By Otis Grotewohl
December 5, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump is finalizing cabinet selections before the inauguration date of Jan. 20, 2025. The most recent appointments blend in with the earlier announcements of villainous warmongers, racists, sexual predators and fascist ideologues.
Los Angeles protest against President-elect Donald Trump, November 2024.
New cabinet announcements appear to be eclectic and contradictory. For example, while many of the selections are former and current Congress members, corporate lawyers and business executives, other choices include far-right conspiracy theorists.
The most contentious selection was former Congress member Matt Gaetz as U.S. attorney general. Gaetz was previously under a “House Ethics Committee” investigation for sex-trafficking allegations, and he has since withdrawn from the appointment due to dwindling Senate support.
Trump’s second selection for U.S. attorney general is former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi served as one of Trump’s defense attorneys during his first impeachment trial, and she publicly denied the 2020 presidential election results.
Unhealthy medical choices
In addition to tapping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, the incoming Trump administration has picked other vaccine skeptics to lead medical-related agencies. Kennedy not only opposes vaccines, which save lives worldwide, he is a conspiracy theorist.
Trump announced television “physician” Mehmet Oz, popularly known as “Dr. Oz,” as Medicare and Medicaid administrator. Oz has a history of giving harmful medical advice on his former daytime talk show.
In 2014, Oz appeared before a Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance on charges of falsely advertising weight loss supplements. He also alleged certain foods could cure cancer, but the National Institute of Health has debunked those same claims.
Oz first appeared in the political arena in 2022 when he ran for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania and was defeated by Sen. John Fetterman. In one political debate, Oz stated that abortion decisions should be made by “women, doctors and local political leaders.” (self.com, Nov. 7, 2022)
The Trump team named Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health. He is a pro-business economist and licensed physician who encouraged “herd immunity” over COVID-19 vaccines. In 2021, Bhattacharya publicly stated that “the lockdowns were the single biggest public health mistake” during the pandemic. (apnews.com, Nov. 13)
Another anti-vaxxer nominee is former Congress member Dave Weldon (R.-Florida), who was named as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although Weldon is a licensed physician, he has also made misleading claims. Weldon has a track record of erroneously attempting to link vaccines to autism — a notion that has no scientific evidence.
The nomination for deputy secretary of HHS is Silicon Valley billionaire Jim O’Neill, who will work closely with Kennedy. Neither one of them holds a medical degree or has any clinical experience.
A peculiar selection for education secretary
Both Trump and the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” openly call for the destruction and elimination of the Department of Education. Trump named Linda McMahon as the secretary of that department. McMahon is the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, which she co-founded with her spouse, Vince McMahon.
Linda McMahon served one year on the Connecticut Board of Education in 2009. During that time, she promoted privatization of public education. McMahon resigned from the state board after it was discovered that she lied about her education degree.
McMahon served in the first Trump administration as administrator of the Small Business Administration from 2017-2019. She later resigned and formed a far-right super PAC called “America First Action.” In 2024, she and Vince McMahon were named in a scandalous lawsuit, charging they enabled ongoing sexual abuse of teenage “ring boys” by prominent wrestlers and ring announcers in the 1980s and 1990s.
Conflicting business interests
The Trump team is openly anti-union. Therefore, some were surprised when former Congress member Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R.-Oregon) was chosen as the secretary of the Department of Labor. She was one of only three House Republicans to support the PRO Act, which would have strengthened workers’ ability to organize. She was also one of the few House Republicans to endorse the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, which would have expanded collective bargaining rights.
All of Trump’s business and financial picks inherently contradict Chavez-DeRemer’s previous labor stances. Around the same time that he picked her to head the Department of Labor –an appointment praised by Teamsters President Sean O’Brien — the Trump team also tapped Russell Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought is an architect of Project 2025, which explicitly calls for dismantling labor unions and workers’ rights, as well as gutting essential federal programs such as Medicare and Social Security.
A recent selection was that of billionaire hedge fund boss Scott Bessent as the head of the Treasury Department. Ironically, Bessent had been a long-time Democratic Party donor and was considered a protégé of George Soros. Soros, a neoliberal billionaire, is often the subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories and is hated by most Trump “loyalists.” But more recently, Bessent has donated to and raised funds for the Trump campaign.
Provocative pick for FBI
The most controversial appointment since Gaetz and accused rapist Pete Hegseth as secretary of the Department of Defense is that of 44-year-old Kashyap “Kash” Patel, who has been named as the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Formerly a prosecutor for the Justice Department, Patel later served in the first Trump administration as Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense,
Patel was a vocal 2020 election denier who openly embraced bigoted QAnon conspiracy theories. Appearing on Grace Time TV in September 2022, he stated, “If it’s Q or whatever movement that’s getting that information out, I am all for it, every day of the week.” (motherjones.com, Dec. 1)
Patel authored a three-part children’s book series called, “The Plot Against the King,” in which Trump is referred to as “King Donald,” and Patel is a sidekick “wizard.” The series features QAnon-related storylines.
In addition to writing right-wing children’s novels, Patel released a book in 2023 entitled, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy.” The book writes about eliminating what Patel and other Trump “loyalists” call the “deep state.”
Patel’s appointment clashes with the status of current FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump to serve a 10-year term in 2017. Wray will either have to resign or be fired, and both Trump and Patel have signaled the latter as a possibility. In fact, Patel has stated he would “shut down the FBI Hoover Building ‘on day one’ and reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state.’” (Associated Press, Dec. 3)
Cabinet of capitalist parasites and bigots
Material conditions are different today than they were the first time Trump was inaugurated in 2017. The U.S. is viewed globally as an empire in decline. Meanwhile, the Global South is advancing through the rise of BRICS+ (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and other countries), especially with the assistance of China and Russia.
The incoming Trump administration is filled with a hodgepodge of parasitic financiers and reactionaries from conflicting backgrounds. For example, conspiracy-minded and anti-vaxxer nominees rhetorically clash with those connected to Wall Street, and banking and pharmaceutical industries.
The Trump team is carefully picking people they see as “loyalists,” but the people who worked under the previous administration considered themselves “loyal” to Trump at the time. Many of the current cabinet picks — as well as Vice President-elect JD Vance — have gone on record as criticizing Trump in the past.
Capitalism is a narcissistic and parasitic class-based system. Something Trump’s new cabinet choices all have in common is that they are “loyal” to their profit-driven class interests, above all else. Weaknesses and divisions within the incoming administration are starting to appear. Communist class consciousness can combat capitalism and the fascist, MAGA right!
