President-elect Donald Trump is going all-out at full speed to put his White House leadership team and guidance priorities together pursuant to carrying out a clear electoral and popular vote mandate for radical change.
In doing so, many of his nominations for top cabinet and agency positions draw upon individuals independent from the federal administrative state and its incestuously beholden special interest Washington Beltway cronies.
Unsurprisingly, the very notion of drawing from a pool largely comprised of establishment “outsiders” from successful business backgrounds whose central mission is to disrupt free-spending, overregulating bureaucratic bastions of fiscal and rule-making policy unaccountability is being roundly assailed by Democrats as “radical.”
Instead, the opposite is truer.
The federal establishment has moved radically afield from what America’s constitutional framers had in mind when they established three co-equal branches of government and placed primary responsibility for legislation on Congress rather than rulemaking by unelected agency officials.
And although Republican senators appear broadly unified in support of the president-elect’s Cabinet picks requiring confirmation, it remains uncertain whether they will hold together in virtual lock-step unity as Democrats did in affirming President Biden’s full slate of 2020 nominees.
There were only three holdouts among them, with each electing not to vote for one candidate.
To his credit, on Thursday Trump’s Attorney General pick, former Fla. Rep. Matt Gaetz, withdrew his own candidacy to avoid disruptive contention within his party ranks regarding denied sexual scandal allegations which he said were “unfairly becoming a distraction.”
The Department of Justice that Gaetz was nominated to reform had previously investigated such claims but has filed no charges against him for any criminal offenses.
Gaetz’s AG nomination also drew particularly strong opposition from some members of his own party in large part due to active and ultimately successful efforts over 14 rounds of ballots to remove Kevin McCarthy as Speaker when Republicans regained control of the House in 2023.
Trump will now tap former Fla. Attorney General Pam Bondi to replace AG Merrick Garland, arguably the most radically unjust person ever to hold that politically weaponized position.
He’s the guy who authorized an armed early morning FBI raid on the former president’s and first lady’s personal Mar-a-Lago residence in search of classified documents while ignoring those haphazardly stored in Joe’s garage, and who had parents concerned about indoctrination of young school children with sexually age-inappropriate materials investigated as suspected domestic terrorists.
Trump’s Secretary of State nominee, China policy expert Marco Rubio, will be a very welcome change from Antony Blinken who had previously served as Joe Biden’s top campaign adviser and engineered the letter from 51 former intelligence officials falsely claiming that Hunter’s laptop from hell “had earmarks of Russia disinformation” in the run-up to the 2020 elections.
Incidentally, that would also be the very same Antony Blinken who headed the Pennsylvania Biden Center where unauthorized classified documents were transferred from Chinatown in Washington, D.C. to an unprotected closet. That center successfully lobbied the Biden Department of Justice to reverse former President Trump’s China Initiative established to combat spying and theft of intellectual property.
Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Security and John Ratcliffe as CIA Director will address radically neglected foreign espionage and coercion threats evidenced by rampant foreign Biden family influence peddling including Chinese Communist Party-affiliated entities and individuals.
And speaking of radical, let’s be grateful that South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has been tagged to head the Department of Homeland Security as a major change from Biden-Harris administration open border invasion policies mis-administered by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Afghanistan and Iraq combat veteran Pete Hegseth has been tapped as Secretary of Defense along with former Green Beret Fla. Rep. Mike Waltz as national security adviser at a time of radically great global unrest under weak and confused foreign policies including the spectacular Afghanistan withdrawal debacle.
Expect current Defense Secy. Gen. Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Mark Milley to get Trump marching orders to leave the Pentagon over their roles in this historic military blunder.
And remember being assured by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen that inflation was “transitory,” really nothing much to worry about?
She will soon be transitory, too.
Entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will create and head a temporary new Department of Government Efficiency to radically cut profligate spending and economically destructive federal regulations with eyes on terminating certain unnecessary and wasteful agencies altogether.
So yes, America is long overdue for radical disruption of a federal government that no longer represents what voters demand and deserve.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.