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Tom Brenner

And so it begins. Judging from his Cabinet picks, President-elect Donald Trump’s second term in the White House won’t be as bad as the first. It will be much worse.

Voters who convinced themselves that Trump would focus on quality-of-life issues were wrong. As he announced in March of last year, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/06/trumps-dark-i-am-your-retribution-pledge-how-gop-enabled-it/" target=_blank>he wants revenge</a>. “I am your justice,” he said back then. “And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

His choice of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/13/matt-gaetz-trump-controversial-attorney-general-pick/" target=_blank>former representative Matt Gaetz (R-Florida)</a>, of all people, as attorney general can only be seen as a howitzer aimed at the Justice Department, which is No. 1 on Trump’s long enemies list.

Federal prosecutors had the temerity to make Trump the first former president to be charged with a crime. The FBI had the audacity to search his home. Now, let’s see how much all these agents of the purported “deep state” enjoy being under the thumb of one of Trump’s most loyal and obnoxious MAGA acolytes. Like Trump, Gaetz was investigated — but not charged — by Justice, in his case for alleged sex trafficking.

Almost as vengeful is Trump’s choice of former congresswoman <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/11/13/tulsi-gabbard-trump-director-national-intelligence/" target=_blank>Tulsi Gabbard</a> as director of national intelligence, overseeing all of our spy agencies. The intelligence community is also on Trump’s list of those to be punished.

A onetime Democrat who became an independent and then a MAGA Republican, Gabbard has publicly taken the side of Russian President Vladimir Putin in his war to conquer Ukraine. While she was in Congress, she <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/11/13/tulsi-gabbard-syria-assad/" target=_blank>traveled to Syria</a> and met with President Bashar al-Assad, a murderous dictator who has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. If Gabbard were applying for a job at the CIA or the NSA — two of the 17 agencies she would oversee — I seriously doubt she would qualify for a security clearance.

And there’s more: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/11/13/pete-hegseth-trump-senate-confirmation/" target=_blank>Pete Hegseth</a>, a Fox News commentator who spent the past seven years as co-host of “Fox &amp; Friends Weekend,” will be Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense. Trump’s rocky relationship with “the generals” got worse during the campaign, when two of the respected military men who worked for him during his first term — Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly, who was Trump’s chief of staff, and Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — went on the record with the assessment that Trump is a “fascist.”

Hegseth is a decorated veteran who ably led platoons in war, but there is nothing in his résumé to suggest he is remotely qualified to lead the nearly 3 million personnel of the world’s mightiest fighting force. What likely attracted Trump is Hegseth’s macho posturing against racial and ethnic diversity in the military, which senior officers have long seen as a great strength, and against women being deployed in combat roles.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), an Army veteran who was seriously wounded in Iraq while flying a helicopter in combat, told CNN that she has a question for Hegseth. “I would ask him, where do you think I lost my legs? In a bar fight? I’m pretty sure I was in combat when that happened. You know, it just shows how out of touch he is with the nature of modern warfare if he thinks that we can keep women behind some sort of imaginary line, which is not the way warfare is today.”

As was the case during his first term, Trump does not so much assemble a Cabinet as cast a reality show. He wants the members of his team to have a certain look, a certain backstory, a certain persona. He chose South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem as his nominee for homeland security secretary despite — or perhaps because of — her story about shooting her family’s puppy for misbehavior. He knows that Gaetz is widely loathed on Capitol Hill, including by fellow Republicans, and has the sneering arrogance of a professional wrestling villain. Hegseth has the square-jawed looks of a G.I. Joe action figure.

Trump’s announcement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health and human services secretary is in a category of its own — a cruel joke on all of us. If his conspiracy-theory distrust of vaccines ever becomes policy, children will die.

These are unserious choices that will make our nation less secure. The one exception, so far, is Trump’s pick of Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida to be secretary of state; he, at least, has the requisite knowledge and experience. But I doubt he will be able to use those tools, since Trump bases his foreign policy on which foreign leaders are sufficiently obsequious in flattering him and which are not.

I haven’t mentioned the proposed “Department of Government Efficiency,” a new advisory body headed by billionaire Elon Musk and millionaire Vivek Ramaswamy. The DOGE will have no power to actually do anything. If this is just a way to keep the yapping tech bros busy and away from the West Wing, it is the most rational move Trump has made so far.

I know all the clichés about how elections have consequences and presidents should have latitude to build the Cabinet they want. But the Senate has a duty to reject nominees who are obviously and dangerously unfit — such as Gaetz, Gabbard, Hegseth and, of course, Kennedy. Trump is daring Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the next majority leader, to defy him. For the sake of the country, Thune needs to call Trump’s bluff.

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2009 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary

Coal to Cream: A Black Man’s Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race (Free Press, 1999)

Last Dance in Havana: The Final Days of Fidel and the Start of the New Cuban Revolution (Free Press, 2004)

Eugene Robinson writes a column on politics and culture and hosts a weekly online chat with readers. In a three-decade career at The Washington Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper’s Style section.

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President-elect Trump is casting for a reality show, not a Cabinet

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