President-elect Donald Trump has put together a team prepared to implement two of his top priorities, less than a month after winning the election: punishing his political rivals and completely overhauling the American government. The president-elect's determination to get revenge on those he feels have mistreated him was shown by his appointment of former White House deputy Kash Patel to head the crime-fighting FBI. Patel, a vocal opponent of the bureau, has promised to target Trump's alleged adversaries. Additionally, he is the most recent of several nominations that demonstrate Trump's preference for outsiders with a wrecking-ball mindset over seasoned Washington professionals, those who have the ability to upend the system from inside and change government in a way that may be unparalleled in the contemporary era.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's choice for secretary of Health and Human Services, is committed to purging corporate influence from the agency. The nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has criticized "woke" practices in the Pentagon and demanded a change in top leadership. It appears that Linda McMahon will carry out one of Trump's campaign promises by dismantling the Department of Education, which she has been appointed to run. Cabinets have historically been tools that presidents have utilized to create and advance programs rather than destroy them. The goal of Republican George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative was to use testing to enhance public education. Barack Obama, a Democrat, had a trademark plan for affordable healthcare. Elaine Kamarck, a governance expert at the Brookings Institution, stated that Trump has chosen a team with different views in mind. Trump will take office on January 20 after winning the election on November 5.
She claimed that they were picked because of their animosity toward the establishment, their allegiance to Trump, and their pledge to upend everything. Washington needs a shake-up, according to Trump supporters. Many people believe that the federal government is an unaccountable, dishonest, and self-sustaining bureaucracy that impedes economic development, illegally targets civilians, and fails to maintain national security. This viewpoint deviates from a broad, bipartisan perception of the federal government as a beneficial entity that provides benefits to millions of elderly, disabled, and impoverished Americans as well as enforcing and administering laws on a variety of topics, including food safety and health, as well as air and water quality.
According to Kamarck, Trump's team may not be able to accomplish the significant change he desires due to a lack of government experience, with some members potentially facing difficult confirmation hearings. She went on to say that cutting government is more difficult than it seems. According to her, the federal government employs 60,000 persons who distribute Social Security benefits each month. What happens if no one answers the phone and Grandma's check disappears?
NOT ONLY BLUSTER
Trump, a Republican, pledged during the presidential campaign to make amends with Democratic rivals and alleged adversaries in the media and government. He claimed that federal law enforcement had been "weaponized" against him by the FBI and the Justice Department.
Patel, 44, a former congressional aide and federal prosecutor who was a prominent national security staffer during Trump's first term, is now his own weapon. President Joe Biden and former Trump officials including his former national security adviser John Bolton are on the list that Patel has compiled, which critics say is a target He cited a list of alleged "deep state" individuals who opposed Trump's policies. We'll look for the conspirators in the administration and the media. We're going to target the media for lying about Americans and aiding Joe Biden in rigging the presidential election, Patel said in a 2023 interview with Trump ally Steve Bannon.
As FBI director, Patel has stated that he would close the bureau's Washington headquarters on "Day One" and restore the agency to its law enforcement roots by focusing on combating crime rather than obtaining domestic information. "Kash Patel will bring the FBI back to its core purpose of protecting Americans," said Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesman for the Trump transition team. Patel and a few of Trump's other choices, according to a number of political analysts, indicate that his calls for retaliation and a drastic change in the government were more than just campaign hyperbole. According to historian Lindsay Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington University, "I believe that many people who voted for him for economic or financial reasons did not believe the more extreme rhetoric."
If confirmed, Patel would lead federal law enforcement alongside Trump's attorney general nominee, Pam Bondi. Both have supported Trump's unfounded allegations that he was cheated out of the 2020 election and have attacked what they see to as a "deep state," which consists of career federal bureaucrats they believe are secretly trying to circumvent elected politicians in order to further their own agenda. Trump has asked two other disruptors to lead a group tasked with reducing the bureaucracy: entrepreneur Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. They would collaborate with Russ Vought, the incoming head of the White House Office of Management and Budget and a designer of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's conservative blueprint for the upcoming Trump administration.
Vought and the other authors of the initiative have pushed for the reclassification of portions of the federal workforce, which would allow Trump to fire tens of thousands of government workers. According to Chervinsky, Trump's choice to surround his cabinet with like-minded supporters is yet another departure from presidential convention. She claimed that in order to comfort those who did not vote for them, previous presidents put together teams with a variety of perspectives. According to Chervinsky, many of these decisions have the opposite effect. They are hostile on purpose.
Posts
