President-elect Donald Trump's choices for top government jobs show he plans to quickly remake Washington in his image when he returns to the White House, according to political experts.
The president-elect has picked a Fox News host to lead the Pentagon, an anti-vaccine activist to head up Health and Human Services, a Vladimir Putin apologist to oversee intelligence agencies, and a former congressman ensnared in a sex-trafficking investigation to direct federal law enforcement.
A Republican strategist told The Guardian making such controversial picks was an intentional strategy.
“Their entire political brand is shock and awe," said Tara Setmayer, a former GOP communications director on Capitol Hill. "Prior to Trump’s re-election it was notional. Now they have the power to execute all of their depravity with the full backing of American government power virtually unchecked. I don’t think the people who voted for Donald Trump, allegedly because of economic angst, have a full appreciation for what that means.”
Trump promised not to be a “dictator” except on “Day One," and he has said he intends to close the border, launch mass deportations and start drilling for oil immediately upon returning to office. Experts say he will face fewer institutional checks on his power than last time.
“The world needs to strap in because the first day of the Trump administration has been in the planning for at least a couple of years and so the white papers, the executive orders are already in files and ready to be pulled out," said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota.
“We can expect certainly that some of the most radical ideas about curtailing immigration into the United States and then the expelling of unauthorized immigrants within the United States will get a boost from the president making a speech or a press conference followed up with directives to the executive branch," Jacobs continued. "That’ll be off and running day one.”
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"We can also expect a pretty sharp attack on the independence of the judiciary," Jacobs added. "This is going to be a rupture in the generations-old practice of political independence in terms of the Department of Justice. That’s coming to an end.”
Trump and his GOP allies insist that voters gave him a mandate to carry out a MAGA makeover of the U.S. government, but Setmayer, co-founder and chief executive of the Seneca Project, said many Americans had no idea what the former president has in store for his second term.
“I expect chaos and a series of constitutionally questionable actions exponentially worse than what we saw on day one last time. It’s already started," Setmayer said. "There will be many of us who said, we warned you.”
“The Trump administration is going to plunge America into a cross between The Hunger Games and The Celebrity Apprentice, unfortunately at great expense to the future of our democracy and the humanity of millions of Americans who will suffer at the hands of this gallery of degenerates," she added. "The American electorate f---ed around and now they’re going to find out.”