Trump’s early moves show he wants to disrupt government and exact retribution
Eight
years ago, Trump’s transition got off to a slow and stumbling start.
This time, he is moving swiftly to fill key roles with loyal but
controversial picks.
President-elect
Donald Trump attends the America First Policy Institute Gala held at
Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on Thursday. (Saul Martinez for The
Washington Post)
The opening phase of President-elect Donald Trump’s
second trip to the White House has been nothing like the first. What
this portends for the coming four years is exactly what Trump pledged in
the campaign: disruption and retribution.
Eight years ago, Trump got off to a stumbling start. Days after his surprise victory over Hillary Clinton, he unexpectedly blew up his transition
operation. He fired transition chief Chris Christie, the former
governor of New Jersey and erstwhile rival for the nomination that year
(and this year) and started over. It took months to recover, if he ever truly did.
Eight
years ago, he paraded potential Cabinet officers in public displays.
Trump seemed enamored with some of his establishment picks. He selected
retired general Jim Mattis as his defense secretary and loved calling
him by his nickname, “Mad Dog.” He thought Rex Tillerson, the ExxonMobil
CEO, and his eventual pick for secretary of state, looked like an actor
from central casting for the role.
His
selection process included a well-photographed dinner with Mitt Romney,
who was said to be under consideration for secretary of state despite
having criticized Trump during the campaign. Trump went on to reject
Romney. Perhaps that was the plan all along.
This
year Trump is operating with a different playbook. He has ventured out
in public only occasionally, such as for a trip to Washington to meet
with President Joe Biden at the White House and to visit Capitol Hill.
Both Trump and Biden played their parts — enforced cordiality — at what
could only have been an awkward encounter.
Trump speaks at a House GOP conference in Washington on Wednesday. (Alex Brandon/AP)
Otherwise, the president-elect has mostly been sequestered at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida with aides and advisers, populating his administration
by press release rather than public events. He is moving at a what
seems a record pace to fill some of the biggest jobs in the
administration — secretaries of state and defense, as well as attorney
general — along with others that seem more random to everyone but
perhaps Trump, like the announcement of a new U.S. attorney for the
Southern District of New York.
He has won praise for some of his choices — Sen. Marco Rubio
(Florida) as his nominee for secretary of state and Rep. Mike Waltz
(Florida) as national security adviser. His choice of Rep. Elise
Stefanik (New York), one of his most loyal advocates, for United Nations
ambassador was cheered many in the GOP.
Others have brought bewilderment and opposition.
Is he serious about wanting Matt Gaetz, perhaps the least liked member
of the House and a renegade politician who had been under a House Ethics
Committee investigation for alleged sexual misconduct and illegal drug
use, as attorney general?
Does he really want Pete Hegseth,
a Fox News host with no governmental experience, to run one of the
biggest and most critical parts of government, the Pentagon? Hegseth’s
nomination has become clouded by a report that police investigated an allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman in a hotel in Monterey, California, in 2017.
Is Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman-turned-Trump acolyte whose past comments about Russia
and about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have raised questions about
her loyalty to U.S. national security, the best person to oversee the
entire intelligence apparatus of the government? Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, the right choice to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services?
There’s
always been this issue about Trump. Should he be taken seriously but
not literally, literally but not seriously, or both literally and
seriously? At this point, after the campaign he waged, after sweeping
all seven battleground states and winning the popular vote, it seems
that taking him literally and seriously is the right way to view what’s
happened to date.
President
Joe Biden shakes hands with Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office
at the White House on Wednesday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Trump
appears intent on making good on what he pledged as a candidate. He is
going after what he calls “the deep state,” the vast federal bureaucracy
that he saw as resisting his wishes during his first term. He is
determined to have his way with the Pentagon brass, after several
generals who served in his first administration turned on him. And he
appears ready to go after those in the legal system who he feels went
after him. Trump demands loyalty and in his early appointments is
rewarding loyalty. That makes this coming administration far different
from his first one.
Eight
years ago, he said he intended to “drain the swamp.” He made little
progress. Now he is trying again, with more focus. Some of his
appointments — Gaetz, Gabbard and Kennedy among them — is likely to have
a chilling effect on civil servants, perhaps driving out some employees
even before he tries to make his own cuts. That’s one brutal way to
shrink the government.
His
decision to put billionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy,
who as a candidate for president proposed huge cuts in government
personnel, in charge of a commission to slash the size of government is
another difference from eight years ago. Their ambitions are beyond
large — and beyond what anyone who took on this issue in the past had
accomplished. The first time around, Trump had no plan, nor did he have
enough willing partners. This time, his loyalists will do their best to
carry out his orders.
Tulsi Gabbard speaks at a Trump campaign rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Oct. 22. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
He
is also filling the Justice Department with true loyalists, and not
just Gaetz. He made clear in his campaign that he wants to clean house
there and some of his supporters want retribution against those who
brought charges against Trump during the past four years. The
president-elect has complained about a weaponized Justice Department
under Biden and now seems ready to weaponize the department against his
adversaries. Trump named his own criminal defense attorneys
to fill the department’s No. 2 and No. 3 roles, tapping Todd Blanche as
deputy attorney general and Emil Bove as principal associate deputy
attorney general.
Rubio
has developed expertise as a senator to become the nation’s chief
diplomat, but the selections of Gabbard and Hegseth have alarmed many in
the national security and foreign policy community, in part because
they lack the kind of experience normally assumed necessary for such big
management jobs but also because what they have said in the past seem
more polemical than thoughtful. Decisions about support for Ukraine in
its war with Russia, for Israel in its war against Hamas and Hezbollah
and its conflicts with Iran, about China and Taiwan will be key tests
ahead.
Trump’s appointment of South Dakota Gov.
Kristi L. Noem to head the Department of Homeland Security, of Tom
Homan, a former ICE director, as his “border czar” and of Stephen Miller
as White House deputy chief of staff for policy signaled that his call
for mass deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants was not
idle talk. That promise is fraught with potential problems and the
prospect of huge disruptions — to families, communities and the economy.
In making early personnel choices, Trump let it be known that he
intends to make a concerted start.
Trump
has put the Senate, which will now be in Republican hands under the new
leadership of Sen. John Thune (South Dakota), on notice. He would like
to steamroll his nominees past the normal Senate confirmation process by
using recess appointments. The Senate could resist and in doing
so maintain its independence as a part of a coequal branch of
government. But just how independent will senators be?
Robert
F. Kennedy Jr., right, talks with Matt Gaetz and his wife, Ginger
Luckey Gaetz, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on Thursday. (Saul
Martinez for The Washington Post)
There
appears to be serious opposition in the Senate to Gaetz’s nomination,
which is colored by the existence of the House Ethics Committee
investigation. Some senators want the committee’s report made available
ahead of any confirmation hearings. House Speaker Mike Johnson
(Louisiana) opposes the release of a report about a former member as setting “a terrible precedent.”
Beyond Gaetz, the question is whether many Republican senators will stand up in opposition to Trump’s other controversial nominees. And if they do, what kind of retribution might Trump seek in return?
Despite
questions about Hegseth’s qualifications to run the Defense Department,
Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), who lost to Thune in his bid to become the
new Senate Republican leader, said Friday he stands ready to help
Hegseth win confirmation. “The Pentagon needs shaking up,” he wrote on
X. “The status quo is dangerous.”
Trump
won the election on a promise again to try to shake up the status quo.
Many voters bought it. The president-elect is gambling that those who
voted for him were prepared for the amount of disruption that his early
nominations suggest is coming.