Trump Potential Cabinet as of 12/1/24
A varied mix of ideas and positions. Not all MAGA. Not all Republicans. Many are well known figures while others are completely unknown. Potential FBI Director Kash Patel could be the wrecking ball.
There is no telling what the success or failures of these potentials will be. Many will be lucky to get confirmed given the nature of Republican Senators that don’t want to help Trump at all. Spiteful bunch of fake conservatives that they are - never met a war they would not fund (course they never declare it a war, funny that). And will routinely stymie anything useful for the public.
There are general observations here though: Trump did pick non-traditionally with some prior personnel coming back (Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner (his father too France), Tom Homan).
Foreign policy. Trump will be very pro-Israel and attempt to bring in a peace in Ukraine, though dependent on Senate approval of any peace accords. Border will be a high priority - how that shakes out is still anyone’s guess.
Healthcare grouping (in blue next to Kennedy) will be most scrutinized. NIH will be in the best hands of the bunch - one contends. But that’s just a cursory opinion on Jay.
One is highly skeptical of a few choices - Surgeon General pick, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, is very pro vaccine and was a Fox News talking point generator. It also appears other media outlets are going after her (CityMD directorship, guilty by association). Dr. Oz is also a concern given his stances on transgenderism and surgeries. (Do your own research into these folks.)
Janette’s pick is quite likely tied to her sister’s marriage to Trump’s NSA pick:
Her sister, Julia Nesheiwat, was Homeland Security adviser in the first Trump administration and is married to Florida Republican Mike Waltz, who the president-elect has nominated as national security adviser. (Purple block)
DOGE: unofficial hedge trimmer of the U.S. federal government
American Conservative writes on what a DOGE mission could be - to destruct the National Endowment for Democracy and its sister organizations that make up the CIA-USAID-State Department hydra of regime change, color revolution chaos making in name-your-country-we-want-to-control stew.
From the American Conservative:
“It was NED-funded groups that led the [2014] Maidan revolution that bitterly divided the country and led to the toppling of its elected president, setting both Ukraine and the world on the course that’s led to this current crisis,” charged Marcetic. “The fact that Elliott Abrams (convicted in the Contra affair) was on its board for years and that its current president and CEO (Damon Wilson) is a longtime NATO-enlargement enthusiast who backed Ukrainian ‘democratization’ and U.S. military entanglement in the country tells you a lot.”
Meanwhile, according to Declassified UK, NED is supporting UK “press freedom” and investigative outlets like Bellingcat (2020 annual report here and policy plan here), which cut its teeth on investigating Kremlin crimes, propaganda, and election influence, has ties to the UK government, and gets pretty close to American politics. For the last eight years, Bellingcat has been absorbed in Russiagate, disinformation tracking, and seeing U.S. policy through the prism of democracies vs. autocracies, especially in Europe. No surprise that Anne Applebaum, Cold War warrior and author of Autocracy Inc.: The Dictators who want to Run the World, is on NED’s Board of Directors.
It seems almost natural then that NED’s “democracy promotion” would fit into the burgeoning misinformation/disinformation industrial complex…
CANVAS/Otpor!
Worth a watch. Included in my 2022 film: The Short History of the 2020s