Trump’s Cabinet Picks and the State of the Union
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to clean up the White House with his recent set of proposed cabinet appointments. In the place of previous political appointments comes a group of people breaking diversity records—if the diversity in question relates to various business interests they might be loyal to. The state of the union may seem more fragmented than ever, and yet the wedding ceremony between country and leader draws ever closer. On January 20th, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as President of the United States with a fresh set of cabinet appointments. Soon afterwards, he’ll be looking to reward his wedding party.
Provided the Senate approves them, the incoming Trump cabinet will be a team of ‘yes-men’, many of whom come from corporate backgrounds rather than political ones. However, this could make for an uneasy union between Trump and his electorate, particularly amidst an election victory that was handed to him by blue-collar working-class voters. The 45th and soon-to-be 47th President has always posited himself as an outsider and underdog—yet this is someone born into wealth, accustomed to power, and whose net worth according to Forbes exceeds $5.6 billion. Far from a working-class hero, the US has just re-elected one of the richest men in the world.
From Cabinet Secretaries to CEOs
The President-elect’s wealth is just one example of the disconnect between Trump the symbol and Trump the man. The current perception of the former US Apprentice host as a Washington outsider has trickled down like Reaganomics, even convincing fellow businessmen, such as Vivek Ramaswamy, that Trump is a maverick of a conservative politician rather than a political actor who uses tricks from the same old playbook. Yet Trump is no maverick. Both he and others have played this game before.
The Pew Research Centre has noted that Trump’s first cabinet was incredibly business-heavy, with around one-third of appointees having no prior experience in either elected public office or high military rank. Curiously, this is not too dissimilar to Ronald Reagan’s first cabinet, where 31% of department heads were formerly corporate executives. Both Reagan and Trump were celebrities-turned-politicians who succeeded in their respective presidential campaigns, able to win over previously partisan Democratic voters through rhetoric that painted the government as the problem, not the solution.
Trump is another manifestation of this phenomenon. His approach to cabinet selection, though unconventional, is not unheard of. His first cabinet followed a broader anti-establishment trend that has historically been favoured by Republicans more than Democrats. The first President to appoint a cabinet secretary who had not previously held public office was Ulysses S. Grant in 1869. Since then, a total of seven Republican cabinets—compared to two Democratic cabinets—have had corporate executives head at least 20% of departments. Notably, one of these two Democrat cabinet exceptions included the first Obama cabinet. 20% of Obama’s appointed executives lacked public sector experience—the highest for a Democratic President since Franklin D. Roosevelt. This suggests Trump is a symptom of, rather than an architect of, a broader shift towards corporate cabinet appointments. Nonetheless, he seems keener on corporate cabinet appointments than previous administrations, particularly considering the novelty of not just his cabinet picks, but indeed the very departments which they are set to head.
Trump’s Cabinet takes Something Old, and Something New…
If the President-elect of the United States has promised his voters a honeymoon, then the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is the ‘something new’ that was brought to the wedding ceremony. Headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, DOGE is a proposed presidential advisory committee tasked with restructuring the US federal government to increase government efficiency, inspired by Javier Milei’s governmental reforms in Argentina. This provides these corporate executives with a senior role in the Trump administration by leading a body which is not a federal executive department. Consequently, Trump will be able to bypass the necessary approval from Congress by having DOGE operate as an advisory board. However, members of Presidential advisory boards do not often have as much influence as Musk and Ramaswamy have. They especially do not sit in on calls with foreign leaders, as Musk did during Trump’s first call as President-elect to President Zelenskyy of Ukraine.
Again, Trump is not an entirely new phenomenon. Indeed, one of his proposed cabinet appointments—Marco Rubio as Secretary of State—is surprisingly unremarkable and, dare I say, sensible. Senior officials in the UN and NATO have noted that though they disagree with many of Rubio’s stances and statements, they have at least fallen within the normal lines of political disagreement. This is in contrast with Trump, whose ramblings on Truth Social contemplate the reacquisition of the Panama Canal and the annexation of Canada. In picking Rubio, Trump has at least some regard for diplomacy, with Rubio representing the last breaths of a dying order in which normality and tradition are lauded. Though Rubio seems like a sound appointment, this may only be because Trump’s other picks—such as RFK Jr. for the Department of Health, and Tulsi Gabbard as Director for National Intelligence—have been so utterly…bizarre. The former wants to remove fluoride from drinking water, despite its overwhelming benefits and lack of evidence to suggest it harms health. The latter has ties with Russia, compromising the potential safety of intelligence sharing between the US and its European allies.
Rubio is no ordinary politician, however. A former Trump rival in the 2016 Republican primaries, Rubio seemed to have undertaken a Damascene conversion following his loss in Florida. Thereafter, he appeared to believe Trump to be the superior Republican candidate sent to defeat the evil ‘Wicked Witch of the East Coast‘, Hillary Clinton. Just like Nikki Haley and JD Vance—both former Trump critics themselves—Rubio has allegedly danced to the same tune in exchange for a seat at Trump’s table. He and Vance played their cards right, with both set to be high fliers not just in the incoming administration, but as heirs-apparent to the MAGA throne. Haley, on the other hand, now hosts a podcast. There are, therefore, two endings for boot-lickers. Either you end up tasting the floor of the White House… or your tongue just tastes of the boot.
Critics of this argument may be keen to point out that Kamala Harris, Vice President to Joe Biden, was a staunch critic of him during the 2020 Democratic primaries. Yet Harris never questioned Biden’s suitability for office or his authoritarian tendencies as Rubio, Vance, and Haley all did of Trump. Harris merely disagreed with Biden on matters of policy. Such disagreements on policy seem to no longer be permitted given these sharp changes of opinion. Indeed, morality seems to go even further out the window if it ensures loyalty at the policy level.
A Shotgun Marriage Makes an Uneasy Union
Matt Gaetz’s previous consideration by Trump as Attorney General appears to be an indication of how far ethical standards are being allowed to stoop if it ensures the presence of a yes-man. It suggests that Trump is not attempting to compromise but is rather doubling down on his anti-establishmentarianism. Gaetz was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegations relating to drug use and sexual assault. Furthermore, a recently published report found evidence that he had sexual contact with a 17-year-old girl. Trump was likely aware of these allegations and yet despite them—he opted against picking a moderate. Instead, Trump chose perhaps the most controversial member of Congress to be his Attorney General, in a display of sheer arrogance and defiance of the status quo.
Gaetz’s replacement as nominee for Attorney General, Pam Bondi, is considered more ethically palatable. Nonetheless, Bondi perpetuated the baseless myth that Biden stole the 2020 Presidential Election. Historically, Attorney Generals were seen as being above politics. Bill Clinton’s Attorney General, Janet Reno, was famously criticised for refusing to investigate accusations relating to the former Arkansas Governor’s alleged sexual harassment of Paula Jones. In so doing, Reno was seen to have politicised the office. By appointing loyalists, Trump is following in these same footsteps—though he is accelerating their pace and deepening their impression. But this approach didn’t emerge from a vacuum. To quote Trump’s rival in this election campaign: “Everything is in context.”
Trump’s inauguration will be a wedding with little love and little compromise. He won the popular vote by a relatively low margin, yet is bringing in hardliners who have expressed support for the implementation of swathes of unconstitutional reforms through Project 2025, though Trump himself has distanced himself from this initiative. In private, Trump’s political allies are no great fans of him personally either. His prospective cabinet enjoys the power that Trump provides them, but one need only look at the statements made by Trump’s employees from previous administrations to see how little love there is likely to be between him and his top team.
In a marriage of little love, there is also little hope for resolution. Already, fractures are beginning to emerge among the wedding party. Musk’s growing deference to Trump is reportedly a source of tension for the President-elect’s team, who fear that Musk’s influence limits their access to him. Furthermore, a policy disagreement on whether foreign workers should be given visas to work in tech companies risks isolating Trump and Musk from their more ideologically stringent working-class base, who fail to see the merits of immigration at any level.
Ultimately, this is what makes Trump’s appointments so ironic. The narrative is to “drain the swamp”, but the issue with swamp-dwellers is that removing them does not change the fact that the swamp itself is a swamp. Whatever replaces them will by necessity be a swamp-dwelling creature too. One of the reasons attributed to Trump’s loss in the 2020 election is because he was no longer the outsider—he was the swamp. The only reason Trump was able to come back and win the 2024 election was that he regained this position of being the outsider, crying “I object! I object!” ever since the 2020 election in the hopes that he could once again catch the bouquet and have his own wedding day again. But, if Trump fails to deliver on his promises, he and his cabinet will become the swamp too. It may only be a matter of time before the message that he has instilled in his supporters will come back and bite him. If Trump fails them, they will vote to drain the swamp again. This time, that will mean taking MAGA Republicans with it.