November 14, 2024 - 10:00am
Donald Trump is surprising even his most ardent fans. The President-elect’s nomination of Rep. Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general managed to catch the MAGA faithful off guard on Wednesday afternoon. One senior House GOP staffer told UnHerd the reaction was “Veep-ish” when asked about the mood behind the scenes.
Gaetz is liked by Trump’s hardcore base but much less popular in DC — not just with the establishment, but also with MAGA-aligned members of Congress. This is more for personal reasons than ones related to policy, which will come as no surprise to those who’ve followed his rapid ascent to the top of the conservative movement. Despite Gaetz’s heterodox tendencies, the Congressman carries the baggage of an ongoing House ethics investigation — which he says is politically motivated, but was at the very least brought about by his penchant for hard partying.
Trump’s roster of deputies is shaping up to be just as weird as the eclectic coalition that delivered him the presidency. It’s true that his national security picks are, as a whole, more hawkish than most of the GOP base at this point, but Trump followed up his nomination of Marco Rubio as secretary of state by picking Tulsi Gabbard as his director of national intelligence. While Pete Hegseth’s foreign policy may have evolved in the years following his deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, he’s also likely to seek major structural reforms that will infuriate the Pentagon establishment. They may not be successful, but if he’s confirmed they’ll surely be on the table.
Does Trump actually think Matt Gaetz can survive a confirmation? Is the plan to sneak him into the cabinet with a recess appointment, leave him as an acting AG without formal confirmation, or use a fight he’ll inevitably lose for political purposes? The same questions could be asked about his nominations of Hegseth and Gabbard, both of whom will undoubtedly face uphill confirmation battles.
So Trump kept Elon Musk out of it. On Tuesday night, Trump announced that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would head up a new Department of Government Efficiency — dubbed DOGE for the memes — that will operate outside the Government while collaborating with the White House and Office of Management and Budget. While the specifics of the arrangement are still unknown, this allows both men — but especially Musk — to keep their business interests entirely intact and skirt any regulation meant to crack down on conflicts of interest.
Musk, for example, can maintain his work as the head of the world’s most consequential companies — some of which are major defence contractors and recipients of Government subsidies — while potentially recommending big cuts that advance his own bottom line and hurt his competitors. On the other hand, it’s likely that his ability to actually make cuts will only come in the form of recommendations without the weight of formal power. Trump pitched himself back in 2016 as the right man for the presidency in part because he’d partaken in the corrupt system, and it’s possible Musk can make a similar argument.
DOGE sounds a bit like MAGA McKinsey, a redundant effort to root out redundancy, but the federal government is in desperate need of streamlining, so Musk and Ramaswamy will have plenty to work with on that front. Trump’s blizzard of major personnel decisions has been predictably eclectic, but with Gabbard really the only major sceptic of the foreign policy establishment and Musk and Ramaswamy pushed to the outside, the influence of Donald Trump Jr, Tucker Carlson, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr seems less powerful than it might have been.
One source with knowledge of the transition told me that Trumpworld “didn’t entirely trust” Gabbard ahead of her nomination. The outcome of this intense push and pull, giving one group a little to take from another, could be what Trump ultimately wants: a close circle full of significant disagreement that, as he sees it, is like iron sharpening iron. Or, then again, it could just be a mess.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeAt one level this feels like it is being played for the entertainment value – put in people to oversee departments that have targeted those individuals in the past, and see what happens, with the expectation of some form of explosion.
In practice, changing things will be much more about culture than browbeating or replacing figureheads. Public servants know full well how to work-to-rule, stick to the letter of the rule, add delays, tie things up via meetings and reports, and how to leak against their leaders if they are asked to implement policies they don’t believe in. And there are built-in restrictions on hiring, firing and closing departments and safety in numbers. So it’s not like a private company with a profit motive and clear outcome-driven targets where employees are fully committed and motivated to delivery the mission statement.
Wrestling the Washington interagency consensus will need very different thinking. Not least because Congress and Senate like pork barrels, and spending money wins more votes than making cuts and making Federal agencies unhappy.
That means trying new stuff. Things like red versus blue teams. Bonuses for delivering within budget. Increased levels of responsibility and accountability (tied to those bonuses). More out-of-DC involvement. And generally more engineers and fewer lawyers (for instance a limitation on the number of individuals with a law degree employed in non-legal jobs). I actually have no idea what would actually work, but just firing and yelling at people isn’t likely to be it.
Vivek seems to think you can just get rid of a lot of people through executive order. With Gaetz as AG, they’re ready for the legal battles too.
He’s wrong.
No great surprise there. Maybe he’s getting legal advice from Gaetz.
So nice to see you back trolling, Champagne.
I might crack a bottle myself, in your honour. Santé!
Surely – surely – the common element among Trump’s new appointees that will strike the biggest chord with the American public is their political non-conformity. Whether or not this new effort towards swamp-draining will be an a measurable success remains to be seen but I would imagine an electorate sick of years of gaslighting and neglect will lap it up.
The public perception of their efforts (as opposed to their actual achievements) could see Trump’s coalition maintaining their popular standing all the way through to a 2028 Republican presidency, if they’re smart about it. We’ll see!
Love Hegseth as the Secretary of Defence!! The guy served on the front lines, has all the educational credentials and he HATES what has happened to the U.S. military. He just wrote a book called the War on Warriors. A lot of generals are very nervous right now. Any general that supports all the DEI and CRT crap that has infected the military will be given the boot. The swamp will hate Hegseth. The regime media will hate Hegseth. Soldiers on the front line will love Hegseth.
Gabbard is great as well. The intelligence community will hate her too. She was actually put on the terrorist watch list, which is hysterical. So she knows intimately how effed up the intelligence community is. The Dems actually loved her too, rising to chair of the Democratic National Committee shortly after arriving in Washington. No one will tell Gabbard what to do. She’s fiercely independent so Trump might grow to hate the pick too.
“No one will tell Gabbard what to do. She’s fiercely independent so Trump might grow to hate the pick too.”
That’s the challenge for all these picks for senior appointments in the Trump administration: they are expected to be effective, but they daren’t outshine Trump.
Unbelievable as it may seem, Ms. Gabbard was on the terrorist watchlist!
https://erikhildinger.substack.com/p/tulsi-gabbard-terrorist
“No one will tell Gabbard what to do.”
Except Putin obviously!
Still banging the Clinton playbook 8 years later, are we? Gabbard is of the opinion that if America wasn’t so belligerent in its efforts to exert its power, Russia would never have felt threatened enough to launch a war and invade Ukraine. Now, we could argue the merits of whether there ever was an actual threat or otherwise until the cows come home – but it doesn’t change the fact that the threat of Ukraine joining Nato gave Putin the justification he needed to launch his war and now 20% of Ukraine has been reduced to rubble, is under Russian control, and 1m+ killed/wounded. Understanding the enemy does not make one their puppet.
Dave Smith recently made an interesting comparison. Anyone who said, in the early 2000s, that Saddam Hussein DIDN’T have WMDs, that he WASN’T involved in 9/11 would have been called a Hussein sympathizer, a puppet, just as Tulsi is called a Putin sympathizer for understanding the obvious nuance of our most recent proxy war against Russia.
You can already see the movement to end the war on the part of Zalensky, Putin, Germany, and NATO, just because Biden, Harris, Bolton, Cheney, and the rest of the neocons are on the way out.
I hope you remember where you stood on this issue—don’t memory hole it, you might learn something.
Jimbo, no surprise that you think a Fox News host has the chops to run the Department of Defense. No doubt you thought it was just dandy when your boy Petey was campaigning to get Trump to pardon the convicted child killers too. The ones whose own units were disgusted by.
As ever you slavishly follow your orange god’s stupidity.
You do know your anger is fueling my schadenfraude? It’s glorious.
Or, then again, it could just be a mess.
Pete Buttigieg. Alejandro Mayorkas. Heaven forbid Trump’s cabinet is “a mess”.
All those people with bullsh!t jobs will hate the picks.
I look forward to hearing the Washington Blob’s squealing complaints and excuses. We need the same the other side of the pond.
Rather a waste of time, this article. What does “penchant for hard partying” mean? Is this single white woman with a cat code for “he’s way too masculine?”
Emily’s pretty cool, actually.
I don’t doubt it, but sometimes that’s the problem.
I think in this case it means “having sex with underage girls”. Otherwise known as statutory rape.
Great pick for the Andrew Tate crowd who are very well represented here!
Seems like a replay of the leftist accusations against Trump that caused him to lose the presidential election and both houses of Congress this month
https://x.com/stephenhilton23/status/1854320812272034154
The fact that so many people are willing to overlook Trump’s sexual assaults is just another indicator of the intellectual and moral sickness afflicting the United States.
Of course you guys stick up for rapists – I would expect nothing less.
Amusing to see the supposedly devoutly Christian speaker of the house now debasing himself by trying to block the publishing of the report on Gaetz’s crimes. There really is nothing you peopel won’t do to debase yourselves to satisfy a failed real estate developer. Incredible!
At least Trump has learned one lesson from his first term: you have to appoint loyalists to top positions or they’ll undermine you.
Amid all this drama, however, I sincerely hope Trump quickly appoints lower-ranking people who are competent and know how to get things done. If Trump’s second administration is all bluster and no results, that’s on him and he can’t blame the Dems.
I wonder how Vance will survive in the Trump white house? He’s no wallflower like Pence, but he daren’t outshine his boss. Trump VP is actually a very dangerous position for his future political career.
I wouldn’t describe Rubio as a “loyalist” particularly, in that he has a mind of his own. I wonder how long he will last. Vance will be fine, because he is the only person in the administration that Trump can’t fire. Plus, he is “a heartbeat away from the Presidency”, and must like the odds of getting the top job, given that Trump is an obese man in his late 70s.
I am thinking Trump is actually going to step back a little and let his people run wild. He’s climbed the mountain, conquered his foes and got the prize. Now he might just sit back and enjoy the churn as his people tear down all the dis-functional bureaucracy the has evolved over the last 60 years. Then, after all the chaos is done, we can start to rebuild.
“Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would head up a new Department of Government Efficiency — dubbed DOGE for the memes — that will operate outside the Government … this allows both men — but especially Musk — to keep their business interests entirely intact and skirt any regulation meant to crack down on conflicts of interest.”
Thanks for the explanation. I wondered why Ramaswamy, especially, accepted this somewhat peripheral job. He strikes me as very smart and calculating. I wonder what he hopes to gain from this job because it has the potential to make him appear irrelevant.
Appointing loyalists who have somewhat diverse views on everything from Ukraine to China, corporate oligopolies to tech mergers could mean all ideas are genuinely on the table.
In his position Trump is the final arbiter with a loyal court, until the infighting begins or the failures pile up.
He also needs some decent implementers of programmes and priorities, from the lower ranked appointments, not just good ideas from the top.
But compared to cross dressing Admirals and Nuclear inspectors with a penchant for stealing women’s luggage, this is quite a normal start tbh.
No surprise that a buffoon like Trump picks a load of clowns to fill his joke cabinet!
A mentally ill Moscow stooge, a Fox News host who supports murderers and neo-nazis and a child rapist. Even I didn’t think Trump could mess it up so badly so fast!
Is it ongoing?