“The advantage I have now is I know everybody. I know people. I know the good, the bad, the stupid, the smart.”
– Donald Trump, Time Magazine, April 2024
One of the most important powers of the presidency is the power of appointment. There are several hundred federal agencies, and the president has the power to make several thousand appointments to these agencies as well as to his cabinet and various executive branch institutions.
Donald Trump’s first term was marred by several appointees that had to be removed in the first year. National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was removed in less than a month for lying to the FBI and Vice President Pence. Ethics charges led to the removal of several cabinet officials, including the Secretary for Health and Human Services; the head of the Environmental Protection Administration; the Secretary of the Interior, and the Secretary of the Veterans Administration. The Secretary of State was fired in his first year, and the Attorney General either resigned or was fired as well.
And there were those who resigned less than two years in, and lambasted Trump soon after. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley described Trump as “just toxic” and “unhinged,” “lacking moral clarity.” Chief of Staff John Kelly said that he had never met anyone more unscrupulous than Donald Trump. Attorney General Bill Barr and national security adviser John Bolton were similarly critical. Of Trump’s highest level appointments, only four of the top 44 supported his run for a second term.
The appointments for Trump’s second term can’t be attributed to recommendations from outsiders; they are far worse and more dangerous than those made in the first term, when Trump could at least say he appointed people he didn’t really know first hand. Thus far, Trump’s appointees lack the skills and the experience that their particular assignments requirement. They truly constitute a house of horrors.
The worst and most dangerous appointment is Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense. Various experts would tell you that running the Department of Defense is the most challenging management job in the world. It has nearly 3 million employees, including the uniformed military the world over; civilians, and the National Guard. The Pentagon’s budget is more than $900 billion a year, and climbing. It was Hegseth who convinced Trump to pardon war criminals in his first term. Hegseth, a Fox News anchor on its weekend broadcasts, could not be more unqualified, and his confirmation process will test the mettle and courage of the new Senate Majority Leader, John Thune.
Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence is another cause for concern. In 2017, Gabbard met with Syrian President Bashar al Assad, and defended his attacks on Syrian civilians. She even challenged the intelligence that documented Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilian communities. More recently, Gabbard said that media freedom in Russia is “not so different” from that in the United States. Gabbard was reportedly placed on a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) watchlist known as “Quiet Skies” this year, which allows federal air marshals to follow U.S. citizens and collect information on their behavior.
The appointment of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) as Attorney General speaks for itself. Gaetz can be counted on to wield the Justice Department against Trump’s political enemies, and Gaetz will also move swiftly to end the two federal criminal cases against Trump.
Lack of experience appears to be the major qualification for most of the appointments. Kristi Noem has been named to head the Department of Homeland Security, which has a $60 billion budget and a work force of 234,000. It is responsible for the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, and Federal Emergency Management Agency. Elise Stefanik has no background in diplomacy or international relations, but she will be the UN ambassador. Her greatest qualification appears to be her contempt for the United Nations, which is how Nikki Haley got the job in Trump’s first term. Of course, the same could be said for UN ambassadors such as John Bolton in George W. Bush’s first term or Jeane Kirkpatrick in Ronald Reagan’s first term.
The list goes on. John Ratcliff, who politicized intelligence in Trump’s first term as the Director of National Intelligence, will become the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Lee Zelden, who has no experience with climate or energy issues, will be the administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency. Mike Huckabee, who says there is no such thing as a Palestinian and that illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank are actually legal Israeli communities, will be ambassador to Israel. Stephen Miller, on the far right wing of the political spectrum, will be deputy chief of staff in the White House for policy, particularly immigration policy. Miller favors mass deportation as does the new border czar Tom Homan, who favored family separation policy as a way to deter immigration when he served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
One worrisome feature of the new appointments in the national security field is their hostility to China. This is true for the new national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who introduced legislation to rename Dulles International Airport as (you guessed it) Trump International. The expected secretary of state, Mario Rubio, is a China Hawk as well as an Iran-Cuba-Venezuela Hawk. The Washington Post has already endorsed the appointment of Rubio, believing that a tough policy toward China will get concessions from Xi Jinping. We’re certain to have a trade war with China in the near term, but perhaps we shouldn’t rule out war itself.
All of these appointments pale next to the naming of Hegseth to the Pentagon. There have been 30 secretaries of defense since the creation of the Department of Defense in 1947. Only a handful of these secretaries truly succeeded: George Marshall in the Truman administration; Harold Brown in the Carter administration; and Bill Perry in the Clinton administration. Some of the most knowledgeable failed such as Les Aspin, whose health worsened in his short tour as secretary of defense. The first secretary of defense, James Forrestal, committed suicide soon after leaving the Pentagon post. Bob Gates and Leon Panetta simply surrendered to the uniformed military and didn’t act as civilian leaders of the Department of Defense. The fact that Trump has talked of using the Insurrection Act to involve the uniformed military in dealing with domestic violence makes the Hegseth appointment particularly threatening.
Political loyalty is obviously the key to Trump’s selection process. This is certainly true for Ratcliff and Waltz in the national security field; for Stefanik in the diplomacy arena; and for Miller and Homan in the area of immigration. And it could get worse before it gets worse because there has been no mention thus far of Jeffrey Clark, Kash Patel, Matthew Whitaker or Richard Grenell, who have been more than loyal to Trump. Stay tuned to this space.
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