Old Turkish proverb: “If a clown goes into a palace, the clown does not become king; the palace becomes a circus.”
Donald Trump returns to the White House on Jan. 21. Coming in with him is a whole busload of clowns. The seat of American executive power could become a large circus – or a nuthouse.
The returning US president does not have a reputation for subtlety or for finesse. He operates like a jackhammer does.
The past week, he was busy announcing his nominations for senior positions in his recycled administration. The last one announced, as of this writing, is the nomination of a fracker to be secretary of Energy. This is complemented by the appointment of climate change denier Lee Zeldin to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Drill, Baby, drill indeed.
In making his appointments, Trump ignored the usual practice of requesting the FBI to vet his people. He simply does not trust the agency. Nor does he want to be bogged down by bureaucratic procedures.
He does not even want to deal with the Senate’s confirmation process. He asked his people in the US Congress to put the institution on recess so that his appointments will not have to be heard by the legislators.
The peril of not conducting proper vetting on his nominees was made clear immediately. His nominee for secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, a Fox News broadcaster who served several tours of duty as a combat soldier, was found to have paid to settle a sexual assault complaint. The nominee represents the Christian Right constituency.
The most shocking of Trump’s nominees is Matt Gaetz. The Republican rabble-rouser was chosen to head the Department of Justice. He resigned his congressional seat last week in time to avert the release of a possibly damaging ethics committee report involving child sex trafficking.
That report could still be made public. There is rising demand, including from staunch Republican legislators, for the report to be released. Even if the timid House Speaker Mike Johnson tries to suppress the report, the contents may be leaked anyway.
As opposition to the appointment of Gaetz builds, it is likely Trump will double down on his nominee. That is simply his operational code. That is the way he behaves.
Another controversial nominee is Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who shifted to the Republican Party. She was a harsh critic of the intelligence agencies. Trump is appointing her director of National Intelligence, meaning she will be coordinating the very agencies she previously condemned. She has also been associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Assad, inviting accusations she is a national security hazard.
Trump named the eccentric Robert Kennedy Jr. to be secretary of Health and Human Services, even if he has no medical background and has spewed conspiracy theories about vaccines. For the reelected American president, loyalty has premium over competence. Kennedy’s appointment could throw health policy in utter disarray.
Trump nominated Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and former primaries rival Vivek Ramaswamy to jointly head something called a Department of Government Efficiency tasked with reducing the size of government spending. This is not a real government department. It will likely be an advisory body where the two billionaires will get paid a dollar a year. But having something with two heads charged with producing efficiency seems a satire writing itself.
Musk has quoted a figure of $2 trillion as the amount he wants cut from public spending by laying off tens of thousands of pubic employees. That amount of reduced spending and the mass layoffs guarantee the US economy falls into a depression – made more calamitous by Trump’s obsession with raising tariffs across the board.
For good measure, Trump is nominating gun-loving, pet shooting South Dakota governor Kristi Noem as secretary for Homeland Security. Along with “border czar” Tom Homan, the duo will oversee the program of mass deportations that Trump promised.
Trump is nominating former congressman Mike Waltz to be his national security adviser, former senator Marco Rubio as secretary of State and former legislator Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador. This trio are all anti-China hawks who uniformly hold a low opinion of America’s defense alliances. They will define a sharp anti-China foreign policy in the Trump II administration.
One analyst compares Trump’s nominations to a man who throws a grenade into a crowded room just to see who would run and who would jump on the explosive. That is most apt. His nominees are certainly keeping everybody on their toes.
The first wave of appointments seems principally intended to shock the Washington DC establishment that Trump often compared to a “swamp” that needs to be drained. The president-elect’s most avid supporters are cheering his choices. They see this as the start of a “revolution” to radically reconfigure the US government.
There is peril in this slam bang process of forming a new administration, however.
The US Congress may find some spine and reject the most controversial appointees. That will deal Trump a resounding political defeat early in his recycled presidency. An early defeat will deplete the political capital he needs to pursue his agenda.
In Trump’s case, however, “the appointee is the policy.” He has chosen a band of senior officials with deeply rooted policy inclinations.
This could become an orchestra with loud players but without a conductor.