Eight years ago I was counting medals and military decorations. Today - the tattoos. In addition to the time difference, this change is also determined by personnel: then Donald Trump's Secretary of Defense nominee was General James Mattis, today - the co-host of Fox & Friends and military veteran Pete Hegseth.
Eight years later, things are somewhat extravagant: one of the darlings of Russian propaganda and marijuana users, Tulsi Gabbard, has been nominated to be the director of US national intelligence (as such, her main function will be to brief the president on the intelligence from 18 different services, some of which are the CIA and the NSA). Another former Democrat, a fan of conspiracy theories and the legalization of the joint, Robert Kennedy Jr., is the nominee for the head of health and humanitarian affairs. Matt Goetz, who has two years of experience as a lawyer, is the nominee for Attorney General and Secretary of Justice.
Each one of these people does not have a professional and managerial biography that corresponds to the position in which Donald Trump wants to "place". But each has a personal merit to the 47th president: Tulsi Gabbard led support for Trump among Democrats disenchanted with progressive liberalism, Kennedy Jr. withdrew his presidential bid and endorsed the Republican, and Goetz was Trump's long arm among House Republicans of the representatives (with the help of which aid to Ukraine was delayed for several months, and the crisis with the pressure of illegal immigrants along the border with Mexico, otherwise the work of the weak administration of Joe Biden, extended for conjunctural reasons serving Trump's presidential candidacy).
But not all of Donald Trump's nominations seem like characters that have sprung from the Republican's colorful and colorful inner world. The nominee for Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has already accumulated considerable experience on the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees, and the incoming National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz, also has experience, either at the Pentagon or on the Armed Services Committees. the foreign and intelligence affairs of the House of Representatives. Both, however, are met with loud suspicion in MAGA circles as former neoconservatives who served the "deep state". For this reason, Candace Owens fluttered cheerfully these days on the Alex Jones podcast, when Trump specifically emphasized that Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley will not participate in the Republican administration being constructed.
But regardless of whether or not they possess the relevant professional arguments for the positions they will apply for (if advisers in the White House do not need Senate approval, then those who will occupy positions in the executive branch must obtain one in The upper house of Congress), the personnel selection of Donald Trump rests on several criteria.
The first is to reflect the political priorities of the 47th president and, in that sense, to reflect Trump's ideological aura.
The internal political ones concern ensuring security along the southern border with Mexico and the possible start of the process of deportation of illegal immigrants. Hence, the nominations of Kristy Noem for Secretary of Homeland Security and Tom Homan as Director of Border Affairs are natural and logical. While there is still no proposal for Treasury Secretary (and the personnel battle there is intense, after Elon Musk also tried to pressure Trump with a proposal of his own), it is also reasonable to expect that the head of this unit will have to to be like-minded to the 47th president on policies to reduce regulations, reduce taxes (individual and corporate) and introduce tariffs.
Trump's foreign policy priorities are related to adapting Washington's diplomacy and security policy to China's geopolitical rise in the Indo-Pacific. This is a shared understanding of both Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, in the name of which both had to de-Ukrainize their own views, modifying them in sync with Trump's understandings of the war in Europe. For example, as a senator this year, Rubio twice voted against support for Ukraine, and Waltz described the Biden administration's decision to allow Ukrainian armed forces to use long-range ATACMS missiles against targets on Russian territory as "another rung on the ladder of the escalation". Both Rubio and Waltz are (already) critics of continued US military support for Ukraine.
The second leading criteria in Trump's personnel selection is loyalty. That is, the future head of the White House prefers to surround himself with listening and faithful people, regardless of whether they are padded with a professional resume or do not possess one corresponding to the positions for which they are applying. That probably answers the question of why the 47th president doesn't mind making impromptu personnel choices -- when the legitimacy of the next, say, Justice Secretary derives from the president's will, not the industry's respectability or function of his own. expertise in the department, then the only reason for Matt Goetz's political survival will be in the White House. That's why even today we don't see names like Jeff Sessions, James Mattis and Herbert McMaster - these are people who, based on their proven professional experience and authority, weigh in on their place. And Trump does not need people who weigh in on the place. If it is possible for the latter to have a positive dimension, it will consist in the fact that his incoming administration will probably not have the kind of personnel turnover and chaos that was present in the Republican's first term. The negative meaning, however, is much more easily predictable: we all know what happens to politicians who only listen to what they want to hear.
Of course, Donald Trump just won the presidential election and he has the right to choose the people with whom to push his domestic and foreign policies. But his victory cannot serve as an alibi or excuse for compromising the functions of "checks and balances" of the democratic political system (unfortunately, often these properties of democracy to carry out checks and balances, including due to the separation of powers, receive the interpretation "deep state". But in the 90s of the last century, not the "deep state" screwed up two nominations for Bill Clinton's Attorney General, and the own negligence of the candidates in question, who hired illegal immigrants as babysitters). In this sense, if Donald Trump is the voice of the ordinary American citizen who cares about his democracy, he should not try to circumvent the functions of the Senate (to hear and approve his nominations) and the duties of the FBI (to investigate those same candidates). , as Barack Obama tried to trick some time ago.
Anyway, the most the FBI can find is another tattoo on Pete Hegseth's body. And one of those we know sits proudly on the chest of the Pentagon chief nominee: the Jerusalem Cross of the Crusaders. Of course, Christianity does not take kindly to stigmatization (the body is a temple for the Holy Spirit, we read in the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians). If you tattoo yourself with a cross, it does not mitigate, but increases the absurdity. As is the political abuse of Christianity. But if nothing else, trumpeters are counted by their tattoos.