Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks are giving the GOP buyer’s remorse

Donald Trump’s ill-considered choice for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, recently emerged from yet another U.S. Senate meeting, stopped to talk with media and vowed, “As long as Donald Trump wants me in this fight, I’m going to be standing right here in this fight.” 

“This will not be a process tried in the media. I don’t answer to anyone in this group, none of you,” he said, pointing to a TV camera as he took questions from journalists this month in the Hart Senate Office Building. “I’m a different man than I was years ago, and that’s a redemption story that I think a lot of Americans appreciate.”

But barely a month after Trump’s election victory Nov. 5, there is little redemption for Republicans. The spectacle of so many unqualified, embattled Cabinet picks has led to division and a growing sense of buyer’s remorse among many GOP senators and others forced to deal with this rogue’s gallery.

Low-information voters helped fuel Trump’s win by a slim 1.5% margin and less than 50% of the vote, and now there is alarm around the country and the world about the fallout — be it egregious Cabinet nominees, threats to politicize the Justice Department to target his enemies or calls for inflation-fueling tariffs.

Trump hasn’t even taken the oath of office for a second time, and already the chaos, calumny and craziness of his first term are unfolding again shamefully across the national scene.

You reap what you sow, and no one should be surprised, least of all Republicans who delighted in his victory. This issue of gross incompetence in selecting crackpots for sensitive national security positions goes way beyond differences among Republicans and Democrats. But it’s a mess Republicans must either try to clean up in a volatile confirmation process in the new GOP-controlled Senate in January — or live with, and force the rest of us to live with, too.

This is really who we are now.

First, it was former Florida U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, who was forced to withdraw his name from consideration after a bipartisan outcry and as Democrats pushed for the release of a House Ethics Committee report on a probe into his conduct, including allegations of sexual misconduct and other alleged crimes he has denied. Gaetz was also widely disliked on Capitol Hill, and a handful of Republican senators bravely said no.

Next came GOP consternation over two other nominees for sensitive roles in government that affect national security: Hegseth, who also has been accused of sexual assault, a charge he denies, and excessive drinking and mismanagement, and former Democratic U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, now Trump’s nominee to be director of national intelligence. Gabbard worries lawmakers from both parties and the intelligence community because of her parroting Russian propaganda and her widely criticized 2017 trip to Syria to visit then-President Bashar Assad, who was ousted by opposition fighters last weekend. Both served in the military, but neither has the customary experience to serve in these roles.

Many GOP voters who understandably were upset about high levels of inflation and immigration weren’t necessarily counting on Trump’s appetite for putting fealty over competence in filling such key jobs.

Then there’s his choice of loyalist Kash Patel for FBI director, a man with an enemies list on a vengeance tour against the “deep state,” to replace the widely respected director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump himself in his first term. Wray honorably said he would step aside at the end of President Joe Biden’s term to minimize the disruption to his agency, but the stench of Trump’s lawless retribution reeks with this play to politicize the FBI.