Column: Trump’s out-of-the-gate choices could make for a Cabinet of avengers

As Donald Trump rolled out his Cabinet choices last week, the strategy that consigliere Steve Bannon described during the president-elect’s first term naturally popped to mind: “Flood the zone with s—.” Overwhelm the media, the public and political opponents, including fellow Republicans, so fully that they can’t process it all, and some crap gets by.

That may well be the case for the emerging Cabinet. Bipartisan alarm greeted news that former Reps. Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard, Fox News provocateur Pete Hegseth and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are Trump’s selections to take charge of the nation’s law enforcement, intelligence, defense and healthcare programs, respectively. Each would likely be disqualified in normal times, given damning details in their bios. Yet Trump is flooding the zone.

Opinion Columnist

Jackie Calmes

Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.

Read more from Jackie Calmes

Amid the deluge, however, let’s not lose sight of where the outrage belongs: on the man who picked them.

That Trump would choose such candidates for essential roles confirms his bad judgment, and his own unfitness for office. But the fact that these nominees were among his earliest picks underscores something more: His priority as president is indeed retribution.

Trump could have first nominated people to head the Treasury Department and other agencies responsible for the issue that probably more than any other got him elected: the economy. But, no. Trump’s top aim is revenge against the agencies that he baselessly believes wronged him when he held office before.

The Justice Department, for its investigations of his 2016 campaign’s connivances with Russia, his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his swiping of government secrets, and for his past appointees’ refusals to be accomplices in his 2020 plot to keep power. Intelligence agencies, for finding that Russia tried to help get him elected in 2016. The Defense Department, because its civilian and military leaders resisted his calls to shoot protesters in 2020 and to help him subvert the 2020 election. And not least, the Department of Health and Human Services, for putting science and public health before his 2020 reelection politics and rejecting his wacky nostrums during the pandemic.

In condemning Trump’s choice for attorney general, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board called Gaetz “a performer and provocateur” and “a nominee for those who want the law used for political revenge.”

My, who could that be? Just say it: Trump.

From Trump’s perspective, who would be better able to turn the DOJ into Trump LLC than the Florida Man? For Gaetz, being attorney general would be a retribution twofer, given that Justice also long investigated him, for alleged sex trafficking and sex with a minor, among other things, and reportedly declined to charge him only because of witnesses’ credibility issues. (The House Ethics Committee then reopened its own wide-ranging probe of Gaetz, which he short-circuited last week by resigning from Congress.)

As a Trump advisor approvingly told the Bulwark last week, other AG wannabes talked about the law and Constitution, but Gaetz was the only one who said he’d cut “[expletive] heads.”

Then there are the other avengers that Trump has in mind.

As director of national intelligence, he wants Gabbard, the former Democratic House member turned MAGA warrior known best as an apologist for dictators Vladimir Putin of Russia and Bashar Assad of Syria (but then, so is Trump). She’s been called “our girlfriend Tulsi” and a Russian agent on state-controlled Russian TV.

An opponent of U.S. aid to Ukraine (again, like Trump), Gabbard posted a video that provoked Sen. Mitt Romney to accuse her of “parroting false Russian propaganda” and to rage, “Her treasonous lies may well cost lives.” She’s called for leniency toward intelligence leakers Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

Hegseth’s qualifications to run the Pentagon are limited to his experience as an Army National Guard veteran of the Afghanistan conflict, and fealty to Trump. His long record of on-air provocations includes support for alleged U.S. war criminals and opposition to women in the military. “I would ask him, ‘Where do you think I lost my legs? In a bar fight?’ ” said Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, an Iraq war veteran. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, she could get a chance — if there is a confirmation hearing.

It’s easy to believe that Hegseth wouldn’t shy from ordering the military to fire on protesters if Trump so desires, and it’s unlikely he’d have qualms about firing the military officers on a list that Trump’s transition team reportedly is compiling, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Charles Q. Brown, a Biden appointee. Hegseth once suggested Brown got the job because he is a Black man. A complication for Hegseth: reports of an alleged sexual assault in Monterey, Calif., in 2017, which he has denied.

And who better to “go wild” on food and drug policy, in Trump’s words, than Kennedy, who has said, “There is no vaccine that is safe and effective.” As secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy would have jurisdiction over the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which Trump came to consider his nemesis during the pandemic, and the Food and Drug Administration. Kennedy tweeted in October that folks at the FDA should “1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”

The widely loathed Gaetz is the most likely to fail muster, either rejected next year in a new, Republican-controlled Senate or forced to withdraw beforehand amid the public backlash. That’s no sure thing, considering Republicans’ sycophancy and Trump’s obstinacy.

Given the quality of such nominees, it’s no wonder that Trump, postelection, demanded that Republican senators forfeit their constitutional “advice and consent” power.

If they don’t, and the Senate actually dooms his avengers, well, Trump will just take further retribution: on them. This is what they voted for, after all.

@jackiekcalmes