A Fox News ally for defence secretary. A former Democrat-turned-Trump-World-celebrity to oversee 18 spy agencies. A right-wing provocateur for the US’s top law enforcement job.
President-elect Donald Trump’s appointments for top government jobs have rolled in fast and furiously this week, and his promise to build a presidential administration fuelled by retribution quickly came into view.
Those plans were perhaps best summarised by Matt Gaetz, who wrote of his enthusiasm for the wholesale elimination of federal law enforcement agencies just hours before Trump announced he’d chosen the Florida Republican to lead the justice department:
“We ought to have a full-court press against this WEAPONIZED Government that has been turned against our people,” Gaetz wrote on social media on Wednesday. “And if that means abolishing every one of the three letter agencies, from the FBI to the ATF, I’m ready to get going!”
Trump could not have said it better himself. And that is the entire point.
The president-elect’s other bombshell picks include Pete Hegseth, a military veteran known for defending Trump on Fox News, to be his defence secretary; and Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress, to be director of national intelligence.
“These are so appalling they’re a form of performance art,” Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice, said in an interview, reflecting on Trump’s choices and their fitness for their jobs.
This parade of loyalists is Trump’s first show of force to Senate Republicans, who will be under immense pressure to either confirm his nominee or sidestep that process altogether. But it is also something of a denial-of-service attack against one of the checks on the presidency: Trump has insisted that the next Senate majority leader allow for recess appointments, which would grant him the ability to unilaterally install cabinet members.
That newly elected leader, South Dakota senator John Thune, told reporters on Wednesday that the Senate would “explore all options” to make sure Trump’s appointees “get moved and that they get moved quickly”.
The president-elect, Waldman said, had effectively “provoked his first constitutional crisis” eight days after winning the election.
“He’s going to pick people who are conservative, who are Republicans,” Waldman said. “You know, that’s what you get with an election. But these choices seem designed to poke the Senate in the eye.”
Not all of Trump’s choices seem designed to throw a wrench into government as usual. The selection of Florida senator Marco Rubio to be secretary of state elevates an established foreign policy hawk who has taken a hardline approach to China. And the election of Thune signals that Republicans are willing to buck pressure – on a blind ballot, at least – to install Trump loyalists like Florida senator Rick Scott, a long-time backer of Trump’s.
But among lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the reactions to the appointments – Gaetz’s in particular – drew a mixture of surprise and disbelief.
Alaska Republican senator Lisa Murkowski said Gaetz was “not a serious candidate” and compared him to a disgraced fabulist who was expelled from the House of Representatives last year, saying, “If I wanted to make a joke, maybe I would say now I’m waiting for George Santos to be named.”
In selecting Gaetz and a cast of other loyalists, Trump is trying to ensure that he can leave the levers of the federal government to people who ultimately answer to him. In this group, there is no Jeff Sessions, who was forced out as attorney general during Trump’s first term because he recused himself from the inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
There is no Jim Mattis, who chose to resign rather than abide by Trump’s wilful fraying of international alliances. There is not even a John Bolton, the former national security adviser who ended up clashing with Trump over making what he considered unwise agreements with the US’s enemies. (On Wednesday, Bolton said on NBC that the choice of Gaetz was “the worst nomination for a cabinet position in American history”.
Timothy L O’Brien, a long-time biographer of Trump, said the selections were his way of ensuring loyalty to him above competence for the role.
“He prizes loyalty above competence, atmospherics above expertise, and buffoonery above maturity,” O’Brien said. “He values that at the expense of almost everything else, other than his own survival.”
Indeed, the one theme in Trump’s running personnel announcements is that no one will step in to establish guardrails for a president who despises them.
Instead, the Senate will now grapple with confirming Hegseth, whom Trump praised as “tough, smart and a true believer in America First”, but who may lack the experience needed to lead the 1.3 million active-duty men and women of the US military. In Trump’s eyes, Hegseth’s criticisms of “woke” behaviour in the armed forces and of the military’s diversity programmes could be qualification enough.
They will also review the credentials of Gabbard, who is one of Trump’s most vocal supporters. She has long been popular with Russian state media. Democratic senators are expected to ask her about her decision to meet with Syrian president Bashar Assad and her past embrace of Russian talking points.
And they will consider the track record of Gaetz, who was recently the subject of a federal sex-trafficking investigation that was concluded in 2023. If he is confirmed, he will lead the Department of Justice, which carried out that investigation.
Gaetz was also the target of a House ethics committee investigation into accusations of drug use, using campaign funds for personal use, and sharing inappropriate material on the House floor, among other offences. He resigned from the chamber on Wednesday after Trump chose him for attorney general, in effect ending the investigation.
While serving in Congress, Gaetz introduced legislation that would limit sentences for people who participated in the January 6th, 2021, attacks on the US Capitol, and became notorious for his conflicts with other House members. (Republican House member Max Miller of Ohio told reporters Wednesday that at least the House would be a more peaceful place without Gaetz.)
“The justice department usually prosecutes bomb throwers,” Waldman said. “This would be somebody whose entire political brand is as a bomb thrower, being put in charge of an agency with extraordinary responsibility and power.”
It will now be up to the Senate to decide whether, or how, Trump’s choices will be installed. As a candidate, Trump had promised that he would root out government corruption, combat censorship and seek revenge on “enemies from within” who have unfairly targeted him. As president-elect, Trump’s organised, quick, headline-grabbing cascade of choices is designed to show that he meant what he said, and that he intends to redirect institutions from functioning on behalf of the national interest to functioning on the behalf of his.
“There all sorts of things going on inside those agencies that we’re not going to be able to see, that are really important to the integrity and the smooth functioning of American life,” O’Brien said. “And they’re going to be in there with matches, seeing what ... catches fire first.” – This article originally appeared in The New York Times
