Donald Trump has nominated a Cabinet full of loyalists with questionable qualifications, but his critics predict they'll quickly become consumed by chaos and infighting.
Trump began his first term as a political newcomer surrounded by more experienced and conventional conservatives he eventually drove off, and the former president's critics told The Guardian his leadership will lead to predictable results.
“The same thing that happened last time will happen this time,” said Rick Wilson, co-founder of the anti-Trump conservative group the Lincoln Project. “He cannot resist chaos. It is his drug. He will eventually start doing what he always does and turn on different people and start sandbagging his own choices for these various jobs."
“It’s that pattern he has," Wilson added. "He comes out one day and says, ‘I love so and so,’ and then the next he’s talking to his friends saying, ‘Hey, you think Tillerson’s doing a good job or is he screwing me over?’ Those things are patterns we’ve seen in Trump’s personal life, his business life and his prior administration. An 80-year-old man is not going to be a changed person.”
The once and future president has assembled "a revenge team," according to one analyst, while another compared his Cabinet picks to the "wretched hive of scum and villainy" found in the Star Wars cantina, but it's not clear how the hodgepodge of missions and political ideologies will mesh with one another.
"Regardless of whatever individual ideological leanings these people have had at varying points in their adult lives, it’s largely irrelevant because the only litmus test we have seen put forward is absolute fealty to Donald Trump," said Democratic strategist Kurt Bardella. “As we have seen in the Republican party overall, absolute fealty to Donald Trump overshadows any ideological belief. We could take almost every issue that used to be a part of the Republican party and show how the party has moved to a diametrically opposite position. This is not a party governed by ideology any more. It is governed by personality. It is governed by loyalty to Donald Trump.”
"They’re all going to get in a room and they’re just going to go: ‘Here’s what we think – what do you think, boss? Oh, okay, well, that’s what we’re all going to do,’" added Bardella, a former Republican congressional aide. "The idea that there’s going to be ideologically rooted debate, vigorous debate happening in the Trump administration is absurd. It’s laughable.”
Some of Trump's nominees, like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) as top diplomat and Wall Street billionaire Scott Bessent to head the treasury, are somewhat conventional picks for their roles, but seasoned Trump watchers believe he'll once again govern on impulse and thrive on conflict.
“I don’t think there’s any evidence that Trump has learned anything about governing since his first term," said Chris Whipple, the author of The Gatekeepers.
“There’s a lot of wishful thinking among a lot of commentators that, okay, he’s had four years in office, he learned a lot, he’s had all this time to plan with Project 2025 and the America First Policy Institute and he’s got his act together," Whipple added. "I just don’t think that’s true. I don’t see any evidence that there’s any sort of plan here other than ‘this guy looks good for that job, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has got a cool last name.'"