| WASHINGTON—Trump’s big week of picks started calm. |
| Names like Mike Waltz (R-Fla.)—tapped on Nov. 12 to serve as Team Trump 2.0’s national security advisor—met with a relatively warm reception from the establishment. |
| “Mike Waltz,” the Economist intoned, “wants America to focus on the threat from China”—a common thread across virtually all of Trump’s choices, controversial or otherwise, alongside a lengthy history of loyalty to the president-elect. |
| Trump’s selection of John Ratcliffe, his former director of national intelligence, to lead the Central Intelligence Agency was received neutrally, at least judging by the headlines on Google News. |
| That Tuesday night pick was lauded by Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), head of the influential House Intelligence Committee. |
| Mid-afternoon the next day, there was another audible sigh of relief from the establishment wing of the Republican Party. Early reporting had proven accurate: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a member of the Senate’s intelligence committee, had been chosen as Trump’s secretary of state. |
| Less than twenty minutes later, there was a collective gasp: Trump had picked former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. |
| Soon afterward came the biggest shock—and likely toughest confirmation—of all. |
| “It is my Great Honor to announce that Congressman Matt Gaetz, of Florida, is hereby nominated to be The Attorney General of the United States,” Trump wrote in his announcement. |
| Gaetz, a man with many enemies and who triggered the ouster of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif), was the subject of a yearslong House Ethics Committee probe over allegations of sexual misconduct, drug use, misuse of campaign funds, and accepting improper gifts, all of which he has denied. |
| Many have called on the committee to release its report, but Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) argued against disclosure after Gaetz resigned from the chamber following the cabinet announcement. The committee does not have jurisdiction over former members. |
| “Matt Gaetz shouldn’t be able to resign away an ethics investigation,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) wrote on X. |
| Early Thursday evening came another highly controversial pick. The president-elect wanted another former Democrat, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in his administration. More specifically, he sought to place the vaccine safety advocate, known for claiming that there is a link between certain vaccines and autism, at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services. |
| The progression could be scored to Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” the soundtrack to a video Trump famously shared on then-Twitter in 2020 when he was acquitted in the Senate after being impeached in the House. |
| Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) released a statement describing Kennedy, Jr. as a “known conspiracy theorist.” |
| And neoconservative political insider Bill Kristol suggested that Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) “issue a statement saying they won’t support manifestly unfit nominees like RFK Jr., Gabbard, Gaetz, and [Peter] Hegseth.” |
| The week was also marked by choices that appear to reflect a commitment to experimentation in the new administration—in the language of Silicon Valley, moving fast and breaking things. |
| That, anyway, is one way to interpret the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to be co-led by entrepreneurs Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk. |
| Though criticized in some quarters, particularly for possible conflicts of interest related to Musk’s many businesses with government ties, it has also drawn positive interest from a wide array of political figures; everyone from Justin Amash, a former Republican representative known for past opposition to Trump, to Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who on X described himself as a “Democrat for government efficiency.” |
| “I kept all the receipts from my “nay” votes on absurd spending bills that passed Congress overwhelmingly and were signed into law,” Amash wrote. |
| North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who, like Musk, got his start in the tech world, will also head up a Trump 2.0 innovation in governance. The billionaire will chair a new National Energy Council, created as a mechanism for coordinating energy policy within an administration that has vowed to expand production and slash costs quickly and across the board. |
| Another theme in Trump’s picks is youth, including when compared to their Biden administration equivalents. |
| The latest pick, prospective press secretary Karoline Leavitt, is just 27. She would replace Karine Jean-Pierre, who is 50. |
| Prospective administration members that have gained traction on social media, like Kash Patel for FBI director or Michael Anton as deputy national security advisor, could also leave many shaken. |
| But the week has also been marked by truly unanticipated choices, like Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense. |
| The latest crescendo Trump orchestrates could shock, or awe, us all. |
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| To dig deeper into the subject, read the following original reporting by our journalists: | |
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 | | Tracking Every Trump Cabinet Pick | | President-elect Donald Trump is already beginning to finalize his Cabinet roster less than a week after his decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. | | | |
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