By Kenneth Tiven
The second American Revolution is underway with President-elect Donald Trump interpreting his election victory to require a hostile takeover and remaking of the federal government. This extreme application of “Make America Great Again” will make life inhospitable for recent immigrants and first-generation families. India and dozens of other nations will soon understand that Trump views them as junior partners in both trade and alliances.
American voters, 49.2 percent of them, chose Trump over Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, who received 48.3 percent. The remainder went to write in and third party names. The political shock wave is global, promising good times for billionaires, oligarchs and dictators, but limited help for most citizens in India and elsewhere. In 1964, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater said: “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” He lost badly, but now, 60 years later, this sentiment reflects everything Trump wants to do after his inauguration on January 20, 2025.
Trump is not repeating the indecision and confusion of his first term in 2016. As a novice politician, he was incapable of organizing the machinery of government. This time, a public blueprint called Project 2025 describes taking American social behaviour back to 1825, as if nothing on the globe has changed since then. The people nominated for 15 key posts represent that extreme loyalty to Trump is an absolute pre-requisite, with skill or experience a secondary consideration. Unconventional hardly does justice to the names floated. Confirmations are probable as Republicans have a four-vote Senate majority. Any Republican senator who joins Democrats to oppose Trump will be shamed and hounded for demonstrating judgment and personal courage.
In the USA, these positions report to the president, unlike in parliamentary systems, where the ministries and committees report to the parliament. Approximately 1,200 positions require confirmation. While campaigning, Trump frequently promised to usher in an era of retribution and revenge against people and institutions that had criticized his violent rhetoric.
The Department of Justice is the government’s law firm, capable of using retribution as cause for cases, real or imagined. Who better, says Trump, than the controversial Matt Gaetz for this position? Gaetz resigned as a Florida Congressman concurrent with the nomination, hoping to quash the release of a House investigative report on his controversial social behaviour. He did attend law school, but is best known for his severe MAGA fixation and history of bragging to House colleagues about his penchant for drug-fuelled sex with young women. A former business partner is serving an 11-year jail sentence for sex trafficking.
Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House lawyer, said: “There’s no conceivable justification for nominating somebody this smarmy and this offensive for a position of such significance in this democracy other than to have a puppet who will do anything Trump asks.” Marc Short, the long-time chief of staff to former vice-president Mike Pence said: “Generally, nominating reputed sex traffickers for the highest law-enforcement job in the land is not a good idea.”
However, in a sudden development, Gaetz withdrew from consideration to serve as Trump’s attorney general on Thursday (November 21), amid intense scrutiny of allegations of sexual misconduct, ending the brief nomination of one of Trump’s most controversial cabinet picks. After meeting with senators on Capitol Hill, Gaetz determined that his nomination was “becoming a distraction to the critical work” of the new Trump administration, he explained on X. “There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump’s [justice department] must be in place and ready on Day 1,” Gaetz said. “I remain fully committed to see that Donald J Trump is the most successful President in history. I will forever be honoured that President Trump nominated me to lead the Department of Justice and I’m certain he will Save America,” he added.
Trump is naming Brendan Carr as the next Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, positioning the regulatory agency to do battle against social media companies and TV broadcasters that Republicans portray as too liberal. Carr, 45, is the senior Republican among the FCC’s five commissioners. He has vowed to take on what he called a “censorship cartel”, including Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft. He wrote the aggressive agenda in Project 2025 against the FCC’s recent rulings. Carr is a vocal supporter of billionaire Elon Musk, who has become Trump’s “brother of convenience,” recommending that he and Vivek Ramaswamy advise Trump on slashing federal spending.
The Director of the National Intelligence (DNI) office coordinates the work of 18 agencies involved in US intelligence gathering. The DNI leader Trump wants is former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who has flipped and flopped between political parties and has no relevant experience. She has parroted Russian propaganda lines to explain various international developments. In contrast, the current DNI chief is Avril Haines, who was deputy director of the CIA and deputy national security adviser before taking the top position. Haines also has degrees in law and theoretical physics.
Trump claims he rarely reads intelligence briefs. Perhaps he doesn’t remember that Gabbard met with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad while the Syrian dictator was busy slaughtering hundreds of thousands of his own people. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Gabbard blamed the West, repeating the Moscow propaganda line that the US had positioned secret biolabs across Ukraine. A Russian TV channel referred to Gabbard as Russia’s “girlfriend”. Asked if she was, the head of the Kremlin-backed network replied: “Yes.”
Nominations of this sort may result in thousands of professionals resigning, which may be what Trump wants. His intention appears to be the destruction of what the right-wing calls “the administrative state,” as his strategist Steve Bannon once put it.
The most vigorous opposition will likely focus on Robert F Kennedy Jr., who has been picked up by Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy Jr was once an admired environmental campaigner until disowned by the Kennedy family. His uncle, President John Kennedy, was assassinated 62 years ago this month when RFK was a toddler, and his father died also a few years after that. RFK’s behaviour has been erratic since his college days, beginning with leading the anti-vaccine movement. He has traded on his family name for more than 40 years. Covid found him promoting treatments that don’t work—such as hydroxychloroquine, a medicine for horses—and he rails against those that do, spreading the long-debunked claim that childhood vaccines are linked to autism and opposing fluoridation of water to prevent tooth decay. Other public behaviours have left him appearing unserious. Despite the pandemic, Kennedy thinks US public health officials are too focused on infectious diseases. He once said: “We’re going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.”
These first nominations include the weekend host of a Fox News breakfast show, Pete Hegseth as defense secretary. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan—and then as a prison guard in Guantánamo Bay. He went to Princeton and Harvard Universities, but has zero experience running a small business, let alone one of the world’s largest organizations, employing 2.8 million people with a budget of nearly 850 billion dollars. If his inexperience is a worry, his beliefs are as well. One reliable description: “He’s covered in tattoos, including symbols favoured by the Christian nationalist far-right, among them the slogan Deus Vult and the Jerusalem cross, which celebrates the medieval Crusades when Christians slaughtered infidel Muslims and Jews.” Hegseth is unqualified—a caricature of MAGA fidelity—that insiders say even the new Senate, sworn in with its 53 Republicans, may vote not to confirm him for the Defense Department. The rugged-looking co-host of a weekend programme on Fox appealed to Trump with his criticism of diversity training within the military and his anti-woke attitude. Trump wants to fire generals who display insufficient loyalty to him, and Hegseth has said he would appoint a board of retired officers, no doubt of like mind, to draw up lists of active officers who should be dismissed. Serious political skill and organizational talent are needed to run an enterprise as large, complex, and vital as the Defense Department. The Pentagon job has devoured far more experienced leaders since James Forrestal took the new post in 1947 after World War II when President Harry S Truman created the Department of Defense.
Political pundit Ezra Klein insists this is the first layer of nominations in what he calls Trump’s gallery of misfits and lackeys, essentially a loyalty test from a man who offers none in return. Appointments to government senior positions in and out of the Cabinet are made for various reasons, some for expertise, many also to pay back loyalty and campaign contributions, or to rescue a compatriot having a difficult time in his or her current position. All cabinet positions are not equal in their role in governance, but all regulatory agencies are critical to the kind of nation we will have for a presidential term. Anyone with an eye for how mobsters organize their business will recognize that Trump’s ambition this time is to turn the leaders of major federal agencies into his deputies, running the federal government as if it was Trump Inc and entirely subordinate to him.
Trump’s exaggerations are legendary, so claims that his re-election is a landslide are untrue. But it was a matter of winning all the tight races. His majority control of the Supreme Court acts as a guarantor of whatever he wants to do. His advisors understand how to succeed in full public view without meaningful interference from the political opposition. If you own the courts, you own the Constitution. Despite the facts about his career, voters who think Trump is a business genius are unconcerned or unwilling to admit they misjudged Trump.
Conservatives have despised Democrats since Franklin D Roosevelt for reinventing government as a regulatory force for the betterment of the nation, and incidentally creating the wherewithal to defeat Germany and Japan in a World War. The idea that “Make America Great Again” might refer to 1930 is absurd. I assume it references the 1950s when TV shows like Father Knows Best and Gunsmoke spoke to the American psyche and sexual roles for men and women. Rod Serling’s series, Twilight Zone, was a more accurate reflection of where America might go, and then StarTrek picked at the racism and misogyny then rampant in the USA. The nation has advanced, although this election gives pause to those who hope for a fair and decent America.
“Drive Your Enemies Crazy, and they’ll end up making mistakes, and it will help you.” Roy Cohn, his mentor as a young man, implanted this concept in Trump’s brain. The names put forth for crucial cabinet posts mirror this approach as part of a carefully constructed plan to ensure America ceases to be a representative democracy with three independent branches of government. Right-wing ideologues and fundamentalist religious leaders put this in writing with Project 2025, making clear their intention for an Imperial presidency with a pseudo layer of Christian piety. In sports, a win is a win no matter the final score, and today, it applies to national politics. Those who view it as a “wish list” are mistaken; it was an indictment of America, an English-language version of what the Ayatollahs of Iran might have written.
Oaths of allegiance to the Constitution are meaningless if the president believes he is an emperor. Trump ruined the family’s real estate fortune, which he had inherited from his father. He will now repeat the behaviour against the United States of America, which was made easier by owning a compliant Supreme Court plus majority control of Congress. Trump can make these appointments without the Senate’s consent if the Senate recesses. Without going into the legal details, he can force the Senate to recess with the help of the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives. Yes, the House has no role in approving Cabinet and executive-level appointments, but the Speaker can recess the House. If the Senate refuses to go along, the President, by proclaiming a deadlock, forces the Senate into recess regardless of the Senate’s wishes. He can then appoint anyone! It’s all in the fine print that gets minimal attention in reading the Constitution, except by lawyers desiring to circumvent its real intent.
Robert Reich, a college professor who was Secretary of Labor under President Clinton put it this way: “What do card sharks, magicians, pickpockets, and tyrants do to hide their tricks? They deflect your attention. ‘Look over here!’ they say, as they create a commotion that preoccupies your mind while they bamboozle you. At first, I thought Trump’s gonzo nominations were intended to flood the zone—overwhelm us, demoralize us, cause us to lose our minds. There’s a larger plan at work. Trump wants to deflect our attention while he and his fellow billionaires loot America. As he consolidates power, Trump is on his way to creating a government of billionaires, by billionaires, for billionaires. Trump intuitively knows that the most powerful and insidious of all alliances is between rich oligarchs and authoritarian strongmen.”
—The writer has worked in senior positions at The Washington Post, NBC, ABC and CNN and also consults for several Indian channels