'Goblins and weirdos': Is Trump trolling the world with his picks?

McArdle is far from alone in being taken aback by the president-elect’s nominations that have stunned the political establishment in Washington, triggering indignation and bafflement in equal measure among Democrats and even among some Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Needless to say, the extent of the incredulity among many Americans has provided rich pickings for the country’s array of late-night chat show hosts and comedians who in their own right are such an institution within the nation’s political commentariat.

Speaking about Trump’s tapping of conspiracy-minded Democrat-turned-Republican Tulsi Gabbard to become director of national intelligence, Jimmy Kimmel quipped that the job “could interfere with her other job working for Russian national intelligence”.

This is clearly a reference to accusations that Gabbard has, in the past, amplified Russia propaganda about its reasons for invading Ukraine.

Fellow late show host Stephen Colbert, meanwhile, was equally scathing about Gabbard.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign event in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File).

Not intelligent

Recounting that she was once a guest on his show, he noted: “When I think Tulsi Gabbard, the word ‘intelligence’ is not the

first one that comes to mind – or the second.”

Trump’s other picks came in for similar searing responses with Colbert in reference

to Pete Hegseth’s job as co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend, before now being nominated as defence secretary, joking that

“if we have a war on a weekday, he won’t know what to do”.

But it was the nomination of Matt Gaetz for attorney general, a man facing a House ethics investigation over sexual misconduct allegations, that drew the most biting ire of the chat show hosts and serious consternation among the more mainstream commentariat.

“In a lot of jobs, being investigated for sex trafficking underage girls would hurt your chance for advancement, but in the Trump administration, you can list it on your resume under special skills,” quipped Jimmy Kimmel, underscoring what NBC host and comedian Seth Meyers described as Trump’s cabinet of “goblins and weirdos”.

But satire aside, just what do Trump’s nominees, tell us about what we can expect from his administration?

The first important thing to note here is that so offbeat and outlandish are some of these choices that they may face difficulty being confirmed by the Senate, even one with a Republican majority.

It would only take four defecting Republican senators to reject them, but were they to block all three picks this would be an uncharacteristically defiant gesture.

Many serious political observers maintain that what Trump is doing in making such choices like Gabbard, Hegseth and Gaetz is laying down the gauntlet before taking office and challenging the Senate, in particular, to dare defy him over the nominations.

The president-elect is more than aware that it’s a changed Washington from that during his first term. He knows that Congress has been purged of his strongest critics and his cabinet picks are posing its biggest early test.

Some names on Trump’s list, mainly in departments he does not feel personally wronged by historically, are more conventional. These are of the kind that might have entered any Republican White House.

Among them are Marco Rubio, the Florida senator, to be secretary of state, which will be welcome news for America’s global allies. It was Rubio who co-sponsored a bill to make it harder for the president to pull America out of Nato.

The son of immigrants who fled Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Rubio is a rare Washington insider among the Trump appointments. His selection at the top of the administration perhaps also signals a desire by Trump to get tough with China. Known as a “China hawk”, Rubio shares the conviction that the Russia-Ukraine war is a sideshow to the more important battle going on between China and the United States. Other foreign-policy appointments have similar views and credentials, among them Mike Waltz a former Florida congressman, tapped to become national security adviser.

Like Rubio, he sides with the “prioritisers” in the Republican ranks such as JD Vance, the incoming vice-president, who argue that taking the Chinese threat seriously requires reducing commitments to European security and to Ukraine.

And then there is Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York and Trump’s choice to be UN ambassador, who has been an outspoken supporter of the president-elect throughout her tenure as well as a strong supporter of America’s alliance with Israel.

Former US Representative Tulsi Gabbard speaks during a campaign rally for former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York on October 27, 2024. Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP

Weirder realms

So much then for Trump’s more “conventional” nominees, but beyond these the president-elect has moved into weirder realms and more divisive selections, say critics.

There is the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who after his Super PAC bankrolling of Trump’s campaign to the tune of some $200 million, is now getting payback by being nominated alongside another wealthy man, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, to run the “Department of Government Efficiency,” which is a non-existent government department apparently created to form the acronym “DOGE” which is also the name of Musk’s favourite cryptocurrency.

Musk has, of course, been Trump’s man of the moment during his election campaign. Writing in The Washington Post, political columnist Dana Milbank detailed how close the two have become.

“He has been Trump’s sidekick: sitting in on a call with Russian president Vladimir Putin, joining Trump on a visit to the House Republican caucus, hanging around at Mar-a-Lago and entertaining Trump’s granddaughter,” wrote Milbank.

He noted also that if Musk’s plans are implemented, they would cut all government functions except defence, social security and Medicare by about 75%, while his DOGE co-director Ramaswamy has floated a plan that would eliminate veterans’ healthcare.

As Milbank observed: “Those who were wondering what the second Trump term would look like didn’t have long to wait. We’re already back to the chaos, caprice and overreach. Any hope that he might moderate – in truth, this was never more than a fantasy – has already been dashed.”

Which brings us back to those most divisive and controversial of nominations that of Gabbard, Hegseth, Gaetz, and also Robert F Kennedy Jr for health and human services secretary.

The latter, of course, will roil many public health experts, given that for years Kennedy has opposed the childhood measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, publicising debunked claims that it was linked to autism.

During the pandemic, Kennedy also came out against Covid-19 vaccines, and has been accused of circulating misinformation, including from a group called NewsGuard which has recorded 90 provably false claims spread by Kennedy or his Children’s Health Defence organisation.

That Trump has promised to let Kennedy “go wild” with health and food policy in his administration has sent shivers down the spines of many across the American political spectrum.

Kennedy now joins Gabbard, Hegseth, and Gaetz as the most controversial nominees who face a state confirmation process that could well turn into something of a political circus.

Host Pete Hegseth during "FOX & Friends" at Fox News Channel Studios on May 27, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images).

Polarising picks

While Republicans will from January control the Senate by a 53-47 margin – after picking up four seats in the recent elections – there are early signs that Trump’s most polarising picks may struggle to win over a critical number of senators.

“None of this is going to be easy,” John Thune, the newly-elected Senate Republican leader, told Fox News this week. “But  President Trump had a

huge mandate from the American people.”

But mandate aside, the promise of unified government, with the Republican Party’s sweep of the White House and GOP majorities in the House and Senate, is making way for a more complicated political reality as congressional leaders confront anew what it means to line up with Trump’s agenda and nominations.

The Matt Gaetz nomination for attorney general is perhaps the most explosive political hand grenade of all Trump’s nominations.

Many believe that Trump’s motive in picking Gaetz is that he is the ideal candidate to conduct a wholesale purge of the justice department, against which the president-elect harbours bitter grievances for pressing criminal investigations into his conduct during his first presidency.

Described by one Washington Post journalist recently as a “one-man wrecking ball”, Gaetz being a contender flies in the face of Trump’s campaign promise to clean up Washington.

The very fact that the FBI, over which the attorney general has supervisory control, had probed allegations that Gaetz sex-trafficked a minor makes his nomination shocking to say the least.

Launched in 2021, the two-year Department of Justice investigation looked into whether Gaetz “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift, in violation of House rules, laws, or other standards of conduct”.

Both Republican and Democratic Senators have now been pressing to see a House of Representatives ethic committee report into Gaetz’s conduct that was commissioned despite the criminal investigation ending without charges.

Hegseth, too, faces similar scrutiny following revelations that police in California investigated a sexual assault allegation against him in 2017.

This also before the fact that he has no experience in government, freely refers to “s***hole countries” and thinks Israel should annex the West Bank and also be allowed to take out Iran’s nuclear programme.

Many worry that Hegseth’s role as defence secretary, working as a double act alongside Trump’s decision to put Gabbard in change of America’s intelligence networks, is nothing but a recipe for disaster. Gabbard, time and again, has been critical of and has diverged from the US Intelligence Community’s decisions.

She has also been accused of “embracing” or “amplifying” Russian propaganda.

Among the risks, say current and former intelligence officials and independent experts, are that top advisers like Hegseth and Gabbard could feed the incoming Republican president a distorted view of global threats based on what they believe will please him and that foreign allies may be reluctant to share vital information.

That said, again it’s important to remember that they will first have to go through what will now definitely be a gruelling Senate confirmation process. All of which will involve weeks of public scrutiny, televised congressional committee hearings, and make-or-break votes on Capitol Hill.

Bypass Senate?

THIS, in turn, has led to speculation that Trump might resort to circumventing the confirmation process altogether and installing the nominees via what’s known as recess appointments which allow the president to bypass Senate approval.

Trump would do this, observers argue, because the common feature of his appointees is their loyalty to him and he remains determined to ensure that this time during his presidency he is surrounded by rock-solid allies, unlike after the start of his term in 2016.

This being the case, some more establishment Republicans are nervous indeed.

“The basic problem is that Trump can’t tell the difference between the national interest and his personal interest,” warned John Bolton, who served as national security adviser

and was no stranger himself to controversy during the first Trump administration.

In a recent interview with Foreign Policy magazine, he warned about the risks of a similar repeat of Trump’s behaviour once in the White House.

“As Louis XIV used to say, ‘l’état, c’est moi’,” Bolton wryly quipped, quoting an apocryphal saying allegedly made in 1655 and which translates as “I am the state” or “the state, it is me”.

What the extent will be of any pushback by a small number of concerned Republicans over Trump’s nominations remain to be seen.

The one thing for certain, though, is that America’s satirical late-night chat show hosts will not be short of gags and material for the foreseeable future.