Photo credit: The Press Democrat
Donald Trump’s personnel choices for his new Cabinet and White House reflect his signature positions on immigration and trade, as well as various viewpoints and backgrounds that raise questions about what ideological anchors might guide the Oval Office encore.
DailyMail.com reports that the former and incoming president has combined television personalities, former Democrats, a wrestling executive, and traditionally elected Republicans into a mix that makes clear his intentions to impose tariffs on imported goods and crack down on illegal migrants but leaves open a range of possibilities on other policy pursuits.
Marc Short, former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, said, “The president has his two big priorities and doesn’t feel as strongly about anything else—so it’s going to be a real jump and a zigzag. In the first administration, he surrounded himself with more conservative thinkers, and the results showed we were mostly rowing in the same direction. This is more eclectic.”
Secretary of State-designee Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who has pilloried authoritarian regimes around the world, is in line to serve as top diplomat to a president who praises autocratic leaders like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban.
Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-Deremmer of Oregon has been tapped to serve as a pro-union labour secretary in the Cabinet alongside multiple billionaires, former governors, and others who oppose making it easier for workers to organize themselves.
The prospective treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, wants to cut deficits for a president who promised more tax cuts, better veteran services and no rollbacks of the largest federal outlays: Social Security, Medicare and national defence.
Abortion rights supporter Robert F Kennedy Jr. is Trump’s choice to lead the Health and Human Services Department. Trump’s conservative Christian base has long targeted that the anti-abortion movement must wield more influence.
Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich allowed that members of Trump’s sale will not always agree with the president and certainly not with one another. However, he minimized the potential for irreconcilable differences. “A strong Cabinet, by definition, means you’re going to have people with different opinions and different skills.”
This time, trump has pledged to impose tariffs on foreign goods, end illegal immigration and launch a mass deportation force, goose US energy production and exact retribution on people who opposed – and prosecuted – him. He’s added promises to cut taxes, raise wages, and wars in Israel and Ukraine, streamline government, protect Social Security and Medicare, help veterans and squelch cultural progressivism
