U.S. President-elect Donald Trump shakes hands with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during a campaign rally at the Gas South Arena in Duluth, Ga., on Oct. 23.CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump has tested the limits of American politics before. He tried to overturn an election and convinced an entire party and a good portion of the public that he was robbed of a second term. He inspired a mob to invade the Capitol and suffered no penalty for it. He was indicted four times and now appears certain to escape prison. He introduced vulgar language and bizarre behaviour into campaign rallies and won the 2024 election.
Now, with his cabinet nominations, he may have finally run up against the boundaries of what Washington will tolerate.
Or maybe he hasn’t.
Either way, by selecting figures who, from the point of view of mainstream Washington, are nothing short of political outlaws, Mr. Trump is making a statement – one heard unmistakably in the halls of the capital’s bureaucracy, where many of the denizens of the “deep state” that he so reviles began preparing their resumes and plotting their resignations.
These selections are a vivid display not only of Mr. Trump‘s preference for loyalists but also of his contempt for conventional politics, his distaste for the totems and taboos of the capital, and his broad hostility to government institutions and established political byways.
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The latest expression of these sentiments came with his announcement that he will nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services, install former representative Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, and put former representative Matt Gaetz in the Justice Department as attorney-general.
None of these three apparent nominees is remotely considered a mainstream figure. Mr. Kennedy is regarded as a fringe gadfly in many matters of public health. Ms. Gabbard faces questions about her friendly views on the leaders of Syria and Russia. Mr. Gaetz is a radical who toppled a House speaker, has alienated most of his congressional colleagues and has attracted a series of ethical investigations from his peers, many of whom loathe him.
Mr. Kennedy, the oldest son of the slain senator Robert F. Kennedy, had run a Democratic presidential candidacy, then campaigned as an Independent, only to withdraw, endorse Mr. Trump and then appear frequently with him on the stump. In his victory speech, the president-elect said, “He’s going to help make America healthy again … He wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him get to it,” adding, ”Go have a good time, Bobby.”
Now Mr. Kennedy is Mr. Trump’s selection to run the sprawling department that includes, among other agencies, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control – two bodies that regulate areas where Mr. Kennedy’s positions are at odds with those of most health professionals.
Mr. Kennedy’s cries of alarm over obesity, his criticism of high-fructose corn syrup, and his drive to ban processed food from school lunches have won wide acceptance and even applause among public-health experts.
Even so, his views on the supposed dangers of vaccines and his aberrant behaviour have prompted criticism, even horror, among many health professionals. Benjamin Mazer, a Johns Hopkins University pathologist, described Mr. Kennedy, who has no formal medical training, as “a grade-A crank” in a blistering essay in The Atlantic this week.
Donna Shalala, who served as HHS secretary for eight years under president Bill Clinton, suggested that the selection of Mr. Kennedy was part of a wider effort to reward the president-elect’s supporters.
“Bobby Kennedy is not qualified to run a big, complex agency like HHS,” she said in an interview. “He has a set of views that are in conflict with science and are dangers to people’s health. There are plenty of responsible Republicans who were Trump supporters who could run that department. It’s an awful appointment.”
Similarly, the appointment of Mr. Gaetz has raised alarms. The former congressman – who resigned his seat this week after his selection for attorney-general had been announced – was investigated by the Justice Department for allegedly having sex with a 17-year-old and violating sex trafficking laws, but he was not charged. He once sought a presidential pardon from Mr. Trump.
“Mr. Gaetz does not have the high-level law practice and leadership experience typical of past attorneys general,” said Gabriel Chin, director of clinical legal education at the University of California, Davis. “Likewise, his conduct has given rise to a significant number of ethical questions, including an allegation of having sex with a high school student while he was a member of Congress. I’m very surprised that one of the many experienced Republican lawyers of unquestioned personal integrity wasn’t nominated.”
The first test of the new Senate leadership will be whether it allows Mr. Trump to install these nominees as recess appointments, permitting them to evade hearings and confirmation votes.
“That is a major challenge to the institution of the Senate and it raises the question of whether in the competition among the branches of government the executive branch acquires too much power,” Sen. Angus King, an Independent from Maine, said in an interview. “This would be an abdication of a fundamental congressional power. I don’t think these people can be confirmed, or at least it will be very hard to get some of them confirmed.”
Then again, it’s entirely possible that Mr. Trump doesn’t intend for them to be confirmed.
Perhaps these appointments were announced with the intention of signalling the extent of change the new president wants to impose on Washington, but with the quiet assumption that if these nominations fail, he can return to the well of MAGA talent and win confirmation of figures who aren’t as well known. A new set of nominees could have the attributes and attitudes of his original choices, but without the opprobrium.