reagan has said they’re for a balanced budget, yet somehow the goal has eluded every single one of them. Trump did not pursue a budget cutting agenda in his first term, but having been targeted by multiple tentacles of the deep state leviathan, I’m pretty sure he’ll come in with a newfound zeal for chopping the federal government down to size. And Musk has a talent for both management and radical disruption, which the federal government badly needs.
Director of National Intelligence: Tulsi Gabbard. I’m skeptical this one works out. Tulsi is clearly sharp, and after this election she clearly needs some role in the Trump 2: The Venging administration. And she drive feminists crazy simply by standing there and looking pretty. But directing the national intelligence apparatus, especially one that will be institutionally hostile to reform from the git go, will take a very special, and very tough, director to fill that role, and I’m not sure Gabbard has the intestinal fortitude for the sort of brutal inter-agency knife-fighting necessary to defeat the Deep State. Very few men do, and even fewer women, and having served in the military isn’t sufficient to assure that. For a woman to succeed in this role, she’s going to need to fall somewhere on the Margaret Thatcher to Nancy Pelosi Iron Lady to Stone Cold Bitch spectrum, and I’m skeptical Tulsi meets that threshold. Maybe I’m wrong and she’ll suprise us all.
Robert K. Kennedy, Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. No. Like Tulsi, you have to give him some role, and he probably has some good points to make about over-medication, junk food additives, and how the pharmaceutical industry has misled the public (especially over Flu Manchu vaccines and side effects) and commits regulatory capture of the people who should be overseeing it, but he has too many fringe, scientifically supported ideas, and he seems to support ObamaCare. There’s still a chance this selection works out, assuming the Assistant Director is someone who can keep Kennedy’s worst impulses in check, and having him as the designated bad cop may force the medial industry get its shit together (and give up its push to mutilate children for funny, profit and virtue signaling brownie points entirely). Then there’s this via Instapundit:
God forbid we let RFK Jr. be in charge of HHS, otherwise he might do something crazy like fund experimental gain-of-function research in Chinese laboratories and cause a global pandemic
But this could still blow up in Trump’s face. Rand Paul would have been a much better pick here, assuming he could be persuaded to leave the senate.
Border Czar: Former ICE director Tom Homan. Yeah, he’s got the starch.
Let a thousand ten million deportations bloom.
So I find it a pretty mixed bag.
Athena Thorne notes that all those selected were unfairly targeted by the very agencies they’re being tasked to oversee, and that probably does provide powerful motivation, as well as insight on the types of abuse that need to be rooted out. I’m just not sure that’s sufficient…
Rubio and Gabbard give me some doubt. Leading is not a popularity contest, and both those departments are chock-full of some heinously “bitter clingers” who will work very hard to make themselves safe in exchange for validation. Gabbard and Rubio strike me as people that thrive on validation, and Gabbard is especially worth watching considering what the swamp did to her just recently. If she doesn’t draw blood I’ll be very hesitant of Donald’s choice. Hopefully Trump is right
I think there’s method to Trump’s apparent madness with some of these appointments. Tulsi Gabbard and RFK? LOL… They were Democrats a couple of months ago. Even if they don’t make it through confirmation in the Senate, they were both just converted into allies and effectively removed from the Democrat camp.
It’s gonna be realllllllly hard for the Democrats to demonize these two. They’re no doubt gonna try, but I think the odds are pretty damn good that they wind up being driven further into the Trump camp, and since Trump is effectively a 1960-style Democrat anyway…?
I’ve been saying it for a long time, that the two sides of the national oligarchy Uniparty are effectively joined at the hip. What Trump is really doing here is pulling from both party structures into the center, and that’s going to be the way things are going forward. I fully expect to see the Cheney/Bush/McCain sort of Republican to gradually morph into Democrat statists over the next few years, because that’s precisely what they are. They’ve only been mouthing the words of opposition in order to gull the rubes, and the rubes ain’t buying what they sell any more.
In the end, I think there’s going to be this thing called the Republican Party that actually occupies the center of things, and is more populist than the opposition, who’re going to be consisting of the Pelosi statist freak types that can’t give it up. Where all this winds up? No ‘effing idea, but it’ll be amusing.
Hell, you’ve already witnessed the Republicans becoming the “Party of the Working Man”, while the Democrats gradually morphed into the “College Edumicated Elitists Party”. Going forward, it’s only going to get more defined that way.
I’m so old I can remember US Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) praising Peter Paul Buttigieg’s “impressive credentials” and intellect. The Senate rolled over for this lightweight and confirmed him with a vote of 86-13.
For the Senate to balk at Matt Gaetz or Tulsi Gabbard after placing their imprimatur upon Mayor Pete is risible.
Are there better, more capable candidates for Cabinet positions than those Trump has named? You bet! Contrary to popular opinion, the “Advice and Consent” clause of the US Constitution does little or nothing to ensure the brightest and the best are appointed to office. It’s simply a reminder to the President that he serves at the good pleasure of the Legislature, which is empowered to impeach and remove him from office for even a trifling misdemeanor.
I believe Devin Nunez would be a much better choice for DNI, leaving open the VA position for Gabbard but there are no fatally bad candidates on offer here and any objection from the Senate amounts to little more than political posturing.
Rubio and Gabbard give me some doubt. Leading is not a popularity contest, and both those departments are chock-full of some heinously “bitter clingers” who will work very hard to make themselves safe in exchange for validation. Gabbard and Rubio strike me as people that thrive on validation, and Gabbard is especially worth watching considering what the swamp did to her just recently. If she doesn’t draw blood I’ll be very hesitant of Donald’s choice. Hopefully Trump is right
I think there’s method to Trump’s apparent madness with some of these appointments. Tulsi Gabbard and RFK? LOL… They were Democrats a couple of months ago. Even if they don’t make it through confirmation in the Senate, they were both just converted into allies and effectively removed from the Democrat camp.
It’s gonna be realllllllly hard for the Democrats to demonize these two. They’re no doubt gonna try, but I think the odds are pretty damn good that they wind up being driven further into the Trump camp, and since Trump is effectively a 1960-style Democrat anyway…?
I’ve been saying it for a long time, that the two sides of the national oligarchy Uniparty are effectively joined at the hip. What Trump is really doing here is pulling from both party structures into the center, and that’s going to be the way things are going forward. I fully expect to see the Cheney/Bush/McCain sort of Republican to gradually morph into Democrat statists over the next few years, because that’s precisely what they are. They’ve only been mouthing the words of opposition in order to gull the rubes, and the rubes ain’t buying what they sell any more.
In the end, I think there’s going to be this thing called the Republican Party that actually occupies the center of things, and is more populist than the opposition, who’re going to be consisting of the Pelosi statist freak types that can’t give it up. Where all this winds up? No ‘effing idea, but it’ll be amusing.
Hell, you’ve already witnessed the Republicans becoming the “Party of the Working Man”, while the Democrats gradually morphed into the “College Edumicated Elitists Party”. Going forward, it’s only going to get more defined that way.
I’m so old I can remember US Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) praising Peter Paul Buttigieg’s “impressive credentials” and intellect. The Senate rolled over for this lightweight and confirmed him with a vote of 86-13.
For the Senate to balk at Matt Gaetz or Tulsi Gabbard after placing their imprimatur upon Mayor Pete is risible.
Are there better, more capable candidates for Cabinet positions than those Trump has named? You bet! Contrary to popular opinion, the “Advice and Consent” clause of the US Constitution does little or nothing to ensure the brightest and the best are appointed to office. It’s simply a reminder to the President that he serves at the good pleasure of the Legislature, which is empowered to impeach and remove him from office for even a trifling misdemeanor.
I believe Devin Nunez would be a much better choice for DNI, leaving open the VA position for Gabbard but there are no fatally bad candidates on offer here and any objection from the Senate amounts to little more than political posturing.