Marsden: Trump's shock and awe cabinet picks are everything that America needs

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Many of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees just don’t have the gravitas or institutional experience in dealing with giant bureaucracies to serve effectively, critics say. That whining you hear is the sound of progress.

Trump, who has spent his entire business career in real estate taking a wrecking ball to what doesn’t work and then building luxury in its place, staked his entire campaign message to American voters on the need to do the same with Washington. You’re not going to get renewal and reform from cabinet appointees who figure that the place looks good overall, but just maybe needs a little bit of paint. You need human bulldozers.

One of the few nominees that the establishment actually accepts proves the rule: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state. Even Democrats have said that despite their ideological differences, he’s a viable candidate for the job because he knows the ropes. Which is really just another way of saying that he’s on board with the bipartisan neocon talking points that don’t distinguish between Republican and Democrat positions much, if at all, underscoring the need for an anti-establishment force that’s skeptical of both establishment parties and whatever systemic corruption underpins some head-scratching consensus.

A tweet from October 2015 by Trump himself speaks volumes about why he may have chosen Rubio. "Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet," Trump wrote, referring to the late top Republican donor and passionate Israel advocate, Sheldon Adelson, whose wife gave $100 million to Trump’s campaign late in the game, according to official disclosures as reported by the Times of Israel.

Not sure that anyone can actually make a puppet of Trump now that he’s cashed the check and doesn’t have to worry ever again about reelection, but Trump clearly doesn’t see Rubio as a leash-biter. Perhaps Trump also imagines him being a go-between who can translate Trump’s MAGA worldview to all the swamp critters at the State Department.

Same with Elise Stefanik, the New York congresswoman nominated to be Trump’s United Nations ambassador, who already seems to be working on her MAGA fluency after many years of speaking only neocon. "I’ve seen how important Ukraine is for the region," she said in March 2022, according to WWNY-TV News. "They need to be admitted into NATO and we need to do everything we can by providing them munitions and javelins. ..."

Fast-forward to just a few days ago. Stefanik "fully supports President Trump’s peace through strength policy agenda and will follow his lead as commander-in-chief on best practices to end the war in Ukraine," her spokesperson said.

"Best practices" for ending a war start with cease-fire agreements and negotiations, which is the opposite of what official Washington is advocating, and what Americans voted for. But Stefanik already seems to understand what it’s going to take to keep the job.

Fox News host and veteran Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense immediately triggered personal witch hunts related to everything from his tattoos to his personal life, with criticism suggesting that he doesn’t have the chops to lead one of the biggest bureaucracies in the country at the Pentagon. He had previously appeared on a podcast saying that he would purge the Pentagon of all the "woke (expletive)," which already puts him a step ahead of how the place is being run now.

How much worse can the guy do, really? The Pentagon, when it wasn’t run by Hegseth, wargamed its chances against Russia and China, and lost. It’s also currently losing the war that it’s piloting in Ukraine against Russia. What exactly is the establishment worried that Hegseth would ruin, besides maybe the morale of a few paperclip Purple Hearts in the bureaucratic brigade?

The main concern about Trump’s director of national intelligence pick, Army reservist and former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, would be that Russian President Vladimir Putin would be running the U.S. intelligence community. All because she hasn’t swallowed the standard talking points and has been open to considering all sources and types of information and analysis. Which is actually the definition of intelligence gathering. Perhaps under Gabbard there would be more of that and less time setting fires in foreign countries as an excuse to rush in and put them out.

Attorney general pick Matt Gaetz seems to have spent much of his time as a congressman yelling about what he characterized as highly selective and ideologically driven prosecutorial choices made by American justice officials. Much has been made of the fact that Gaetz hasn’t even practiced law, despite having a law degree. Pretty sure he doesn’t need one to recognize and end witch hunts dressed up as justice. (Editor's note: Gaetz withdrew his name for the attorney general position Thursday.)

And last but not least: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of health and human services. The department is currently run by Dr. Rachel Levine, the first openly transgender official ever confirmed by the Senate. "Dr. Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic — no matter their ZIP code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability — and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond," Biden said upon Levine’s appointment as deputy to current health secretary and lawyer, Xavier Becerra.

But the real diversity would be Kennedy, whose environmental law career involved suing industrial polluters, and who would be the first Big Pharma and medical-industrial industry skeptic to hold the position at a time when the U.S. has become synonymous with pharmaceutical profiteering and obesity.

America’s problems won’t be solved by slight variations of the same sort of people who created them. Trump was elected as a giant middle finger to the system. This cabinet is just the rest of the hand, winding up for some long overdue spankings.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of independently produced talk shows in French and English.