WASHINGTON — While campaigning for victory, Donald Trump portrayed the Justice Department as a hotbed of partisan prosecutors who “weaponized” law enforcement and the military as a combat force that abandoned its mission in favor of him. political etiquette.
The Trump presidency has promised to fix all that, and has shown he means it with his picks to lead the Defense and Justice departments, along with other agencies.
After his decisive victory last week, Trump found reliable allies to deliver on the priorities he promised voters.
If he wins Senate confirmation, Matt Gaetz will become the next attorney general, with the power to end the Justice Department’s traditional independence from the White House and ensure it becomes a trusted tool of Trump’s political interests.
“President Trump is going to hit the Justice Department with a blowtorch, and Matt Gaetz is that torch,” Trump’s former White House strategist Steve Bannon told NBC News.
Gaetz, R-Fla., He submitted his resignation from the chamber on Wednesday.
In former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, Trump will have a secretary of defense who can be called on to rid the armed forces of generals whom Trump sees as anathema to America’s military superiority.
Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat in Congress who has since left the party, ran. director of national intelligencedespite limited experience in that arena.
Trump chose Tom Homan, a hard-line former immigration official, to be his border czar and South Dakota Gov. Christy Noem, who once gave him a Mount Rushmore model, including his face, as homeland security secretary. If approved, both would be crucial to his plan to deport undocumented immigrants on an unprecedented scale.
Trump’s transition team announced a number of Cabinet picks this week as he moves quickly to build an administration and capitalize on an election victory that gave him the popular mandate he disliked when he won in 2016.
One difference this time is that he promotes people he knows and likes well, as opposed to strangers boasting impressive credentials and resumes. In his first term, he nominated retired four-star general James Mattis for secretary of defense. Mattis had commanded troops during the war and was considered a mix of soldier and scholar with a library of thousands of books.
Trump chose another retired four-star general, John Kelly, whose son was killed in action in Afghanistan, as homeland security chief.
Trump split with both men, firing Mattis and parting ways with Kelly after bringing him into the White House as chief of staff.
At the time, both Mattis and Kelly were seen as the “adults in the room” to lead the new president, who had never held public office.
This model did not suit Trump, and he is clearly rejecting it as he shapes the new presidency.
The Gaetz and Hegseth announcements in particular caused a backlash.
None of them ran anything as complex and coherent as the departments they would lead. Hegseth was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq and served more than 19 years in the National Guard.
Trump’s transition official said Hegseth ‘maybe unusual to Beltway insider types’ [but] a young, talented, innovative person who can perform exactly for DJT [Donald J. Trump] with the lessons learned from the first term of the president”.
Still others said experience is key in filling jobs with such great responsibility.
“You need two things: competence and character. You need people with deep, big, organizational experience, ideally with the public sector. We don’t see that with these options,” said Max Stier, chief executive of Public Partnerships, a service dedicated to improving government efficiency. non-profit group.
Allegations about Gaetz were investigated sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl. A federal investigation did not result in criminal charges, and he has long denied wrongdoing.
A Justice Department official said Gaetz’s announcement.really amazing“; another called it “crazy.”
At this point, Trump has shown no sign of backing down. He won a clear victory over Democrat Kamala Harris. His party will control both the House and the Senate, and Congress’s habit is to give presidents leeway in picking their teams.
In this case, there may be a fight. Trump will need the unified support of Senate Republicans; won’t be able to get it.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said she doesn’t think Gaetz is “a serious candidacy for attorney general.” Sen. Kevin Cramer, RN.D., said he was a “long shot.
Trump knows from bitter experience that he needs an attorney general he can implicitly trust, and fighting for Gaetz’s confirmation could be worth the political capital.
Few things in Trump’s first term have angered him more than Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to recuse himself and appoint a special counsel to investigate possible collusion between his 2016 campaign and Russia.
“This is the end of my presidency. I f—–,” Trump said report Filed by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.
He continued to fire Sessions. And then he sparred with another appointee, William Barr, who angered him by saying that the 2020 election was not stolen, as Trump falsely claimed.
In Gaetz, Trump would get an attorney general who said Trump won the election that year, as well as an iconoclast who shared his willingness to disrupt the status quo.
At a conference of conservative activists last year, Gaetz said, “I don’t care if this takes every second of our time and every ounce of our energy. We either take this government on our side or we cut our money.” – Abolish the FBI, CDC, ATF, DOJ do, if they don’t come off the heels, every one.”
A source close to Trump told NBC News when asked about the likelihood of Gaetz’s confirmation in the Senate: “The American people have made it clear that they want President Trump to rebuild Washington, and Rep. Gaetz is the perfect person to bring the DOJ back to greatness. .
“Senators will hear from constituents who support the congressman.”