President Donald Trump’s choice of outsiders to head major cabinet departments and hold senior White House positions has wreaked almost as much havoc on the Washington DC establishment as the British did when they burned down the city in 1814.
In choosing Matt Gaetz to be his Attorney General, Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to head HHS, Tulsi Gabbard to be Director of National Intelligence, Kristi Noem to head the Department of Homeland Security, Trump has chosen disruptors, rather than traditional movement conservatives, to manage key departments of the government.
And he may announce even more disruptive personnel selections by the time this article is posted.
Gone are industry insiders, retreads from establishment think tanks, the defense industry and the DC legal establishment, as Mr. Trump has chosen to look to his own MAGA Movement, rather than traditional pools of establishment political appointees.
But this doesn’t mean that Trump’s choices, which may seem idiosyncratic to many conservatives (to put it mildly), are unqualified or “unfit” for the jobs. On the contrary, what qualifies them is their outsider status and their avowed commitment to make radical changes to the departments they’ve been chosen to run.
As an example, yesterday President-elect Donald Trump said he is “thrilled to announce” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in a statement on social media.
The Epoch Times reported that on Oct. 25, Kennedy wrote on X: “FDA’s war on public health is about to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.
“If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”
It sure doesn't sound like Kennedy plans to parlay his government service into a board seat on one of the companies he will regulate, does it?
Democrats and DC establishment commentators will make much of the personal lives of Gaetz, Kennedy and Hegseth, who have already been smeared by opponents, but Trump didn’t hire them to be Sunday School teachers. They were chosen to shake-up politicized departments of government that have been deeply corrupted by the cultural Marxism of the Democratic Party, its racial spoils system and its systemic disregard for the constitutional rights of Americans who do not hew to the Democratic Party line.
And Hegseth and Gaetz both have firsthand knowledge of how this deeply corrupted system works.
In Pete Hegseth’s case he wrote a #1 bestselling book about how the Democrats’ racial spoils system and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies of wreaked havoc on our military readiness.
Hegseth, a graduate of Princeton and Harvard, who served tours of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay as an infantry officer, and received two Bronze Stars for his service, is the author of “The War on Warriors,” a best-selling book in which the Trump nominee blames the “woke military” for the recruiting crisis facing the nation’s armed services.
“For the past three years – after President Barack Obama poured the social justice foundation – the Pentagon, across all branches, has embraced the social justice message of gender equality, racial diversity, climate stupidity, and the LGBTQA+ alphabet soup in their recruiting pushes” Hegseth wrote in his book, released in June.
“Only one problem: There just aren’t enough lesbians from San Francisco who want to join the 82nd Airborne. Not only do the lesbians not join, but those very same ads turn off the young, patriotic, Christian men who have traditionally filled our ranks.”
“You’ve got to fire the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and obviously, to bring in a new secretary of defense, but any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever that was involved in any of the DEI woke s–t has to go,” he said in the Nov. 7 episode of “The Shawn Ryan Show,” according to reporting by the New York Post.
Matt Gaetz has an even more compelling reason to shake up the Department of Justice – after he became one of the Biden DOJ’s fiercest Capitol Hill critics, they tried to smear him and set him up.
In a fiery 2023 House Judiciary Committee hearing Gaetz started questioning FBI Director Christopher Wray by reading a WhatsApp message from July 30, 2017, in which Hunter Biden demanded money from a Chinese business associate.
“Sounds like a shakedown, doesn’t it, Director?” Gaetz asked.
When Wray declined to opine, Gaetz lit into him.
“You seem deeply uncurious about it, don’t you? Almost suspiciously uncurious. Are you protecting the Bidens?” the Republican asked in rapid-fire fashion.
“Absolutely not,” Wray countered.
“You won’t answer the question about whether or not that’s a shakedown, and everybody knows why you won’t answer it. Because to the millions of people who will see this, they know it is, and your inability to acknowledge that is deeply revealing about you,” Gaetz answered.
Following the clash about Hunter Biden, Gaetz peppered Wray with questions about alleged abuses of the FISA surveillance system, particularly the number of violations.
Gaetz then played a clip of Wray’s testimony before a Senate panel in which he told Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) that he didn’t believe FISA was part of the bureau’s Jan. 6 investigation.
The congressman then read a court document suggesting FISA had been used and grilled Wray about whether he perjured himself.
“I certainly didn’t perjure myself. At the time that I testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I didn’t have that piece of information,” Wray shot back.
“The answer is, the FBI is broken so bad that people can go and engage in queries that when you come before the Congress to answer questions, you’re like blissfully ignorant. You’re blissfully ignorant as to the unlawful queries, you’re blissfully ignorant as to the Biden shakedown regime,” Gaetz chided, according to reporting by the New York Post.
Why was Matt Gaetz, characterized by one Democrat lawmaker as “fiercely competent,” chosen by President Trump to be his Attorney General?
Perhaps it is because, as Gaetz said in a social media post a few hours before his selection was announced, there needs to be a “full court press against this WEAPONIZED government.” He added, “And if that means ABOLISHING every one of the three letter agencies, from the FBI to the ATF, I’m ready to get going!”
If confirmed as Attorney General, Matt Gaetz would oversee both the FBI and the ATF, formally known as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and not only have the opportunity to get answers to his many questions of FBI Director Wray, but make good on that social media post as well.
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