Donald Trump’s personnel choices for his new Cabinet and White House reflect his signature positions on immigration and trade but also a range of viewpoints and backgrounds that raise questions about what ideological anchors might guide his Oval Office encore.
With a rapid assembly of his second administration — faster than his effort eight years ago — the former and incoming president has combined television personalities, former Democrats, a wrestling executive and traditional elected Republicans into a mix that makes clear his intentions to impose tariffs on imported goods and crack down on illegal immigration but leaves open a range of possibilities on other policy pursuits.
“The president has his two big priorities and doesn’t feel as strongly about anything else — so it’s going to be a real jump ball and zigzag,” predicted Marc Short, chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence during Trump’s 2017-21 term. “In the first administration, he surrounded himself with more conservative thinkers, and the results showed we were mostly rowing in the same direction. This is more eclectic.”
Indeed, Secretary of State-designee Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who has pilloried authoritarian regimes around the world, is in line to serve as top diplomat to a president who praises autocratic leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban.
Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon has been tapped to sit at the Cabinet table as a pro-union labor secretary alongside multiple billionaires, former governors and others who oppose making it easier for workers to organize themselves.
The prospective treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, wants to cut deficits for a president who promised more tax cuts, better veterans services and no rollbacks of the largest federal outlays: Social Security, Medicare and national defense.
Abortion-rights supporter Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is Trump’s choice to lead the Health and Human Services Department, which Trump’s conservative Christian base has long targeted as an agency where the anti-abortion movement must wield more influence.
Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich allowed that members of Trump’s slate will not always agree with the president and certainly not with one another. But he minimized the potential for irreconcilable differences: “A strong Cabinet, by definition, means you’re going to have people with different opinions and…
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