Elect Trump and Welcome The Cabinet From Hell
Trump had the most corrupt and incompetent presidential cabinet ever but if he gets allowed four more years in the White House, look out for the cabinet from hell.
A new trump cabinet would make the word sycophant sound tepid. His quisling appointees would first, pledge total, unquestioned loyalty and have absolutely no question that trump lost in 2020 because the election was rigged.
They would be more than willing to do the king’s bidding and whatever it takes to enact white, Christian nationalist agenda where laws and the constitution would be no deterrence. As trump said, he’d be a dictator for the first day and then, he’d see.
The underlings would be willing to punish apostates and purge the government of non-loyalists as they press the trump agenda, from jailing journalists, confining tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants in sprawling camps, invading Mexico to seize drug dealers and mobilize the Army to quell domestic protests.
The denizens in a 2024 trump cabinet could see the likes of Tucker Carlson, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, J.D. Vance, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kari Lake, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kash Patel. And that is just the start.
The pick for vice president would likely come from a large group of grovellers that include:
Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio
Vance, 39, was elected to the Senate in 2022 with the trump’s endorsement. First and foremost, Vance has reiterated trump’s false claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential contest.
Vance has said that the Democrats don’t want to control immigration because they want to flood the voting rolls with people of color who would vote Democrat. Vance was referring to the white racist conspiracy theory, known as the “Great Replacement” theory. To block the great replacement, Vance supports spending $3 billion to complete trump’s border wall along the southern border.
During his 2022 U.S. Senate campaign, Vance advanced the false belief that President Joe Biden was flooding Ohio with illegal drugs by not enforcing security at the southern border.
In October 2016, Vance called trump “reprehensible.” As the 2022 election got closer, Vance changed his tune, calling trump “one of the few political leaders in America that recognizes the frustration that exists in large parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, eastern Kentucky and so forth.” Vance said trump was a good president and regretted criticizing him.
In a July 14, 2021, story Associated Press reporter Jeff Dean said, “To distill the essence of Vance as a public figure, the word that enters my mind is an anatomical reference beginning with the letter a.”
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Arkansas governor
Sanders, 41 was elected governor in 2022 with trump’s endorsement. She is the daughter of former Arkansas governor and senator, Mike Huckabee.
Sanders was trump’s fiery press secretary from 2017 to 2019. She was the White House spin doctor when trump fired FBI director James Comey in May 2017 because Comey wouldn’t drop the probe into Russian influence for trump in the 2016 election. Sanders said she heard from “countless members of the FBI that are grateful and thankful for the President’s decision.” Emails later showed Sanders lied and there were not countless member backing up the firing.
After Comey accused trump of lying about the circumstances in which he was dismissed, Sanders said, “I can definitively say the president is not a liar, and I think it’s frankly insulting that question would be asked.”
In June 2017, Sanders said that trump “in no way, form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence.” That came after a 2016 campaign speech in which trump said, “So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you?… I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise.”
Sanders fully defended trump’s family separation policy, which separated migrant children form their parents at the Mexico border. In 2019, Sanders said on the Christian Broadcasting Network that “God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times, and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sanders pledged not to implement any mask mandates or vaccine mandates and said she opposed abortion, even in cases or rape and incest.
Kari Lake
Lake, 54, is a former television news anchor, former candidate for governor of Arizona in 2022, and U.S. Senate candidate in Arizona for the 2024 election.
She won the Arizona GOP nod for governor in 2022 and after losing, completely blamed unfounded voter fraud for her defeat. Through it all, she continued to back trump’s lies about voter fraud and called for imprisonment of those who accepted trump’s defeat, including her Democratic opponent, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lake led anti-mask rallies and said she was taking hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19 infection. She said that, as governor, she would have hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin produced in the state to “make it easier for us to get these lifesaving drugs.” Neither drug has been shown to be effective in treating COVID-19 infections.
Lake endorsed Jarrin Jackson, a far-right online streamer, in his campaign for the Oklahoma state Senate. Jackson had a record of making anti-Semitic comments, including claims that “the Jews” are evidence that “evil exists”; “Jews will go to hell”; and “Jews [are] taking over the world.” She accused President Joe Biden and Democrats of harboring a “demonic agenda.”
Lake grew up as a Catholic, previously identified as a Buddhist and as of 2022, she identified as an evangelical Christian.
Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla.
Donalds, 45, an African American, has been in Congress since 2021.
Donalds was arrested in 1997 for marijuana distribution but the charges were dropped as part of a pre-trial diversion program. In 2000, he pleaded no contest to a felony bribery charge as part of a scheme to defraud a bank. His record was later sealed and expunged.
Donalds has claimed that Biden is not the legitimate president of the United States. In 2020, Donalds was part of the “Freedom Force,” a group of incoming House Republicans who “say they’re fighting against socialism in America.” The following year Donalds was blocked from joining the Congressional Black Caucus.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
Taylor Greene, 49, has been in Congress since 2021 and identifies as a Christian nationalist.
Greene has promoted anti-Semitic, white supremacist, and far-right conspiracy theories, including the white genocide conspiracy theory, QAnon, and Pizzagate. She has embraced other conspiracy theories including government involvement in mass shootings in the United States, baseless allegations of murder against the Clinton family, and 9/11 conspiracy theories.
During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Greene promoted Russian propaganda and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin. Greene is a huge trump supporter, 110 percent behind trump’s claims of voter fraud.
Tucker Carlson
Carlson, 54, the bombastic former Fox News star, has the support of trump’s wife, Melania, who said he would make a powerful extension of her husband. Last month, trump said, “I like Tucker a lot…He’s got great common sense.”
Carlson hosted a nightly political talk show on Fox from 2016 to 2023. After he was fired, Carlson started his own talk show, “Tucker” on X, formerly Twitter, and has been described as the most influential voice in right wing media and trump’s highest profile supporter.
Carlson is a strong critic of immigration and is known for circulating far-right, debunked conspiracy theories on such topics as white replacement, COVID-29, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by trump supporters and Ukrainian bioweapons. Carlson’s remarks on race, immigration, and women have been described as racist and sexist.
Attorney General
Stephen Miller
Miller, 38, was trump’s speechwriter and senior advisor for policy. His politics have been described as far-right and anti-immigration. Miller is a proponent of white identity politics and is on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of extremists.
Miller was the chief architect of trump’s ban on Muslims coming to the U.S., the reduction of refugees admitted to the country and trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents.
As a White House spokesman, Miller lied about widespread electoral fraud, conspiracy theories and promoted articles for white nationalist publications.
Miller supported a plan to make mass arrests of undocumented immigrant families in 10 major cities. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., one of two Muslim women in congress, called Miller a white nationalist.
Miller heads “America First,” a non-profit dedicated to suing the Biden administration. He has been a leading recruiter for right wing lawyers to staff the executive branch.
Jeffrey Clark
Clark, 56, is a former assistant attorney general for environment under trump. After trump lost the 2020 election, Clark urged the Department of Justice to investigate the bogus claims of election fraud. The top level of the Justice Department refused.
In 2020 and 2021, Clark allegedly helped trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. His actions were reviewed by the District of Columbia Bar which recommended discipline to the DC Court of Appeals in July 2022. Clark was indicted along with 18 other people in the prosecution related to the 2020 election in Georgia.
Mike Davis
Donald trump Jr., has recommended Davis as an interim attorney general. Davis, a major attack dog for the ex-president, has promised that a new trump administration would be marked by a “three week reign of terror” where children would be put in “cages” and prosecutors and journalists who opposed trump would be put in jail.
Davis leads a group called the “Article III Project,” which is trying to prove trump’s false claims that his indictments are politically motivated. The group has produced a 60-second digital spot that opens with a figure of Lady Justice, followed by a gavel and pair of handcuffs, and narration that says, “Activist prosecutors and judges have destroyed the rule of law, the scales of justice forever broken and imbalanced. The worst offenders? Those who have weaponized the legal system for political gain against President Trump.”
“Even now they’re resorting to insane legal theories to take him off the ballot,” the ad continues. “They’ve gone after a President of the United States. Do you think they’ll stop there?”
Davis is the former chief counsel for nominations to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. He has worked to win Senate confirmation of Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, for whom he later clerked on the Supreme Court.
White House Chief of Staff
Stephen Bannon
Bannon, 70, is a far right, media executive, former investment banker and was trump’s chief strategist during the first seven months of the administration. He is a former executive chairman of Breitbart News, which Time magazine said “pushed racist, sexist, xenophobic and antisemitic material into the vein of the alternative right.”
In August 2020, Bannon and three others were arrested on federal charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering in connection with the “We Build the Wall” fundraising campaign. According to the grand jury indictment, Bannon and the defendants promised that all contributions would go to building a U.S.–Mexico border wall, but instead enriched themselves. Trump pardoned Bannon of federal charges in his last day in office but Bannon is still to be tried on state charges.
In November 2020, Bannon’s Twitter account was suspended after he suggested that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s infectious disease expert, and FBI director Christopher Wray should be executed.
Bannon was held in contempt of Congress in October 2021 after he refused to comply with a subpoena issued by the Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. He was convicted and has appealed the sentence of four months in prison and a $6,500 fine.
In 2017, Bannon founded the Movement, an organization which promotes right wing populist groups in Europe which are against the EU government and political system in Europe. The organization has been praised by figures like the autocratic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Italian Eurosceptic party M5S leader Luigi Di Maio.
In 2020, Bannon began a podcast “War Room: Pandemic,” and a February 2023 Brookings Institution study found Bannon’s podcasts contained the highest proportion of false, misleading and unsubstantiated statements among 36,603 episodes produced by 79 prominent political podcasters.
The NAACP described Bannon as a “symbol of white nationalism” who “energized that sentiment” through his position within the White House.
Susan Wiles
Wiles, 66, is a senior advisor on the Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign. The Hill called Wiles “the most powerful Republican you don’t know” and credited her with helping to secure trump’s victories in Florida in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
In March 2021, Wiles was chosen to serve as CEO of Trump’s Save America PAC. In April 2021, Politico described Wiles as the “new honcho atop Trumpworld.”
In trump’s 2023 federal indictment for mishandling classified documents, an unnamed person was labeled “PAC Representative” who Trump allegedly showed a classified map concerning a military operation. Press reports said the person is Wiles.
National Security Council or CIA Chair
Kash Patel
Patel, 43, possibly the most outspoken and outrageous trump loyalist, was a National Security Council official, senior advisor to the acting Director of National Intelligence, and chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense under trump.
In 2021, Patel wrote an illustrated children’s book about the Russian investigation with “King Donald” persecuted by “Hillary Queenton.” Trump sought to name Patel to a high post in the FBI or CIA but former Attorney General Bill Barr wrote in his memoir that it would happen “over my dead body.”
Trump wanted to name Patel as deputy CIA director so that Patel could review the intelligence community for information that could damage trump’s political enemies. Former CIA director Gina Haspel threatened to quit if Patel was appointed and trump dropped the plan.
As an aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, Patel played a key role in helping Republican attempts to fight the investigations into trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election. Nunes resigned to take a top position with trump’s new media platform, Truth Social.
In November 2020, Patel argued that Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was disloyal to trump for refusing to deploy military troops to Washington to quell the George Floyd protests. Esper was later fired.
In 2022, Patel created “Fight With Kash,” a tax-exempt charity, to raise donations to bring “America First patriots” together and “helping fight the Deep State.”
During a December 2023 appearance on the Steve Bannon “War Room” podcast, Patel said that under a second trump administration, “We will go out and find the conspirators — not just in government, but in the media … we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections … We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators … Because we’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.”
Director of Oval Office Operations
John McEntee
McEntee, 33, was in charge of loyalty vetting of potential presidential personnel under trump. He also was responsible for purging officials deemed to be disloyal to trump.
McEntee began as a body man and personal aide to the president but was fired by White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly in 2018 after failing a security clearance background check. The check showed that McEntee was under investigation by the Homeland Security Department because of debt-related issues from gambling.
McEntee was hired by trump’s 2020 reelection campaign as a senior adviser for campaign operations. In 2020, McEntee worked to have then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject the electoral college victory for Biden. McEntee sent a series of messages to Pence’s chief of staff to incorrectly note that Thomas Jefferson “Used His Position as VP to Win” the 1801 election. McEntee said it “proves that the VP has, at a minimum, a substantial discretion to address issues with the electoral process.”
Secretary of State
Ric Grenell
Grenell, 57,a former ambassador to Germany was trump’s acting director of national intelligence. As the ambassador, he pressed the “America First” agenda, drawing rage from European diplomats. Grenell declassified Obama-era intelligence in an effort to change perceptions of the Russian investigation. Trump praised Grenell as an “all-time great acting (official), at any position.”
Der Spiegel published a profile of Grenell on January 11, 2019, using interviews with 30 “American and German diplomats, cabinet members, lawmakers, high-ranking officials, lobbyists and think tank experts.” The magazine wrote that “almost all of these sources paint an unflattering portrait of the ambassador, one remarkably similar to Donald Trump, the man who sent him to Berlin. A majority of them describe Grenell as a vain, narcissistic person who dishes out aggressively, but can barely handle criticism.”
Democratic national security leader Susan E. Rice called Grenell “one of the most nasty, dishonest people I’ve ever encountered.” Journalist Irwin Arieff, who worked more than 20 years at Reuters, including seven years covering the United Nations, described Grenell as “the most dishonest and deceptive press person I ever worked with.”
Jared Kushner
Kushner, trump’s son-in-law, was a senior advisor to trump from 2017 to 2021 and directed the Office of American Innovation.
Kushner was a real-estate investor in New York City, through the family business Kushner Companies. He took over the company after his father Charles Kushner was convicted for 18 criminal charges, including illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering in 2005. Charles Kushner was pardoned by Trump in 2020.
Kushner had no prior foreign experience or experience in the middle east when his father named him the administration’s representative for the Middle East Peace Process.The process led to the signing of the Abraham Accords and other normalization agreements between Israel and various Arab states in 2020.
Kushner helped broker the sale of $100+ billion of arms to Saudi Arabia.
Since leaving the White House, Kushner founded Affinity Partners, a private equity firm investing in Israeli and American companies expanding in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Kushner’s firm landed an investment contract worth more than $2 billion only six months after he stopped working as a senior adviser for the president. Investors include $2 billion from the Saudi public investment fund, Kushner said he hoped it would lead to an opening of an “investment corridor between Saudi Arabia and Israel.”
Defense Secretary
John Ratcliffe
Ratcliffe, 56, a former Texas congressman was trump’s last director of national intelligence. He is a strong opponent of China and was one of trump’s most devoted allies during the first impeachment. He also declassified information calling into question the origins of COVID-19 and the Russia investigation into the 2016 election.
Trump named Ratcliff as director of national intelligence despite concerns by Republican senators that he might politicize intelligence while the media reported that Ratcliffe embellished his prosecutorial experience in terrorism and immigration cases.
As director of national intelligence, Ratcliffe was regarded as using the position to benefit trump politically. Ratcliffe contradicted the intelligence community’s own assessments. Democratic senators including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, R-N.Y., and Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Intelligence Committee, said that Ratcliffe’s only qualification for the office appeared to be “blind loyalty” to Trump.
Ratcliffe has strongly supported trump’s criticism of the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, contending “it does appear that there were crimes committed during the Obama administration.”
Treasury Secretary
Jamie Dimon
Dimon, 67, is a billionaire Democrat who heads JPMorgan Chase. He was previously on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. His possible appointment as treasury secretary may have been dimmed after he endorsed Nikki Haley for president.
Joint Chiefs of Staff
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.
Cotton, 46, a former congressman gained notoriety when he wrote an op-ed supporting the use of the Insurrection Act against civil disorder.
In 2021, Salon reported that Cotton falsely claimed in campaign ads and videos from 2011 to 2014 that he had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and earned a Bronze Star as a U.S. Army Ranger even though he did not serve in the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment. A Cotton spokesperson said, Cotton graduated from Ranger School, earned the Ranger Tab, and served a combat tour with the 101st Airborne, not the 75th Ranger Regiment.
A trump loyalist, Cotton frequently met with trump’s staff during the transition period. In an interview shortly after the 2016 presidential election, Cotton said that waterboarding is not a form of torture.
Rep. Lee Zeldin, R- N.Y.
Zeldin, 53, an officer in the Army Reserve, has been a congressman since 2015. Zeldin was a Trump ally and prominently defended him during his first impeachment hearings concerning the Trump–Ukraine scandal.
Zeldin prominently defended Trump during the impeachment hearings and denied there was anything wrong when trump requested that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Zeldin said in October 2019, “It is crystal clear… that any allegation that President Trump was trying to get President Zelensky [sic] to manufacture dirt on the Bidens is just not true.”
In the seven impeachment deposition transcripts released as of November 2019, no Republican had spoken more than Zeldin, referenced more than 550 times. On February 1, 2020, days before the conclusion of Trump’s first impeachment trial, Zeldin suggested that Republicans should expunge the impeachment if they won a House majority in the 2020 House elections.
Zeldin has said that Israel is “America’s strongest ally” and in March 2017, he co-sponsored a bipartisan bill in the House, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, to oppose boycotts of Israel and “further combat the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.” He supported the trump administration’s decision to relocate the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May 2018 as part of the United States recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel.
Zeldin spoke highly of the Abraham Accords and nominated Jared Kushner and Avi Berkowitz for a Nobel Peace Prize for their work on the agreement.
In 2017, Zeldin supported Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, saying it offered the FBI a chance at a “fresh start” to rebuild trust. In May 2018, Zeldin called for the criminal prosecution of former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.