At first glance, President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks seem mostly an ideologically eclectic mix. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the presumptive nominee for secretary of state, does not share the same understanding of the threat posed by Russian President Vladimir Putin as the presumptive nominee for director of national intelligence, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. Jay Bhattacharya, the presumptive nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health, does not share presumptive nominee for secretary of health and human services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s view on vaccines. If you are trying to understand Trump’s Cabinet nominations from a policy perspective, you are probably wasting your time.
What all the candidates share, some more than others, is a strong personal loyalty to Trump himself, not to the conservative movement or the Republican Party. But there are millions of loyal Trumpists out there, so loyalty to Trump is not the only common or determinative factor in his choices. It is a prerequisite, but is not alone sufficient to win a high-level position in the Trump administration.
The common theme running through most but not all Trump Cabinet nominees has nothing to do with either policy or ideology. Trump’s choices are best understood through his understanding of politics as entertainment. He has chosen a Cabinet of celebrities, personalities, and communicators. Trump wants a Cabinet that can advance his administration’s message compellingly on Fox News and elsewhere, set narratives through social media, and feel as comfortable meeting a senator as they would sitting down with a podcaster such as Joe Rogan.
World Wrestling Education
No pick better epitomizes Trump’s approach to building his Cabinet than that of education secretary presumptive nominee Linda McMahon. To say McMahon’s education policy resume is a little light is an understatement. After donating millions of dollars to Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, McMahon has been a member of the board of trustees for that institution since 2004. She was even appointed to the Connecticut State Board of Education, in which she earned bipartisan support for her confirmation.
But McMahon was in that position for less than a year before she resigned so she could run for the Senate — Connecticut law prevents State Board of Education members from soliciting political donations. McMahon lost that 2010 Senate race and a subsequent run for the Senate in 2012. Five years later, she was appointed by Trump to head the Small Business Administration, a position she served in competently.
Focusing on McMahon’s brief education career and her unsuccessful Senate runs sells her resume short, however. She is a successful businesswoman who helped take a small regional entertainment entity, the World Wide Wrestling Federation, and build it into an internationally recognized brand, World Wrestling Entertainment. McMahon was not just the off-screen brains behind that operation. She also ably served on-screen, often unscripted, demonstrating the stage presence and quick wit necessary to be an effective communicator.
Trump got to know McMahon’s talents in and out of the ring when he started hosting WWE events at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City before becoming a villain on the show, just like McMahon. The two maintained a professional relationship for years, with McMahon donating first to Trump’s charities and then to his political campaigns.
While the Department of Education has not been a big focus for Republican presidents in the past — it certainly wasn’t in the last Trump administration — taking on the entrenched power of far-left university and school administrators will be a top priority for the second Trump administration.
McMahon will be charged with rolling back President Joe Biden’s Title IX regulations, which recreated the due process-free sexual assault kangaroo courts of the Obama administration and enforced a radical gender ideology. McMahon will also be at the forefront of Trump’s effort to rid college campuses, especially, of faculty hiring processes from the strictures of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. These are highly contentious issues for which McMahon will receive plenty of negative press from national media. But when you’ve already been a WWE villain, with thousands of fans booing you, the editorial board of the New York Times can probably be sloughed off as only a minor irritation.
TRUMP CABINET PICKS: WHO’S BEEN TAPPED TO SERVE IN THE PRESIDENT-ELECT’S ADMINISTRATION
As seen on TV
What about Trump’s pick to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services? Presumptive nominee Mehmet Oz has healthcare experience but not the type that matches the job he has been nominated for. He was a successful surgeon, attaining tenure as a professor of surgery at Columbia University.
By all accounts, he is still an excellent surgeon. But the administrator of the CMS doesn’t do any surgery. It is a highly technical accounting job that manages how the federal government pays healthcare providers through the Medicaid and Medicare systems. If you wanted to save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, appointing a forensic accountant to head the CMS would be the right move. There is a strong possibility that Oz’s deputy will have that skill set. But that is not why Trump chose Oz for the job.
Trump chose Oz because Democrats are going to accuse Trump of cutting Medicare and Medicaid benefits no matter what he does. What Trump needs in a CMS administrator is a face that most seniors already know and trust to tell them that their benefits are secure under a Trump presidency. There are few people better qualified to do that than Oz.
Presumptive nominee for defense secretary Pete Hegseth has an impressive record, including two combat tours, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, where he won honors, including the Bronze Star. However, as impressive as that resume is, it does not suggest strong credentials or experience to run an organization with a budget of almost $900 billion and 3.4 million employees.
What Hegseth does have is over a decade of television experience on Fox News and almost a million followers on X. When defense contractors and establishment Pentagon voices push back against reforms Trump wants at the Department of Defense, Hegseth will be ready to jump on TV and post clips of his performance to be shared by his social media followers.
Sean Duffy, the nominee for transportation secretary, has no specific transportation policy experience. (Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg rarely dealt with federal transportation matters, either, as mayor of South Bend, Indiana). Duffy at least voted on annual transportation-related bills while in Congress. He also served as a district attorney before running for Congress.
But Duffy’s real skill set began to develop in 1997 when he first appeared on MTV’s Real World: Boston. He would later appear on MTV’s Road Rules: All Stars, on which he met his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, and then later on Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Battle of the Seasons. This is not a man at all uncomfortable near a television camera. His 100,000-plus followers on X don’t hurt, either.
The administrators
Not all of Trump’s Cabinet picks fit the communicator mold. His border czar, Tom Homan, has been in law enforcement his entire professional life, serving as a police officer after graduating college, then joining the Border Patrol before joining the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1984.
From there, Homan steadily rose through the ranks before then-President Barack Obama named him associate director of enforcement and removal operations in 2013. Two years later, Obama gave him a Presidential Rank Award, and two years after that, Trump promoted him to be the acting director of all of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. No one knows immigration law or border security policy better than Homan. He is an ideal candidate to secure the border and oversee Trump’s mass deportations.
Trump’s presumptive trade representative nominee, Jamieson Greer, has an equally focused resume, though it’s not as long. He was an international trade lawyer by training and represented U.S. Steel in a suit against China before serving the first Trump administration as Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer’s chief of staff. He is an ideal pick to implement Trump’s trade policy.
WHAT TRUMP HAS PROMISED TO DO ON DAY 1 IN THE OVAL OFFICE
Finally, there is no staffer who knows every inch of the federal government better than Office of Management and Budget presumptive director Russell Vought. One of the architects of Project 2025 and Trump’s OMB director in the first administration, Vought has a vision to fulfill Trump’s agenda throughout the federal government. He has a written plan on how to do it, and he knows how to execute it.
Populist politics personified
Trump is a unique politician whose style has been imitated but never matched. There are many reasons why the Washington establishment fears him, and his talent for using unconventional means to achieve his desired results is definitely one of them. Maintaining the support of his legions of supporters will be essential if he is going to be successful in bringing about real change in Washington. His Cabinet of communicators will be a cluster of weapons for getting the job done.