Deborah Daniels: Here’s what to make of Trump’s cabinet picks

In November, the voters spoke. The question is: What did they say?

It appears that Democrats have moved so far left on cultural issues that the voters perceived they were more interested in those issues than in securing the border and improving the economy.

President Biden upon entering office essentially opened the floodgates at the border and didn’t close them until the last several months of his presidency—far too little and far too late. And it didn’t matter that, in fact, the U.S. economy was doing well in comparison to those of other countries recovering from the effects of the pandemic: What people saw was that the cost of groceries and other essentials increased significantly.

President Biden shares the responsibility for inflation with former President Trump, because both added huge amounts to the federal deficit during their four-year terms. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Trump approved $8.4 trillion of new 10-year borrowing during his full term in office. Biden, in his first three years and five months in office, approved $4.3 trillion of new 10-year borrowing.

It is a fact of life, though, that whoever is president when the public is feeling an economic pinch gets full blame for that.

So it seems clear that the voters were primarily saying: Secure the borders and bring down prices and quit championing causes like transgender boys playing girls’ sports. Some voters also subscribed to the misguided but populist theory that the government needs to be “blown up.”

But I believe it is the former, not the latter, set of concerns that resulted in the president-elect’s victory. I do not think the majority of voters were actually in favor of blowing up the government, but that seems to be the message heard by the president-elect.

So what to make of various Cabinet nominees distrustful of government and intent on disruption? One fully expects a president to nominate people loyal to him, but several of these nominees are not even minimally qualified for their proposed roles and some might actually do harm through both their ineptitude and their misguided beliefs.

In the category of not only unqualified but also dangerous nominees, I would place Tulsi Gabbard (nominee for director of national intelligence), whose open sympathy for Vladmir Putin and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad will cause our allies to hesitate to share intelligence with us, making the world a more dangerous place; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (nominee for HHS secretary), whose belief in debunked theories of the alleged dangers of vaccinations will surely lead to measles and other outbreaks, potentially costing lives; Pete Hegseth (nominee for defense secretary), whose own mother has decried his serial abuse of women; and Kash Patel (putative nominee for the not-yet-open position of FBI director), who proposes to shut down FBI headquarters and has openly stated that he would weaponize the Justice Department to pursue political opponents, agents who have investigated Republicans and journalists who do not toe the Trump party line.

We will soon learn whether this nation still has constitutional checks and balances, when the Senate is called upon to execute its important advise-and-consent role.

Matt Gaetz was forced to drop out of the running for attorney general due to Senate opposition, and by the time of publication Pete Hegseth might suffer that fate. This would suggest that the Senate still values its role, understands that the nation’s security depends on that role, and will decline to confirm unqualified and dangerous candidates.

The landscape changes daily; keep watching.•

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Daniels is a retired partner of Krieg DeVault LLP, a former U.S. Attorney and assistant U.S. attorney general and former president of the Sagamore Institute. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.

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