The first wave of nominees to the Trump administration announced this week included normal Republicans—Susie Wiles as chief of staff, Elise Stefanik as ambassador to the United Nations, Lee Zeldin at the Environmental Protection Agency, Marco Rubio as secretary of state. All are grown-up players who have political histories that preceded Donald Trump and became fully MAGA.
But the second wave—it is impossible to tell if Mr. Trump is announcing appointments or trolling his enemies. Pete Hegseth as defense secretary? This is unserious and deeply alarming. He is a decorated military veteran with Ivy League degrees, but he has no serious governmental or managerial experience, no history of international accomplishment. The Pentagon is a mammoth bureaucracy overseeing almost three million employees, including those in the military services. The defense secretary is a world leader: If North Korea launched a nuclear missile, he would be in the room with the president, advising and counseling. In the past 10 years Mr. Hegseth has made his living as a breakfast TV host and culture warrior. This isn’t the right fit. At this point in his life, Mr. Hegseth, 44, lacks the stature and depth required of the role.
As for Matt Gaetz being nominated as attorney general—well, this is just straight-out trolling, right? The four-term Florida congressman has won a reputation as disruptive, divisive, aggressive, lacking in groundedness and wisdom, and dogged by ethics allegations. He seems to see politics as an offshoot of showbiz and has entertained his followers with successive attempts to take down GOP leaders in the House, on behalf of—well, it’s never quite clear. This we need in America’s top law-enforcement official?
The choice obviously isn’t meant to reassure anyone outside the MAGA base—or even those within it who are intelligent. It is an insolent appointment, guaranteed to cause trouble and meant to cause friction.
We are back to the Island of Misfit Toys. What a mistake. Mr. Trump often confuses his own antic malice for daring, his own unseriousness for boldness. How amazing that in the rosy glow of election, he will spend so much political capital and goodwill on confirmation fights he may well, and certainly deserves to, lose.
I turn now to the Democrats. Here is some advice to the party that I consider to be all wrong. It is from Elizabeth Warren in Time magazine and was published two days after the election. Her advice to her party: Back to the Future. Go back to “mass mobilization”—peaceful protests—to recharge “the resistance.” Step up oversight of Mr. Trump’s “corruption and abuses of power.” “Slow down confirmation and expose Republican extremism.” Searching for the middle ground is foolish. “Uniting against Trump’s legislative agenda is good politics because it is good policy.”
It is also a recipe for unending clash and political theater—Resistance Part II, take it to the streets. In the shock of 2016 it made sense that his opposition make itself heard, encourage itself, see itself. But a repeat isn’t in line with the mood of the country, which now isn’t electrified by politics but exhausted by it. And in some funny way demonstrations especially would make the Democratic Party look weaker. As if it has no other moves. As if it’s trying to avoid something, a sober look inward, and trying to cover it up by chanting.
It looks to me as if the rising argument in the party is for a left-wing populism, but it’s not certain what that would look like. Ms. Warren said the system is “rigged,” giant corporations get tax breaks and billionaires pay nothing. The job of the Democratic Party is to “unrig the economy.”
A few days later, in a Twitter thread, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said, “Time to rebuild the left.” “We are beyond small fixes.” The economic policies of the past 50 years have left places hollowed out. “Rapacious profit seeking” destroyed “the common good.” Unchecked new technologies were allowed to “separate and isolate us.” In response, the left has offered only “uninspiring solutions.” “The right regularly picks fights with elites—Hollywood, higher ed, etc.” Why doesn’t the left fight with billionaires and corporations? “Real economic populism” should be the Democrats’ purpose. But it must change its ways: “Our tent is too small.” Don’t keep out those who don’t agree on every social issue. “Build a big tent. Be less judgmental.” It tells you a lot about the party’s problems that that last part had to be said.
As to the resistance, Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic offered what seemed to me wisdom. After 2016, “a large faction of Americans declined to treat Trump as a president with democratic legitimacy.” He’d lost the popular vote, invited foreign actors to interfere in the election. “So they fancied themselves members of the ‘resistance,’ or waged lawfare, or urged the invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. Immediately after Trump’s inauguration, liberal groups started to push for his impeachment and removal from office.”
Now Mr. Trump returns under different circumstances. He received some three million more votes than Kamala Harris. “No one believes that a foreign nation was responsible for his victory. . . . No one alleges illegality in this campaign.” A 2016-style resistance to Trump is “untenable.”
“As a Never Trump voter who thought January 6 was disqualifying but who respects the results of this election,” Mr. Friedersdorf writes, “I urge this from fellow Trump skeptics: Stop indulging the fantasy that outrage, social stigma, language policing, a special counsel, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or impeachment will disappear him. And stop talking as if normal political opposition is capitulation.”
“Unaligned Americans who don’t even like Trump are tired of being browbeaten for not hating him enough.” If voters have made a terrible mistake, “that’s a risk of democracy, so we must live with it.” Mr. Friedersdorf himself doubts Mr. Trump’s character, judgment and respect for the Constitution. He fears recklessness in some areas and cruelty in others. What he urges toward Mr. Trump is in line with our past: “normal political opposition,” which is “more likely to yield good civic results.” “Our constitutional and civic checks on executive power are formidable, frustrating every administration.”
“Until 2028, normal checks can constrain Trump.”
These are wise words.
I close with this. People say they fear authoritarianism from Mr. Trump, latent or overt fascism, a reign of intolerance. My fears are in the area of foreign policy. Mr. Trump no doubt believes he’s ready for a major foreign crisis, but he’s never had one. I mean not something like the pandemic, a crisis with foreign-affairs aspects that rolled out over a matter of months and years, but a sharp and immediate crisis, a big and crucial one. He tends to think foreign affairs comes down to personal relationships, but it doesn’t. Xi Jinping, “Little Rocket Man”—he had them all wary in his first term. Who is this guy? Better not push him. But now they know him—how he operates, what he wants.
He isn’t a mystery to them anymore. He isn’t a mystery to anyone. That will have some impact on things going forward.