Read this before you flip out on Trump's cabinet

Is it farce or Make Ivy League Great Again?

Deserve’s got nothing to do with it. Donald Trump didn’t deserve to be elected. Hell, he didn’t even deserve to run again. But as our accountants wrote in their notes to explain the 60 pizzas with no receipt to the IRS auditor: it is what it is. I know many of our readers here are reflexively opposed to whatever Trump 2.0 is going to do. It’s Old Yellowstain at the Conn during a typhoon, and he’s going to founder the ship. I get it. But we’re on that ship, so I owe it to you to give you the rundown without the partisan glasses. It might not be worth freaking out just yet, but hey, there’s plenty of time in the next four years for that.

Pete Hegseth. Photo credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

So, about Trump’s cabinet picks. Specifically, about Pete Hegseth. Let me tell you something, though many on Capitol Hill and in the halls of the Pentagon have never heard of the guy outside Fox News, he’s not an insane pick. Let’s look at the last five people to serve as Secretary of Defense. Two of them graduated from West Point, one from George Washington University, and one—Gen. James Mattis—from Central Washington University and the National War College. Two were generals, one was a Boeing executive, and Christopher Miller was a career Army officer, followed by a series of contractor and DOD positions, climbing that ladder.

What they all had in common was climbing that ladder: working within the cloistered defense iron triangle of military services, DOD leadership, and contractors. What we got was, as Rip Torn’s character said in “Men in Black,”: everything we have come to expect from years of government training.

Pete Hegseth graduated from Princeton University, and got his Masters in Public Policy from Harvard. At Princeton, he played college basketball. He served as a major in the Army National Guard, and fought in both Afghanistan and Iraq, winning two Bronze Star awards. He has worked at Bear Stearns, followed by stints at various conservative think tanks, PACs and advocacy groups. No, he is not a Pentagon insider. No, he has not been in the room when major decisions or crises have arisen. No, he has not commanded large units or had a big staff under him. No, he has not plied the waters in the halls of Congress or Capitol Hill.

Yes, Hegseth is going to have a hell of a hard time in confirmation hearings. But Hegseth is the ringer. He’s the guy with all the checkboxes outside being a government creature. He could suck all the air out of the room for Trump’s cabinet, while he has the background, and likely the chops, to give cogent, intelligent, and snappy answers. His television personality time has given him the ability to look good while thinking on his feet, like all network talking heads.

If I were on the Senate Armed Services Committee, if Hegseth comports himself well during the hearings, I’d say give the guy a chance.

And meanwhile, the rest of Trump’s picks might not garner so much attention, but some of them are in the “Make Ivy League Great Again” club.

Tom Homan, Trump’s new border czar, served as acting director of ICE in 2017 through 2018. We don’t know what specific powers the “czar” will have, working under the DHS secretary, but we do know Homan can hit the ground running. Under Barack Obama, Homan was appointed as the ICE official in charge of enforcement and removal operations. Before that, he was a Border Patrol agent, moving up through the ranks since 1984. Homan knows the system from the inside. Now, if you don’t like Trump’s promise of mass deportation, you don’t want Homan to be the border czar. But not because Homan isn’t qualified; more because he is extremely qualified to carry out Trump’s promise.

Homan’s designated boss would be Kristi Noem, who is nominated to run the Department of Homeland Security. Noem is the governor of South Dakota. She went to college at South Dakota State University (her educational career is, let’s say, not traditional). In 2006, Noem won a seat in the House of Representatives, and kept it until she successfully ran for governor in 2018. Noem is an example of a successful politician and a fairly effective governor. The combination of Homan and Noem in Capitol Hill would likely be effective, but Democrats will scream and cry that both of them are way too MAGA. Again, the objection is not in the person, but in the policy. I got news for everyone who opposes the policy: it is what it is. Whether it’s Noem and Homan or some other nominees, or Trump himself, we’re getting the policies.

At the CIA, we’ll have John Ratcliffe, a Trump supporter, as all the nominees are. Ratcliffe is a lawyer who attended Notre Dame and got his law degree from SMU. He served in Congress since 2015, and then served as Trump’s Director of National Intelligence from 2020 through the end of the term. I personally had not heard of any scandals involving him, but in 2019 Trump withdrew Ratcliffe’s nomination as DNI, only to try again in 2020. Sen. John Cornyn, who is in the running for Majority Leader, replacing Mitch McConnell, supported Ratcliffe. It’s likely he’ll sail through confirmation hearings with little opposition.

For U.N. Ambassador, it’s Elise Stefanik, the bane of Harvard University, which is also her alma mater. It was under Stefanik’s questioning the presidents of Harvard and Yale wilted into word-salad explanations of how Hamas-loving protesters were okay but other speech wasn’t free. I think she’s a good pick for the hive of hypocrites at Turtle Bay. She might not be as forceful as Nikki Haley, who I really liked, but Stefanik will do fine and I expect will be confirmed without any drama.

Again, you might oppose Stefanik on the basis of her listening to her boss, Trump, on issues like Israel and Ukraine, but that’s literally the job of the U.N. ambassador, to do the president’s bidding. If not Stefanik, would you rather have Steve Bannon or Tucker Carlson?

Lee Zeldin is a wild card; he’s named to run EPA. Zeldin is a New York lawyer, who served in the Army Reserve (through ROTC), and worked his way from the New York state legislature to Congress in the state’s 1st district in 2014. As far as anyone knows, Zeldin knows nothing about the EPA, or environmental issues. He did run, unsuccessfully, for governor of New York in 2022. I don’t know how much political favor Zeldin has in the Senate, but heading the EPA isn’t exactly Secretary of State or Attorney General. I don’t see why the Senate would not give the guy a chance.

We still don’t know a whole slate of cabinet positions, because Trump has not named them: Attorney General, Secretary of State, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, HHS, HUD, Transportation, Energy, Education, and Veterans Affairs.

One position that has been named, and to me, is the most Kafkaesque, Orwellian, and Monty Python appointment rolled into one, is where Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will serve: the Department of Government Efficiency: DOGE. If you aren’t a connoisseur of memes, you might not know that Doge is the mack daddy of them all (read about it in the link). Only Musk could have the cojones to name a government agency after a dog meme.

I’ve said it before that one of the more amusing elements of a Trump 2.0 would be Elon Musk running through the halls of Washington D.C. yelling “delete! delete! delete!” Now we get to see it happen. My bet is that the warm relationship between Trump and Musk will dissolve sometime in the first year, and we will again see the once and future president’s invitation to X grow cold. Or maybe not.

Finally, a name we haven’t seen yet in an actual government position: RFK Jr. I am thankful for that. I did hear that Kennedy at HHS is a non-starter. Good. The further away from actual health policy this worm-brained nut case is the better. I hope he’s consigned to some honorary position where he can spout his conspiracy garbage and have no effect on real things in the world. Or even better: to nothing at all, or the Secretary of Funny Walks.

Again, we might not like the policies of the Trump 2.0 team. But we’re getting the policies whether we like them or not. And some of the policies are not awful, if done right. So far, so good. Or at least, we can die laughing.

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