TIME Correspondents Brian Bennett and Philip Elliot break down Trump's most controversial new appointments to his administration.
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00:00Hey, I'm Brian Bennett. I cover the White House for Time.
00:03Hi, I'm Phil Elliott. I'm a columnist and correspondent for Time here in Washington as well.
00:07And Brian and I are just down the hall from each other here.
00:10But we're going to have to talk about what we've been discussing in each other's doorways all week.
00:15Yeah, Phil, we've had a lot of nominations from Donald Trump.
00:19You wrote this week about Matt Gaetz and what that means.
00:24What are your thoughts right now? Why is that such an important topic right now?
00:27I have never seen a cabinet pick so roundly criticized and condemned
00:32and even preemptively rejected by the members of the president-elect's own party.
00:37Matt Gaetz is a firebrand. He's made himself no friends in the House.
00:41I mean, he toppled a House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, without so much as a plan, let alone an alternative for him.
00:48He's universally hated in the House.
00:51The Senate has very little use for him, but he's a hero in the MAGA movement.
00:55The problem is he has a little bit of a history here.
00:59The department that he's been picked to oversee, the Justice Department, has investigated him on perhaps potential child sex trafficking.
01:08There have been allegations of revenge porn, drug use.
01:12I mean, there's just this is a it's like spring break come to come to the Capitol.
01:18Can someone be nominated to take over a department like the Department of Justice that they were being investigated with recently?
01:25How does that work?
01:26You know, we've never been here before.
01:28And I think we're going to be having a lot of these conversations in the next four years with Donald Trump back in the White House.
01:36I mean, it's just never crossed anyone's mind that can you it's like putting an arsonist in charge of a fire department.
01:41But this is what we're going to be doing here for a while.
01:44Matt Gaetz has vowed that he will exact revenge.
01:48Steve Bannon, the president's perhaps biggest outside adviser, has said the hunted have become the hunters.
01:55And that there really is just this pervasive sense that this is just the first of many steps that Trump is going to put in place to exact revenge on his enemies, foes, even as critics.
02:07And, you know, the attorney general is a really powerful position here in government.
02:12And it's it can touch every single American's life in a huge way.
02:17I mean, the FBI is part of the Justice Department.
02:19The Supreme cases at the Supreme Court are argued on behalf of the administration by the solicitor general who is part of the Justice Department.
02:27Alcohol, firearm, tobacco.
02:28I mean, all of this D.A. like all of this falls under the Justice Department.
02:34It's a huge machine and we're not really sure how I'm not sure how seriously to take the president's nomination.
02:41Matt Gaetz, he says he's serious.
02:43People around him say serious, but also quietly in the last couple of days, he's also nominated some pretty serious level headed, even handed people as the subcabinet.
02:54So even Democrats, I know, in the Justice Department breathe a sigh of relief when they heard some of these names that, OK, these are the people who would actually be running day to day.
03:03And if history is any guide, they'll be the people working as an acting attorney general or acting deputy attorney general while we sort through the Matt Gaetz confirmation hearing or if someone else is nominated in his place.
03:15I mean, what are you hearing, Brian?
03:17I mean, it sounds like this kind of tracks.
03:18What do you think?
03:19Yeah.
03:20What do you think he's trying to do with Matt Gaetz's nomination in general?
03:24And what's the Trump loves to get attention?
03:27He loves to look like he's breaking things in Washington.
03:29What do you think is his big picture objective by putting Gaetz forward as not as a nominee?
03:35So the two things can be true at once.
03:37And I think both of these in varying truth, varying degrees are accurate.
03:41One is he just wants to upend everything, that this is him saying the way we've done this in the past has not worked.
03:47We're not going to go back to doing it again.
03:49And, you know, anyone who doesn't like this, if you don't fall in line, I'll know you're disloyal and your next couple of years going to be really miserable.
03:58The other theory, and it's been interesting, everyone from Ann Coulter to Chuck Todd have pointed this out, that maybe this is a false flag and this is a way to soften the ground for, OK, it won't be Matt Gaetz.
04:10But whoever comes after it has to be better than Matt Gaetz, that this is a way for him to do a false flag softening of the ground.
04:17So when his real nominee comes forward, it's going to be curious.
04:21The problem here is Matt Gaetz has resigned from Congress, at least for the 118th Congress.
04:27The idea there was it would spare him a very if the early detail leaks are accurate, a very messy report from the Ethics Committee.
04:36The thinking is if you're no longer a member of the House, the Ethics Committee can't come and get you.
04:40Well, that might not be the case, given how much of the Ethics Committee report has already leaked and how much the senators are asking for the full copy of it.
04:48So, yeah, that might get Matt Gaetz might have left the House, maybe for good, maybe for just the end of the 118th with really no protection under him.
05:00But to say that this has been one of the things that has consumed Washington would really be an understatement.
05:07Brian, to pivot to stuff you're reporting, there's a similar panic happening in the intelligence community, isn't there, with Tulsi Gabbard taking over?
05:16Yeah, that's exactly right.
05:17So when Tulsi Gabbard was named as the nominee for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a number of intelligence officials that I talked to were really alarmed.
05:30They're concerned about her track record of parroting Russian propaganda, taking stances against standard and bipartisan US foreign policy positions.
05:45She put out a video two years ago where she described biolabs in Ukraine as being in danger of releasing pathogens if the war continued, and that should be a reason for a ceasefire, which was like a direct parroting of things that the Russian government had been putting out.
06:04And that drew concerns among people who watched this really closely about her judgment, and that if she was in charge of the 16 other intelligence agencies which the ODNI is in charge of, that she could be in a position to censor intelligence reports or defund or de-emphasize investigations into Russia or other places.
06:29I spoke to someone who said that at the CIA, for example, after she was named, a number of people have gone and are looking for new jobs, are thinking about they have to get their resumes cleared, and they're going to the HR department to try to get their resumes cleared so that they could go out and look for other things.
06:51In case Tulsi Gabbard and other people that Trump nominates in the intelligence community decide that they want to come in and really start putting political pressure on intelligence conclusions, which intelligence analysts are trained to try to speak truth to power, to say unpopular things to the president, challenge the received wisdom of the president.
07:21What the president is hearing and put forward facts.
07:24So the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard really sent a chill within the intelligence community, and we'll have to see how that plays out.
07:35I think she will also have a hard time during confirmation hearings.
07:39We'll have to see what the senators say about it, particularly Republican senators.
07:45I do think this, like you mentioned, both the Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard seem to be a kind of litmus test by Trump to test the loyalty of the Republican senators and to see how far they will let him go in putting forward these really controversial nominations.
08:03What do you think about that?
08:04I think that's right.
08:05I mean, it's also worth remembering.
08:06I mean, this is a relatively new position that came out of the post 9-11 reforms.
08:12I mean, this is not just some administrator of some backwater.
08:15The director of national intelligence is the chief spy advisor to the president of the United States.
08:21It's a huge position with great oversight, great authority, which really was put in a position because there was a feeling that the intelligence community wasn't sharing in the lead up to 9-11 enough information that they had.
08:34And this is a person who's supposed to come in and make sure that the intelligence community is all working together and identifying what the most important threats are and sharing the right information so the country can be prepared for these threats.
08:46And like you said, that position has a tremendous amount of power and influence.
08:52Yeah.
08:53I mean, it's also, for those unfamiliar with Tulsi Gabbard's record, she also briefly ran for president, I mean, as a Democrat.
08:59So, I mean, there's a whole lot of head scratching about this one.
09:03I just don't know if this gets through, which brings us maybe to our third, maybe potential first cut, but not final cut of the cabinet with Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host, who's been nominated to be the defense secretary, overseeing a huge piece of the federal government, national security cornerstone here.
09:26Yeah, I mean, he is a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, but it's one thing to run a soundstage in Manhattan for Fox and Friends weekend.
09:35It's another to run a huge bureaucracy of the Defense Department.
09:38I mean, what are you hearing from your folks on this, Brian?
09:41Yeah, I mean, it's a really fascinating thing to watch President-elect Trump nominate a Fox News anchor to run the biggest and most influential part of his cabinet.
09:57It's laudable that Hegseth has on the ground combat experience as an infantryman.
10:08He has been vocally critical of women in combat, has said women should not be in combat, which has been a major push by the Pentagon going back to the Obama administration.
10:21And he feels like the culture wars have bled too far into how the military chooses its leadership, and so he would come in with a big project to try to reverse that.
10:38But I think another big thing is that he just hasn't had the senior leadership experience that you need to run a massive federal agency that reaches around the entire globe.
10:50And so that's going to be a really interesting nomination process as well.
10:55I also love to talk about RFK Jr. for HHS or the Health and Human Services, which, again, it's a massive bureaucracy that touches American lives, whether it's through the Centers for Disease Control, medical investments, drug approvals.
11:18The Head Start pre-K program is an HHS part of it because it funds public health for the young and the most vulnerable poor kids.
11:28I mean, this is just one of those, this, I think, is the most surefire nonstarter among Senate Republicans, just because he's an anti-vaccine guy who was, he's spouted a ton of things that just fall way outside the mainstream of contemporary science.
11:48And with a potential pandemic brewing out West with bird flu, I mean, is this the guy we really want to put in charge? I mean, this is a guy who's anti-vaccine. The only reason you and I are back at the office anymore is because, you know, to his credit, President Trump did Operation Warp Speed.
12:06President Biden got it into the CVSs around the country and that we're able to get back to some semblance of normalcy because of vaccines. RFK has said vaccines are garbage, that maybe they cause autism.
12:19I mean, he's trying to get fluoride out of the water. I mean, there's just this whole, I mean, even his comments that have not been, they're not isolated. His comments about HIV and AIDS being the byproduct of sexual party drugs.
12:36I mean, it's just like this is all just outside of the realm of acceptable or even debatable science. And presumably President Trump understood, President-elect Trump. I mean, we're going to have to, President-elect President Trump is going to be one of these weird constructs that we're going to have to go through for a while as protocol goes.
12:56But it's he has to have known this was going to get backlash. And maybe that was that the point was just to kind of throw salt in the wound of everyone, especially Democrats who are staring down a bunch of these nominations that some of them they'll go along with. Some of them they absolutely will not.
13:14But you can imagine some Democrats going along with Marco Rubio's nomination to run the State Department. No one's going to really object to Doug Burgum running Interior. I mean, these are some of these Doug Collins running the VA. None of these are, I mean, no one loves them, but they're also not as objectionable as say, you know, RFK Jr., who, I mean, the entire campaign, he was nothing but a buffet of sideshow.
13:43Subplots. I mean, it's just a question now of does does this tank his nomination or is all or is all the chatter about this nomination going to overshadow, say, Donald Trump himself? And Brian, you've covered the man now for a while. You know, he does not take kindly to others creeping into a spotlight.
14:06No, he doesn't. So he's both drawn to celebrity and doesn't want anyone to overshadow him. So, you know, I think he was drawn to RFK Jr.'s celebrity and his and his what he did and to get a lot of attention over the last year when he was running for president.
14:24And, you know, I think he wanted also to appeal to the the aspect of his party that the fringe aspect that's been critical of vaccines. But there's a lot of things about RFK Jr. that are not aligned with the Republican Party or even even things that that Trump has has gone with. I mean, he has talked about wanting to strip out chemicals and foods. Well, that's going to require additional regulation.
14:49And that cuts against the larger project that Trump pitched to voters, which was that he would strip away regulations. There's going to be a lot of tensions that would play out if if RFK Jr. actually gets confirmed and gets to hold the reins for for the Health and Human Services Department.
15:09Another person I want to talk to is in the immigration space, Tom Homan, who who ran Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And but so he was basically he was the head of the American deportations program under the Trump and Trump's first term.
15:28And he has been nominated or he's been named by Trump to be a border czar, which is a which is like, you know, it's a job that doesn't have at this point an agency or funding. What do you think is at work there? And why do you think Trump wanted to reach for for someone like Tom Homan for that job?
15:49I mean, the symbolism here is as strong as his biography. I mean, no one can credibly question whether Tom Homan can get the job done. I mean, he is he was the architect of the first Trump term border policy and it was it it it accomplished what Trump wanted to see done.
16:10Whether it was good policy is a totally different matter. But he gave Trump what he wanted in elevating him from acting ICE, Immigration, Customs Enforcement, to this border czar role. It expands his power, but also leaves him in a largely an unchecked place that I mean, what committee summons him before before Congress to testify.
16:33I mean, the way it's been described to me is it's going to be in charge of not just the border, but also the planes coming into the country, the boats and ships coming to the country, maybe railroads. I mean, just so much of I mean, food inspection at the border. There's just so much that this could touch.
16:50It's totally sweeping without really any oversight. And I just have to take a moment and appreciate everyone who is freaking out about when President Obama named czars. Suddenly they're all forgetting that czars are bad and they're fine with Tom Homan's a good czar. Like, give him his own little his his dacha and let him have his little fiefdom in government.
17:19And he can boss the cabinet around however he wants. I just don't know that this is an actual workable situation any more than I think the office of government, the Doge, the new government efficiency office that Elon Musk, Elon Musk, Varma Swamy, who are doing this blue ribbon commission outside of government, it turns out we're going to be working 80 hours a week, but not being paid and not government employees.
17:48I mean, it's this is that extra government, just one step removed that just really makes all of this seem so oddly familiar to the first term when the people actually in Trump's ear were not the people who even had government email addresses.
18:05They were not on government payroll, but yet we're pulling the strings from either their couches on Fox News or their townhouses on Capitol Hill or their wallets, frankly, around the country. I mean, what, Brian, are you having deja vu on this or am I alone on this?
18:23I am having deja vu. I think it's really interesting that Elon Musk and Vivek Rawasamy will be nominally in charge of cutting government spending, but it seems like they won't have any actual government job or official government role, which leaves them on the outside at this vaguely titled Department of Government Efficiency, basically making recommendations into the Trump administration on what needs to be cut, but without any of the teeth or tools to actually implement any of that.
18:52For Elon Musk, he has companies to run, so I can understand why he wouldn't necessarily want to take a government job, but it's hard to see what kind of impact it's going to have. People often have titles, but without power and without people to employ and without a budget to control, that limits your influence.
19:17Yeah, I mean, we've also done, we've been through, I mean, Al Gore did Reinventing Government and that was actually done on the inside when he was vice president, but we've also seen these outside commissions and expert panels come through with, you know, Simpson-Bowles came through with a really, you know, aggressive plan to curb government spending during the Obama years.
19:38And those two very well-intentioned, thoughtful, sober men, they basically were told, thank you for your paper, we're going to put it on the shelf, and nothing ever happened to it because cutting government spending is fundamentally not a popular option here in Washington.
19:54Everyone wants to cut spending until it hits their district or their state. And, I mean, heading into the midterms that are already going to be difficult for Republicans, historically, the party in control of the White House on a first term, although this isn't technically a first term, it'll feel like a first term for a lot of voters.
20:13Typically, they get shellacked. I mean, Barack Obama lost 63 seats in his first at-bat. This is not going to be an easy fight for Republicans. And Republicans, do they go along with the Trump-endorsed, you know, empowered government spending cuts when it means, you know, maybe that sea lane doesn't get staffed, maybe that port doesn't get re-upped, maybe that airfield doesn't get repaved.
20:40I mean, these are, it's all fun and games to cut spending until you actually wind up with, you know, a bridge collapsing or, you know, that exit just doesn't work anymore. I mean, this does take a lot of money to run this country. And it's not like there's, I mean, yes, we all know the stories of the $10,000 toilet, but a lot of the times, just the day-to-day interactions with government could be made so much better with targeted money, not less.
21:07We're going to have to see how this all plays out. What do you think the Senate's going to do? Do you think any of the Republican senators will be willing to stand up to Trump on these nominations?
21:15I think in private, several will. I think we saw a lot of that coming through already. John Thune, coming right off his win as the new Senate majority leader designate, he was saying that, you know, some of these are just going to have a really difficult time getting across the finish line.
21:31Perennial, deeply concerned senators of Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, they may end up throwing up some roadblocks. And who knows? I mean, there could be some, John Cornyn, who's about as conservative as they come, has been skeptical of some of these nominees.
21:48I mean, you're going to have some deference given. I mean, for instance, Elise Stefanik, you and I both know her as a member of the House. And before that, a staffer in the Bush administration. She's not the most obvious choice to be the U.N. ambassador.
22:03But I think a lot of lawmakers, including some Democrats, are going to give some deference because, you know, elections have consequences and the president should have the team, as long as they're not, you know, an extreme outlier, to form a government and see, you know, test it out, see what actually happens.
22:25And finally, I mean, Brian, you and I have had a number of, OK, are you at your computer or am I? Especially on Friday afternoons during the Trump administration. Who's taking this firing by tweet of a cabinet? I mean, just asking, I mean, who might be the first nominee to be thrown under the bus? And then who might be the first confirmed member of the cabinet or senior administration official to get thrown under the bus?
22:50I mean, you and I both, we've both written at length. Loyalty is a one way street with this president. He demands it from the people around him, but he is incapable of showing it to anyone, anyone really. Even his family has moments of being on shaky ground with him. What are your thoughts on this, Brian?
23:09I think that tells us, I think you're right. I think if you follow the pattern of how Trump nominates people, when he employs people, how long he keeps them, that this slate of names that we've seen so far is probably not going to be the exact slate of names that takes the actual cabinet positions come January 20th when Donald Trump is inaugurated.
23:35I think you're right. I think some people will be cut loose, thrown under the bus, and some people will just be flatly rejected by senators who won't cast a vote.
23:51And then even when people start working for Trump, if they aren't carrying out what he wants to get carried out, we'll be fired by tweet.
24:04Also keep in mind, I mean, even if they're doing the job exactly the way they think he wants, Trump always surrounds himself with people who are going to start fights behind the scenes and needle each other because Trump just empowers people to create that dysfunction internally.
24:20He loves it. It's like a reality show for him. But as a result, so much time is spent caring for the gossip mill, the water cooler churn, and actually not running government, which is actually kind of bad.
24:34If you're a conservative who wants to see Trump succeed, given another four years with four years under his belt, actually understanding for the first time the powers he had, managing water cooler grievance is not good for the conservative movement or the MAGA movement, but it might be the best the Democrats can hope for, at least for the next two years.
24:56It does give us a lot to write about.
24:58It's an embarrassment of blessings.