The president-elect has picked a team designed to ensure his domination, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland
‘Personnel is policy, as they used to say in Ronald Reagan’s White House – and Donald Trump is telling us exactly who he is.’‘Personnel is policy, as they used to say in Ronald Reagan’s White House – and Donald Trump is telling us exactly who he is.
Some wonder if naming such a man as head of the US justice department is a diversionary tactic, designed to distract attention from the clutch of other nominations that are scarcely less outrageous, in the hope that those will look reasonable by comparison. In this view, Trump knows that Gaetz will never be attorney general, that his nomination will be blocked in the Senate where, even though the Republicans have a majority, too many will balk.
Hegseth will find company in Trump’s choice of ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas governor and evangelical Christian Mike Huckabee.
My own view is simpler. At the heart of it is the quality all would-be strongmen value most: loyalty. Trump knows that a character as tawdry as Gaetz, despised by his own colleagues, would owe everything to him. As attorney general, he would do whatever Trump asked, working his way through Trump’s enemies list, prosecuting whoever had crossed his boss, delivering the retribution Trump yearns for.
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