Trump’s team: Loyalty and Willingness to Disrupt the Checks And Balances

For President-elect Donald Trump, loyalty to him is far more important than experience, as many of the cabinet nominees announced so far would be given a job they have never done before but have always loyally defended Trump.

The Cabinet is an advisory body comprising the heads of the 15 executive departments. Appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, the members of the Cabinet are often the President’s closest confidants. In addition to running major federal agencies, they play an important role in the Presidential line of succession – after the Vice President, Speaker of the House, and Senate President pro tempore, the line of succession continues with the Cabinet offices in the order in which the departments were created. All the members of the Cabinet take the title Secretary, excepting the head of the Justice Department, who is styled Attorney General.

In 2016, he made a reality show of the transition, a special edition of The Apprentice reality. Aspiring cabinet members arrived at the tower that bears his name in New York and walked past TV cameras.

That series was drawn-out with celebrity appearances, including by Kanye West. This time, Trump is directing a tighter show: deliberating at his estate at Mar-a-Lago away from cameras and issuing his hiring verdicts over social media at a much faster pace. Unfortunately, the outcomes are hardly saner.

At the time of writing, Trump has already named 10 of his 15-member minimum Cabinet and has already announced his nominees for other positions. And then there are the weirder appointments – for departments that do not yet exist. Trump announced that he would tap Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, to run a new commission with Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and former presidential primary opponent, to reduce government waste and cut red tape. This is a worthy aim, but, as often with Musk, it is hard to know whether to take him literally. DOGE is named after Musk’s crypto, which started as a joke and is now a form of trolling.

Loyalty is Above All

Based on the names revealed so far, some are surprising and some not-so-surprising. The list of the latter is shorter: Sen. Marco Rubio’s pick for secretary of state could be a good choice, as Rubio has experience in foreign policy, as does Mike Waltz, who has been tapped as Trump’s national security adviser.

According to his CV, Tom Homan, formerly the interim head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for a year, could also be a good fit for border czar – though his job would likely be to organise and orchestrate mass deportations, as he contributed to this chapter of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 with his hardline views.

Trump already appointed to the White House chief of staff his campaign manager, Susie Wiles, a seasoned Republican operative and also a grandmother.

However, the chief of staff is not part of the Cabinet, but her role is essential, not just in day-to-day affairs but also in overseeing all policy and navigating the competing factions already emerging in Trump’s inner circle.

Wiles, who turned 67, worked in politics for more than 40 years and is known for her tough and disciplined approach and his deep devotion to Trump.

“Wiles is not just one of Trump’s senior advisers. She’s his most important adviser. She has been in essence his chief of staff for the last more than three years. She’s one of the reasons Trump is the GOP’s presumptive nominee and Ron DeSantis is not. She’s one of the reasons Trump’s current operation has been getting credit for being more professional than its fractious, seat-of-the-pants antecedents,” as we read in her portrayal on Politico.

President Joe Biden meets with President-elect Donald Trump on November 13, 2024, in the Oval Office. On the left, Susie Wiles.

War against the Deep State

Trump’s subsequent choices are not only unexpected but also raise eyebrows on the whole political spectrum.

The first of these was former Democratic congressman and presidential candidate-turned-Trump supporter Tulsi Gabbard as head of the national intelligence; far-right Republican Matt Gaetz, formerly under trial for sex and drug trafficking, as attorney general; or Pete Hegseth, a weekend host of Fox News’ morning show, who defended Trump on TV, as defence secretary.

Trump’s selection of Gaetz elevates one of his most vocal and polarizing defenders, someone who has generated animosity even among his Republican colleagues while maintaining fervently loyal to Trump. Gaetz, first elected to Congress in 2016 from Florida, was in the midst of a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, but Gaetz resigned from Congress in November before the report was released. This is who would control the Department of Justice…

Richard A. Epstein, a fellow in the GOP-leaning Hoover Institution, remarked on Gaetz: “He seems to be in personal trouble all the time, up and down. His statements are always pugnacious. He’s going to find it impossible to hire good people to work for him because it turns out he has a reputation of being some kind of a clown or as a misfit.”

A third-party contender who later stepped down in favor of Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.), appears to be secretary of Health and Human Service (HHS) and he “do whatever he wants”.

A nepo baby, anti-vax maniac RFK Jr. started his career in 1985 as a young attorney for the environmental nonprofit River Keeper prosecuting polluters. Although his organization’s objective was to “ensure safe drinking water for American families and preserve fishing as a viable livelihood in the United States,” later, the lawyer-turned-author-turned-politician repeatedly shared that man-made chemicals in the environment could be making children gay or transgender and causing the feminization of boys and masculinization of girls.

Kennedy is perhaps best known for his opposition to vaccinations, though he has balked at being labeled “anti-vaccine.” He founded and led the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense (CHD) before stepping down to launch his presidential campaign in 2023. RFK Jr’s anti-vaccine rhetoric was given a new boost with the release of COVID-19: One of his biggest controversies was saying that COVID-19 was designed to target Caucasians and African-Americans. He was so vehement in his anti-vaccine push that his Instagram was eventually banned. You can read about his various conspiracy theories here.

As in his column in the UnPopulist, Robert Tracinski pointed out that these nominees are radically unfit to hold top jobs in the government: “These individuals are not merely unqualified for their offices. They are disqualified. They are anti-qualified – the antithesis of what the offices call for.”

The reason why they were chosen is obvious; in his second term, Trump does not want officials who oppose him, and he wants cabinet members who will follow his orders and carry them out no matter what. On the one hand, his official agenda includes firing officials who disobey orders. On the other hand, the nominees announced so far for his future administration – if the Senate gives them the green light to take office – could also ensure that the president’s will is carried out at all costs.

Choices of this bizarre team of loyalists may face difficulty being confirmed by the Senate, even one with a Republican majority. Perhaps that’s the point. Four defecting Republican senators would be sufficient to reject them, but blocking all three picks would be uncharacteristically defiant.