TRUMP’S NOMINEES
The incoming Trump administration is expected to feed the military whatever it wants. The nominee for Secretary of Defense is Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and war veteran.
His main concerns seem to be combatting “wokeism” and forgiving US troops for any atrocities committed while on duty. On the other hand, he has said that the US war on terror “burned two decades of money, our best and brightest, good will [and] military capabilities.”
The Secretary of State nominee, Marco Rubio, is known for being fervently anti-China and strongly opposed to leftist regimes in Latin America. Nothing new there. He fits in with Trump’s proposed 60% tariff on goods imported from China.
Mike Waltz, national security adviser nominee, is also a China hawk.
The nominee for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is more interesting. She has been criticized by Democratic hawks for meeting with Syrian Pres. Bashar al-Assad and for not being as anti-Putin as she should be. According to The New York Times she has criticized “counterproductive regime-change wars that make our country less safe, that take more lives and that cost taxpayers trillions more dollars.”
Trump will want to set his own agenda, and his cabinet members may end up being flunkies with no power. We shall see.
Source: The New York Times, 11/15/24 and The Economist, 11/16/24)