Written by Akshar Patel
Edited by Andrew Hermann and Annika Lilja
On the 6th of November, it was declared that Former President Donald Trump had won the 2024 presidential election, becoming the second person ever to win two nonconsecutive terms after Grover Cleveland in 1892. In the following weeks, the new president-elect announced who he planned to nominate under his administration on the social media platform Truth Social. Unlike his first term, Trump and his team plan to significantly restructure the federal government, according to a video the president-elect released on his website. They aim to replace as many roles in the executive branch (including adjacent executive agencies) as possible with GOP loyalists, so that it will be easier for Trump to fully pass his agenda through the executive branch. Since most cabinet positions need to be approved by the Senate, Trump has threatened to use a system known as recess appointments—a Constitutional provision allowing the Chief Executive to nominate people for cabinet positions while Congress is in recess—if the Senate GOP refuses to comply with the entirety of his agenda.
Some of Trump’s appointments are on the tamer side, including the presumptive Secretary of Veteran Affairs Doug Collins, a former representative and Air Force colonel; the presumptive Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, the moderate Republican governor of North Dakota; and his National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, a former representative who is more traditionally neoconservative—especially with regards to China.
However, most of his appointments were large breaks from the status quo in Washington. Most famously, Trump appointed two of his wealthiest allies in tech—Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy—to lead a new advisory board known as the Department of Government Efficiency. Named after Musk’s favorite internet meme, DOGE promises to cut $2 trillion—a third of the US government’s current budget—on what Musk deems wasteful programs, as reported by Al Jazeera. DOGE’s X account has shared some of these programs, which at first glance do appear to be extremely frivolous; they include “$1.7 million for holograms of dead comedians” and “$28 million on licensing fees for a green “camouflage” pattern on Afghan National Army uniforms.” However, critics have stated that Musk and his allies are merely misrepresenting these studies and that they are actually part of larger government efforts necessary for nobler goals such as conservation efforts or studying PTSD in the armed forces. Nevertheless, Musk and Ramaswamy delivering a wrecking ball to bureaucracy was one of the major selling points of the Trump campaign, and it seems he intends to follow through with this promise, for better or for worse.
Another campaign promise Trump followed through with is naming Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former independent candidate in the 2024 race who chose to endorse Donald Trump midway through August of this year, as the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Running on a platform to “Make America Healthy Again,” Kennedy has expressed considerable interest in banning harmful additives in junk food, especially for food products marketed towards children. He has drawn criticism from medical experts for his questioning of the effectiveness of vaccines, especially from past comments of his on the Polio vaccine. In a 2023 podcast with the computer scientist Lex Fridman, Kennedy claimed, “that [the Polio vaccine] killed many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did,” even though the official scientific evidence to confirm his claim does not currently exist. This has caused some panic in the health community, leading Trump to try and allay fears by stating, “You’re not going to lose the polio vaccine,” in a news conference this December, as reported by the New York Times.
One of the more controversial picks that Trump has announced has been his choice for Defense Secretary: Pete Hegseth. A veteran of the Global War on Terror and a former host on Fox News, Hegseth is fully intent on getting rid of “wokeness” in the military, starting with cutting every program for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in all 6 branches of the Armed Forces and removing any and all transgender service members. He has opposed women in combat roles, stating, “I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated,” in an interview on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast on November 7th. Hegseth has also drawn controversy from a sexual assault allegation he faces from a California woman that allegedly happened in 2017, one that Hegseth and allies such as Megyn Kelly have denied, along with concerns that his struggles with alcoholism will make him unfit to lead the world’s largest military.
However, the largest outsider that Trump considered was Florida ex-representative Matt Gaetz for Attorney General. A right-wing firebrand, Gaetz has been one of Trump’s most fiercely loyal allies, infamously supporting Trump during his two prior impeachments and stating that he believed that January 6th was planned by the far-left organization Antifa. However, a week after Trump announced his pick, Gaetz had withdrawn his name from the roster over concerns that it would be too hard for Congress to actually approve him—not for his hard-right views, but for a scandal where he allegedly had sexual relations with a 17-year-old girl. The House Ethics Committee had actually already been investigating him for some time, starting in June, but his recent nomination seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Trump named Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, in his place.
From moderate to radical, Donald Trump’s picks represent a wide range of ideals and goals in the landscape of American conservatism. However, what they all share in common, and what Trump likely values the most, is loyalty to him and his agenda. Trump values this most of all because, as he saw during his first term, if his cabinet disagrees with the policies he tries to pass through, it will only slow down his ability to govern. Critics have likened this policy of staffing all the positions with loyalists as reminiscent of President Andrew Jackson’s spoils system, when he put campaign loyalists in key positions they might not have been qualified for, leading to “rampant incompetence and cronyism,” as The Hill states. It has yet to be seen if Trump’s status-quo-breaking cabinet will follow the same fate, or stand out in the roles they have been assigned to.
Sources
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