Donald Trump’s cabinet picks started off Trumpian but not manifestly ridiculous. South Dakota governor and dog-killer Kristi Noem for homeland security, a position she has no background for but at least she has several years of executive experience. Fox talk show host Pete Hegseth has deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan on his CV for his role as secretary of defense. Right-wing senator Marco Rubio, who has Senate foreign relations committee experience, for secretary of state.
But after that came the proposed appointments — they’re all subject to Senate approval, and the Republicans now control the Senate — that look like mere trolling. Tulsi Gabbard, a Putin and Assad supporter and amplifier of Russian conspiracy theories, for director of national intelligence. Robert F. Kennedy Jnr, an anti-vaxxer and COVID-19 conspiracy theorist, for health secretary. And Matt Gaetz, an accused child sex abuser and sex trafficker, as attorney-general. The ghost of John Mitchell must be furious.
Gabbard — a former Democrat contender for president and a Fox contributor — is a supporter of better relations with the Putin (and Xi Jinping) regimes and a critic of US military aggression abroad (except against Muslims) — and may draw support from the left. Kennedy Jnr will be backed by both left-wing and right-wing anti-vaxxers as a hero against pharmaceutical companies. Trump supporters will see their nominations as clever 3D political chess by Trump. But even Republicans are visibly aghast at Gaetz’s nomination.
Apart from Noem’s executive experience and, arguably, Rubio’s foreign relations committee stints, none of those nominees have relevant experience for their jobs — nor does Elise Stefanik, Trump’s proposed UN ambassador (normally a cabinet-level role); Lee Zeldin, his putative Environmental Protection Agency head; or “American investor and landlord” Steve Witkoff, designated to be Middle East envoy.
It’s common for administrations to hand out ambassadorships to donors and presidential friends, but not diplomatic appointments of consequence. And it’s not unknown for previous administrations to appoint unqualified people to key roles. (Speaking of Kennedys, Bobby Kennedy’s stints as Senate committee counsel were his only qualification for his role as attorney-general, but he was an outlier in a cabinet regarded in the early 1960s as “the best and the brightest”.)
What all the appointees have in common is ostentatious loyalty to Trump — in some cases after having been earlier Trump critics. In other words, merit is irrelevant for Trump; only loyalty counts.
It’s not the first time Trump has elevated loyalty over merit in public sector appointments. One of his last acts as president in 2020 was to remove huge swaths of the federal public service — anything in “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character” — from employment protections, meaning merit appointees could be sacked at will and replaced with loyalists.
The intention was explicitly to sack up to 50,000 merit appointees, or to so intimidate them that they would fall into line. The incoming Biden administration reversed the order before it could be implemented, but Trump has committed to reinstate the order “on day one”.
This isn’t merely about loyalty to Trump. The very logic of Trumpism is a rejection of the idea of merit. The concept of “merit” suggests an independent yardstick by which things can be measured — policies, ideas, actions, people — which is at odds with the worldview of Trump and his supporters. There is no independent means of assessing what people say and do; there is only what Trump determines to be convenient at any particular moment.
Even expecting Trump to be self-consistent is a fool’s errand. This is a man who says “I never said that” about his own public statements. The idea of holding Trump to account based on whether his actions are consistent with his promises, or whether he provides effective leadership, is similarly flawed: his supporters are uninterested in Trump’s poor record during his first term as president. It is who Trump is, not what he says and does, that is important to his supporters.
In that sense, picking an accused sex trafficker as attorney-general, or a possible Russian asset as director of national intelligence, or an anti-vaxxer as health secretary, is an authentic expression of what Americans voted for. It continues the theme of the defeat of the “elites” peddled by so many Trump supporters. In this case, the “elites” are people who have experience, or expertise, in a subject area or have experience in administering complex structures. The idea that you need any expertise or experience to run major departments of state in the most powerful government in the world is just elite nonsense.
If the triumph of Trumpism is the triumph of ordinary Americans over elites, there should be no public sector roles based on merit. The idea of merit is part of the neoliberal culture Trumpism vehemently reacts against. Whatever its other flaws, and the reality that its application was hopelessly corrupted by corporate interests and venal politicians, neoliberalism foundationally celebrated merit: your sole value as an individual was your economic potential. It didn’t matter what colour, gender, sexual orientation or religion you were, or where you came from: you should be judged by how you maximised your economic value; merit was import in neoliberalism, not tribal or cultural or community values.
Trumpism rejects that. Tribal values are paramount — what matters is the colour of your skin, your gender, your cultural values, your loyalty to the leader. Merit is a direct threat to those priorities, allowing people who aren’t white, or male, who don’t share your values, who might even sneer at your values or mock the leader — to prosper. Merit leads to elites, and elites are an affront to ordinary people.
In a world where merit is an abhorred value, Trump’s team is a perfect reflection of the man and his movement.
