The most extreme cabinet ever

Joe Biden appears to have been cursed with terrible timing once again. On Wednesday morning, the forty-sixth president welcomed in an awkward photo, intended to underscore his adherence to old-fashioned constitutional principles like the peaceful transfer of power Donald Trump to the Oval Office. “Congratulations,” Biden said, to a man he has called an aspiring “dictator.” Biden revived a tradition that Trump rejected four years ago in favor of an all-out effort to reverse his defeat, promising a smooth transition and offering to “do everything we can to make sure you are accommodated.” ” The comforting optics of the two men shaking hands in front of a crackling fire seemed intended to convey the message that Americans don’t have to worry about all that election season rhetoric: If Trump really was a fascist in waiting, as his own former white House of Representatives chief of staff has warned that Biden would not have gone through with a meet & greet after all?

Poor Biden. Shortly after leaving the White House, Trump announced not only two of his most controversial personnel decisions ever, but perhaps two of the most controversial cabinet choices ever made. At 3:14 p.mTrump posted on Truth Social that he would appoint Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, as Director of National Intelligence. Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party two years ago and actively campaigned for Trump, is best known for her two secret visits to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in 2017 and for her public amplification of Kremlin talking points in which she blames the United States for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Giving her access to classified information, let alone appointing her to oversee such information, would have been unthinkable in any other administration, including Trump’s. But Trump quickly overwhelmed this news with his announcement, at 3:24 a.m p.mthat he would mention Matt Gaetzthe Florida congressman currently under investigation by his own Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives for alleged illegal drug use and sexual misconduct with a minor, as his attorney general.

Given the ensuing furor, it was easy to forget that Trump had announced a day earlier that he would name-drop Piet Hegsetha weekend Fox News host with no government experience outside of his service in the Army National Guard, as his Secretary of Defense. Hegseth, who routinely rails against “woke generals” on television, publicly urged clemency for war criminals during Trump’s first term; more recently, he has advocated that Trump should fire CQ Brown, the black chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to show that he would no longer support diversity and inclusion efforts in the military. At such a moment, it seemed like a mere quibble to point out that Trump’s decision, also announced Tuesday, to appoint Kristi Noem as his secretary of homeland security, responsible for the embattled U.S. immigration authorities, came despite the lack of relevant information from the Governor of South Dakota. experience or the revelation that she had shot and killed her family’s puppy.

Perhaps it was no surprise that Trump, with his demands for ostentatious displays of loyalty and his penchant for obsessive television viewing, has quickly assembled the makings of a second-term Cabinet that might be better suited to casting for a Republican reality show. The immediate questions raised by these appointments were practical: Could these extreme nominees, even in a Republican-controlled Senate, possibly be confirmed? And if so, what would it tell us, more broadly, about the excesses we should expect from the new Trump administration?

Capitol Hill’s reactions in the wake of the Gaetz news provided an invaluable snapshot of an institution once again on the brink. “God level trolls. . . to own the libs forever,” said John Fetterman, the blunt-talking Democratic senator from Pennsylvania. But it soon became clear that both Republicans and Democrats were owned by Trump; with Gaetz’s nomination, not to mention those of Gabbard and Hegseth, he is practically daring the Republican party to defy him. After eight years of watching Republicans squirm as they ultimately did his bidding, Trump has every reason to believe that won’t be the case. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island, was perhaps even clearer than Fetterman when he noted that the dual nominations of Gaetz and Gabbard were a kind of autocrat’s “crawl test” — as in a public trial to determine whether “Republican senators ‘willingness to grovel to Trump.’

This is a familiar move from the Trump playbook, although it was striking that he moved so quickly to redo it. During his first term, he relished proving the hollowness of his Republican allies’ excuses for him; time and time again, he exposed them as hypocrites more effectively than their partisan rivals ever had. Lindsey Graham, who will become the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the new Senate and who is always a good barometer of how far Republican officials are willing to go to appease Trump, initially sounded doubtful. However, on Wednesday night he appeared on Fox and told Sean Hannity that Trump “won the election. He deserves a chance to choose his cabinet,” praising Gaetz as “smart” and “qualified.”

The rollout of Trump’s Cabinet shows quite clearly what his plan is for the new administration: He doesn’t just want to explode the standards of the capital when he returns to it. He wants to crush them – and anyone else who is tempted to play by the old rules that Trump likes to flout. I’m sure his shaming of Biden was just a welcome side benefit of making his bombshell announcements on Wednesday. Another effect was to overshadow the election of a new Republican Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, of South Dakota. Thune, a longtime lieutenant of the outgoing Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnelldefeated two other candidates, including the MAGA favorite Rick Scott, for the post; he is what remains of his party’s pre-Trump establishment in Congress, and like McConnell, he criticized Trump for “inexcusable” actions ahead of the January 6, 2021 election. attack on the US Capitol. (Not that it stopped either man from supporting Trump in this election.)

Of course, it’s also possible that Trump’s most questionable choices are rejected in the Senate, or that Gaetz never even gets as far as a formal nomination. His sworn enemy, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthyemphasized this in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “Look, Gaetz isn’t getting any confirmation,” he said. “Everyone knows that.” McCarthy, who was dumped from the House of Representatives by Republicans last year in a Gaetz-orchestrated coup, suggested that Gaetz, while unconfirmable, provided a “distraction” to Trump’s other questionable nominees — and he’s certainly right when he says that as long as Gaetz remains in government running for attorney general it will be difficult to focus on other controversies. By contrast, Marco Rubio, Trump’s choice for secretary of state, and Mike Waltz, his choice for national security adviser, seem like statesmen from another era.

Shortly after Trump made his announcements on Wednesday, his ally and former chief strategist Steve Bannon ranted in a long, upbeat podcast about Trump’s Cabinet picks, from his delight in the “brilliant, determined, focused, ruthless” Gaetz as a possible AG to the “shock in this city” that greeted Trump’s first steps. Tactically, he almost seemed to agree with McCarthy that Gaetz’s pick could have the effect of making it easier to push otherwise shocking picks like Hegseth and Gabbard. “It’ll make Pete Hegseth look like General Grant,” Bannon joked.

However, the tawdry theatrics involved in the rollout of Trump’s picks for key national security posts should not obscure an underlying substance that is no less striking for being entirely predictable: this time, the former president who promised revenge and retaliation, who openly admired Vladimir Putin’s “genius” invasion of Ukraine, and whose advisers dream of dismantling the “deep state,” it seems he really wants to fulfill his promises of disruption.

Whether or not Gaetz ends up as a “blowtorch” that Trump aims at the Justice Department, as Bannon put it, it’s as much about the blowtorch as it is about the personnel. How far will Trump go? On Thursday afternoon, Trump announced his next controversial choice: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.the vaccine-skeptical, conspiracy theory-spreading former Democrat, for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Before the election, Trump had already indicated this, saying he wanted Kennedy to “go out of control” against US public health authorities. How much clearer can he be?

I expect to see more such announcements in the coming days. Right out of the starting blocks, Trump 2.0 has already gone far beyond the most extreme people and policies considered during Trump’s first term. And perhaps that is the hidden advantage of his wild debut in the new cabinet: the immediate obsolescence of the post-electoral wave of hot ideas, wishful thinking and psychological self-consolation by many in the capital that maybe, just maybe, this time it won’t be so would be. Don’t be silly.