Get Ready for the Trump Administration

by Ambassador Thomas Graham and David Bernell

The United States is a country that is economically and militarily strong. It has helped to extend liberal democracy and security worldwide, defeating or keeping at bay dictatorial regimes that would cause massive suffering and violate human rights against their own people and their neighbors. It has maintained its constitution, its democracy, and its ability to increasingly serve its citizens – through economic measures (think Social Security and Medicare and how they made it so that being old didn’t also mean being poor), public health advances (clean drinking water regulations, vaccines of all kinds, the Centers for Disease Control), education (Pell grants and student loans), Constitutional and legal changes to promote equality before the law (the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, the 19^th Amendment, the right to privacy, Title IX), and a host of countless other policies, programs and initiatives over the decades.

Still, at the same time, millions of Americans have found in 2024 that the American government has not been serving them well over the past four years, and even before that. The economic insecurity people all over the country face is very real and palpable, so it is not a surprise to see democratic governments all around the world face electoral defeats in the past few years. The global economy was completely disrupted by the pandemic, and over the past few years the supply and cost of just about everything has been adversely impacted at some point.

Now that the United States will join those countries seeing governments voted out of office, the election of Donald Trump to a second term in the White House can be expected to have significant ramifications. The Trump Administration will be in office soon, and there will be a very clear break in how the American government operates and publicly talks about politics and policy. It is not only a matter of changing policy on taxes, environmental regulation, spending levels, and other typical government functions that will be at issue. Such changes in policy are expected whenever a new chief executive and a new party comes into power.

What is more important, and critical, is the extent to which the American government will be able to continue to deliver the benefits – often unseen and taken for granted – that it has long provided to its own citizens and much of the world during and after a second Trump term. The biggest concerns are first, the threats to people’s democratic rights and liberties, and second, to a federal government that may find many of its capacities to serve the country and the American people weakened or eliminated so that they cannot be easily or quickly restored, or that they will be placed in the service of loyalty to one man and his closest supporters.

Since the voters in our American democracy decided to elect (nonsensically, to us) a man who is a demonstrated failure in government, a convicted felon, corrupt, and someone who admires and envies authoritarian leaders and the powers they hold, there is the need to safeguard the institutions and practices of democracy against the establishment of creeping authoritarianism. Trump seems eager to act with the same freedom from restraints and accountability that other strongmen leaders like Putin, Hungarian President Victor Orban, and Turkish President Recep Erdogan have been able to do in the present day, and that many other authoritarians have done in the past.

Masha Gessen, a Russian journalist who has written critically of Putin and the Russian government for many years – and is now a fugitive from Putin – knows very well what the establishment of authoritarianism looks like. Gessen described the 2024 American election as one in which the country “voted against the values of liberal democracy.” (The satirical publication The Onion put this most concisely, with the headline on November 6 saying “America Defeats America.”) Gesson pointed out the attractiveness voting in this way when governments are not seeing as delivering for their citizens – “‘Liberal democracy offers moral constraints without problem solving’—a lot of rules and not a lot of change—'by contrast autocracy offers problem solving without moral commitments.’” This is why there has been such support for Trump, whose voters don’t use the word authoritarian, but instead say they see him as strong, authentic, feared by others, not a politician, someone who will upend the political system.

Gessen argues that populist autocrats have assumed power “to transform their countries into vehicles for their singular will,” pointing out how Vladimir Putin of Russia and Victor Orban of Hungary have been the exemplars of this type of governance. They have abandoned societal inhibitions, weakened and eliminated competing centers of power, and amplified the grievance of one’s own group, heaping hate on assorted others, particularly on groups that cannot speak up for themselves. By doing this, they have ensconced themselves in power permanently. Seeing as how Trump has “tracked the early record of Putin and Orban in important ways,” Gessen says, and that Trump has already dropped hints about staying in the White House beyond a second term, this “gives us a chillingly clear sense of where Trump’s second term may lead.”

The political battles over the preservation of democratic accountability and limitations to presidential powers in the United States will unfold over the course of the entire Trump Administration. Moreover, the potential growth of presidential power will be advanced within a variety of political and policy disputes between Trump and Democrats. (A side note: Since there is little expectation that the Republicans in Congress will advance any criticism of Trump or have any real opposition to him on policy and practice, it seems more accurate to refer to Trump vs. the Democratic opposition than it does to characterize Congressional Republicans as an independent force in American politics. Democratic members of Congress such as Joe Manchin, Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the Squad often challenged Biden on both the right and the left and secured changes in legislation and policy, but the same dynamic should not be expected with Trump.) This means that questions over policy, such as mass deportation, may also hinge on presidential powers. An example of this could involve an effort to impound appropriated funds or redirect them toward a policy that Congress did not fund, such as hiring more immigration officers and building encampments to house those arrested before they can be deported. These are the types of actions that allow would-be strongmen over time to “transform their countries into vehicles for their singular will.”

The second great concern regarding the harm Trump can cause involves the extent to which his changes to the federal government will severely weaken the government’s ability to serve the public interest. There is a saying in Washington DC that “personnel is policy,” which means that the people who will conceive, establish, and carry out policy are the crucial element in getting things done. As Trump begins to appoint people to serve in his government, this maxim suggests that many government agencies may see their aims drastically redirected or their capacities stripped, or both.

Those fears are given a tangible presence when one looks at a few key nominations Trump has made in the vital areas of national defense (DoD), intelligence (NDI), health (HHS), how the law itself is interpreted and enforced (DOJ), and the administration of our government (a newly envisioned department of government efficiency, or DOGE, which seems mostly to be a way for Elon Musk to stay close to power and influence spending and policy as much as he can). These nominations highlight the problem of how the American government is going to be run, as Trump has chosen for various positions what could be regarded as the polar opposite of what those particular cabinet assignments might represent. As historian Timothy Snyder puts it, in looking at these same five areas when looking at Trump’s nominations, “It is a mistake to think of these people as flawed. It is not they will do a bad job in their assigned posts. It is that they will do a good job using those assigned posts to destroy our country.”

Trump’s cast of characters to run the government was led in unacceptability by Matt Gaetz, whose failed nomination for Attorney General offers at least some hope that the worst of the worst will not end up in positions of power and authority. Gaetz was perhaps the least liked member of Congress (especially by his own colleagues) and was known more for breaking laws than enforcing them. He had been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for some time for sex crimes with an underage woman. Two women testified that Gaetz had paid them to have sex with him, and the committee obtained records showing that Gaetz paid more than $10,000 to them. The witnesses also said that they had seen Gaetz committing sex crimes with a 17 year-old girl. When the House Ethics Committee began to deliberate whether or not to release its report on crimes committed by Gaetz, he abruptly resigned from Congress. While Speaker Johnson said that it would not be appropriate for the Committee to release the report after Gaetz resigned, the report was soon released, confirming the details of what had been reported. Even before the Congressional report was released, this was all too much, and Gaetz’s nomination was withdrawn.

The person Trump nominated for Attorney General after Gaetz withdrew is Pam Bondi, the former Attorney General of Florida. She holds far better qualifications than Gaetz, and carries none of the personal, political, and (allegedly) criminal baggage that he does. She is, however (as expected), a Trump loyalist. She was part of Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment, and she supported Trump’s election denials in 2020, asserting that fraud and fake ballots stole the election from Trump. Seeing as how Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested that the Justice Department go after his political rivals and critics, lock up Joe Biden, and serve as a means of Trump’s “retribution,” the question of how much Pam Bondi wants to do Trump’s bidding, and how much she’ll be able to turn her agency into a “Department of Revenge” is both significant and, at this point, unknown.

Within the Justice Department that Bondi will oversee, the implementation of any revenge policies or prosecutions will be carried out in large part by Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist who is being nominated to lead the FBI. The current head of the FBI, Christopher Wray, was appointed by Trump in 2017, but he is now considered to be too much a figure of the establishment, and not sufficiently loyal to Trump or MAGA. Patel has called for shutting the FBI Washington office, firing all of its top leaders, and bringing the country’s law enforcement agencies “to heel.” Patel has called for prosecutions of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hilary Clinton, Liz Cheney, and even former Trump appointees like Bob Barr and John Bolton, saying that they are all part of the “deep state” seeking to target Trump. “The Deep state is continuing to weaponize the power of the state against internal dissidents,” Patel has written, and he says that, “One of the most cunning and powerful arms of the Deep State is the Federal Bureau of Investigation…the FBI is now the prime functionary of the Deep State.” Patel is likely to be a key actor in any “revenge” actions decided upon by the Trump government.

Another Trump nominee who might be expected to turn a government department away from its historical role is Robert Kennedy Jr., who has been nominated to run the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Kennedy has no medical, scientific or government experience, and is best known for endorsing various conspiracy theories that have no relationship to science or to sound medical practices and services. Informing his outlook on health policy and the American government is a view that government policy and industry practices are causing the “mass poisoning” of the American public. The most notable example of this is Kennedy’s false assertions regarding vaccines. He has said that childhood vaccines are related to autism, a charge that has been completely rejected by medical science. He also falsely called the coronavirus vaccine—which saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives—as “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” Vaccines – for measles, polio, diphtheria, mumps, the flu, COVID, and especially smallpox – represent some of the greatest achievements ever in combatting the spread of deadly diseases. The smallpox vaccine led to the complete eradication of the disease worldwide by 1980 (after more than 300 million deaths in the 20^th century alone), and the success of inoculating people against this disease has been evident for so long that even George Washington ordered soldiers in the Continental Army to be inoculated against smallpox in 1777. Kennedy, however, would lend his position and his voice to reducing the widespread acceptance and usage of these life-saving vaccines. Rather than promoting and improving public health, Kennedy would lead HHS in the opposite direction and would be more likely to diminish public health.

Under Kennedy will be Mehmet Oz, better known as Dr. Oz, a well-known TV personality who is also a medical doctor, but who has also promoted a variety of questionable claims about alternative medicine, faith healing, and paranormal activity, leading to considerable criticism of him by the medical community for years. Dr. Oz’s job will be to oversee the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, with a budget of one trillion dollars a year, an immensely important institution for the country. Dr. Oz, who has no experience in government or leading large organizations, matches Mr. Kennedy in that he is entirely unqualified to carry out the job for which he has been nominated. A third nominee in HHS is David Weldon, who would be in charge of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC is charged with preventing and controlling the outbreak of infectious diseases, and would thus be the lead agency in the effort to stave off another pandemic like COVID-19. Weldon is a medical doctor and former Congressman. He is also a vaccine skeptic who has pushed the false claim that childhood vaccines cause autism. As CDC Director, Weldon is likely to reinforce Robert Kennedy’s worst instincts and policies, most notably involving vaccination guidelines and recommendations. Considering the records of Kennedy, Oz, and Weldon, and the aim they share with Donald Trump to thoroughly upend the government agencies they will run and the health care sector overall, it is easy to imagine that medical research, standards, and practices in the United States will suffer considerably under their leadership, as will the health of many Americans. The scientific standing of the United States in global health leadership is likely to diminish as well.

Pete Hegseth has been nominated by Trump for Secretary of Defense. This is a job that carries the responsibility of managing America’s armed forces – the strongest military forces in the world – and the largest bureaucracy in the world. Competent leadership is needed in these highly precarious and dangerous times with war in Ukraine and the Middle East, and global challenges from Russia and China. Hegseth, like Gaetz, has been mentioned in connection with sex crimes, allegedly drugging a woman and having sex with her. However, unlike the case with Gaetz, there is not a past or ongoing proceeding addressing this allegation.

Still, Hegseth is unqualified for the job for many more reasons. Though he has served in the U.S. Army, he has no military leadership experience or any demonstrated proficiency in military policy or strategic miliary analysis. He is instead a Fox News media personality, a performing television entertainer. The major concern he has voiced regarding America’s military is that women, “wokeness,” and transgender individuals have weakened the U.S. military. Soon after he was nominated by Trump, Hegseth stated that the U.S. armed forces, “should not have women in combat roles,” that “men in those positions are more capable,” and that instead, women “could be medics or helicopter pilots or whatever.” He also argued that, “a more empathetic and effeminate military isn’t a more efficient one…Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on bikes. We need them, but not in the military, and especially not in combat units.” This stands against longstanding military policy and practice, and his view that the military is weakened by women is contrary to the evidence of America’s fighting forces. Hegseth seems unaware that women have served as part of U.S. military forces – capably, effectively, and with many commendations – in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as numerous other vital and even dangerous roles going back to World War I. Hegseth’s views on women are part of his larger complaint that the U.S. military is “woke” and that the military cares more about diversity and equity than in maintaining a strong, effective fighting force. To that end, Hegseth is expected to end any program or emphasis that seeks to develop a diverse military force, and to replace military officers and Pentagon personnel he sees as woke or who he considers got their position only through racial or gender preferences. Lastly, when it comes to actual defense policy, Hegseth further displays his aims in saying that the U.S. needs to engage in a new “crusade” both at home and against Muslim countries. A book he released in 2020 was called American Crusade, calling for the advance of Christianity in the world, which would come at the expense of non-Christians, particularly Muslims. And of course, the word crusade is dynamite in the Middle East, evoking images of invading forces from Christian Europe centuries ago. Such words are sure to make even America’s Islamic friends in the region wary and distrustful.

With respect to national intelligence services, Trump has nominated Tulsi Gabbard, a former Congresswoman, as the Director of National Intelligence. This job is central to the performance of all of the national security leadership and organizations, and it supervises the entire national intelligence community. As such, it can be one of the most sensitive offices in the U.S. government on key issues. Gabbard has no experience in intelligence, having never served in Congress or elsewhere in this capacity. Considering her views and statements over the years, she is not only unqualified, she is dangerous to U.S. and global security. During her time in the House of Representatives, Gabbard visited Syria in 2017 and held meetings with Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad. While U.S. policy has seen the Assad regime as a danger to American interest and allies for decades, Gabbard stated that, “Assad is not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States.” Considering that Gabbard met with Assad and refused to condemn his actions – Assad used chemical weapons against his own population and has been indicted as a war criminal – Gabbard has put herself in the position of aligning with a horrendous dictator.

Gabbard’s misdeeds go beyond Syria, as she has repeatedly embraced Vladmir Putin and Russia’s actions, particularly with respect to Ukraine. She has argued that the United States prompted Putin’s invasion saying that the U.S. and NATO should have accommodated Russia’s interests and goals regarding Ukraine. She has also parroted Russian media talking points on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and on conspiracy theories involving bioweapons labs in Ukraine. Her public comments have even earned her praise in Russian state media, with one news program calling her a “superwoman.” Gabbard’s words and actions with respect to Russia and Syria have prompted opposition among Democrats. As Senator Elizabeth Warren said, “Do you really want her to have all of the secrets of the United States and our defense intelligence agencies when she has so clearly been in Putin’s pocket?” However, it is unclear if there will be any opposition skepticism among Republicans in the Senate who will be asked to confirm her nomination.

One area that is not usually considered to be an issue that is critical to the security and well-being of a nation is immigration. In a second Trump presidency, however, this issue will loom large, and mass deportations are expected. Trump has made the issue of immigration central to all his campaigns, and he is now appointing Stephen Miller as his White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, and as “homeland security advisor.” Miller is the most outspoken Trump loyalist on immigration, and he holds extreme anti-immigration views which led to policies during Trump’s first term such as the “Muslim ban” and separating immigrant children from their parents. Working hand-in-hand with Miller will be South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who has been nominated as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. She and Miller will lead the deportation effort which Trump says will target at least one million U.S. residents, and perhaps as many as 12 million. Noem has been outspoken on border policy and immigration from Mexico (in spite of South Dakota being nowhere near Mexico), and sent National Guard troops from South Dakota to Texas in support of an anti-immigration operation undertaken by the Governor of Texas, who has challenged the federal government on immigration policy. Noem used funds from South Dakota’s Emergency and Disaster Fund to pay for sending troops to Texas, yet she refused to use those funds or National Guard troops to help out her own state when it suffered significant flooding in the summer of 2024. Noem’s actions to point to the kind of boundary-pushing that Trump and Miller will want to see as she leads the agency charged with carrying out Trump’s promise of mass deportations.

Alongside the panoply of abysmal nominations for important government agencies (and the people discussed here are only a small number of the appointments to be made), there is Elon Musk, who Trump has said will lead a “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE. There is no such agency – DOGE would simply be an office for Elon Musk (and Vivek Ramaswamy) to advise Trump and the administration on cutting government spending and programs. However, Musk has Trump’s ear after supporting Trump in the election and donating over $275 million to his campaign. Musk has called for cutting $2 trillion in government spending. This may be entirely unrealistic, but his presence and his clout in government suggest that the effort to remake the U.S. government will not only be an ideological project to try and change personnel and policy throughout government, but also an effort to eliminate some parts of the government altogether. Musk already managed with a barrage of tweets to stop Congress in December from passing legislation to keep the government funded and open. His influence can be expected to remain significant.

Taken together, this new president and his new government will be one of the least competent, most ideological, and weakest America will have ever fielded. And yet they have big ambitions and will have broad authorities to change American politics and society. Domestic and global politics are about to get increasingly chaotic and dangerous, and what is so distressing and unsettling is that much of this will be from self-inflicted wounds.