On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump will become the president of the United States for a second time despite, among other things, suggesting Americans ingest bleach in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and inspiring a violent attack on the Capitol that left multiple people dead. The first time Trump was in office, his Cabinet included relatively mainstream Republicans—like Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Many of the individuals he put in top advisory roles—such as retired Marine Corps general John Kelly as White House chief of staff and former Goldman Sachs president and CEO Gary Cohn as National Economic Council director—also had relevant experience. But this time around, Trump is expected to almost exclusively hire people from the far-right whose number one qualification is total loyalty to him.
Speaking to Fox News shortly after the election, Donald Trump Jr., who is “heavily involved on the transition,” indicated that he was focused on installing people who won’t speak up if they disagree with his dad, saying he is looking to staff the administration with individuals who “don’t think that they know better than the duly elected president of the United States.”
The most powerful and coveted gigs are obviously Cabinet positions, which technically require Senate approval. However, many served in “acting” capacities during Trump’s term, allowing them to get around that requirement. In addition, Trump has demanded that Senate Republicans let him bypass the confirmation process altogether by agreeing to “recess appointments.” That scares the hell out of at least one staunch conservative, but it doesn’t mean it won’t happen!
So far, Trump’s Cabinet nominees include:
Matt Gaetz, Attorney General (Just kidding!)
Less than two weeks after Trump nominated Gaetz to lead the Justice Department—despite almost no experience working as an actual attorney, and persistent allegations of sexual misconduct—Gaetz announced he was dropping out of the confirmation process. In a statement, the former congressman said it had become “clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition” and that “there is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle.”
The “distraction” in question concerned allegations that Gaetz had paid women for sex and had sex with a minor. While a Justice Department investigation into the matter had been dropped, and Gaetz had denied all wrongdoing, the House Committee on Ethics, which had conducted its own probe into the accusations, was set to release a report on its findings before Trump nominated Gaetz to serve as attorney general. Despite calls from many Democrats and some Republicans to do so, the ethics panel voted against releasing the report.
Fun fact: It’s not clear where Gaetz goes from here, given that he resigned from his seat in Congress. Among the potential possibilities: run for his old seat in the special election to fill it; take a job with Trump that does not require confirmation; become a host on Newsmax or Fox.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Health and Human Services Secretary
There may be something more terrifying than Matt Gaetz running the Justice Department—and it’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of the nation’s health. As Health and Human Services secretary, Kennedy would have power over numerous health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Health Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration. What are Kennedy’s qualifications for the job? Well, he doesn’t have any—he’s not a doctor and he’s never run a massive bureaucracy with thousands of employees and a nearly $2 trillion budget. He is, however, a rabid anti-vaxxer whose misinformation has been blamed for helping to cause a measles outbreak that killed 83 people; he’s suggested that chemicals in the environment can make children gay and trans; and he once claimed “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people,” and spare “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
Fun fact: Kennedy’s most famous cousin, JFK daughter Caroline Kennedy, has called his vaccine views “dangerous.” In 2019, three of his relatives, including two of his siblings, wrote an op-ed titled “RFK Jr. Is Our Brother and Uncle. He’s Tragically Wrong About Vaccines.”
Kash Patel, FBI Director
Where to start with this one? Here are some random facts about the man Trump wants to put in charge of America’s domestic investigative agency. In 2018 he drafted a memo attempting to undermine the Russia investigation into the then president. Between 2022 and 2024, he published a series of children’s books in which Trump is depicted as a king, while the villains are “Hillary Queenton,” “Sleepy Joe,” and “Comma-la-la-la.” In 2023 he released a memoir called Government Gangsters, which calls for purging government employees who were not sufficiently loyal to Trump. (Many individuals are singled out by name.) He sells pro-Trump merchandise under his “K$H” brand. He’s promoted dietary supplements that he claims will detox the body from the COVID vaccine, writing“Order this homerun kit to rid your body of the harms of the vax.” In a podcast interview with Stephen Bannon last year, Patel declared: “Yes, we’re gonna come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly—we’ll figure that out.”
