The Top 5 Most Important Trump Cabinet Positions and Political Reality

Topic: Perspective

One of those memories I hold on to as a means of motivating myself when I don’t feel like working out or attempting a new challenge is the memory of trying to make my high school’s nationally ranked baseball program.  I had no business even trying out given my lack of skill in playing the game I love, but figured I would live with terrible regret if I didn’t at least give it a shot.  It was required of all players to run a mile in seven minutes or less, which is a strong time usually only achievable by people in excellent cardiovascular condition.  Later in life I would be able to make this time, but just barely and when I was in peak shape while serving in the Army.  In 1999, that was not my reality.

For weeks before I was cut, I huffed and puffed my way around the track, my attitude poor, my legs weak, and my lungs undeveloped and probably weakened from inhaling the cigarette smoke that constantly lingered at home in the kitchen and deeply saturated into the fabric of all furniture.  Sometimes I would dog it and run a sloppy 9:30 or slower mile.  Other times, I ‘d see if I could psych myself out and get myself in position to maybe pull it off.  That would require me to burst off the starting line like an Olympian and step it out.  Thatstrategy, the sprinting of the first lap, broke me so hard that completing the other three laps around the track as the sun would set seemed like a crisis scene in one of those old westerns with the end nowhere in sight.

Where we find ourselves today in the political process is something like that.  Major league Baseball fans are fond of referring to the season a marathon, not a sprint.  That means you don’t go panicking if you lose on Opening Day when there are 161 games remaining, and every team is likely to lose at least 55 games no matter who they are.  Similarly, the political battle to restore sanity and sovereignty to government is also a marathon, and not a sprint.  Less than three weeks ago, almost everyone reading this article would have been thrilled to receive spoilers that you’d even be in position right before Thanksgiving to be freaking out about Trump’s Cabinet picks.

Wait, so what you’re saying is Trump is for sure getting elected?

Yep, that’s what I said was going to happen then, and I’m about to tell you what’s going to happen now.

The first thing that needs to happen is people must get control of themselves and understand a few realities, primarily:

·      Trump is human and therefore capable of making mistakes

·      Trump and team may know things we don’t know about certain selections

·      Trump knows the consequences of Cabinet problems firsthand from his first term

·      Not all Cabinet choices are as important as others

·      Trump can shitcan any of these picks at any time and for any reason, and certainly will as the months and years pass by

·      The makeup of the U.S. Senate is the single biggest constraint to what you want

Here is a run-down of Trump’s picks so far, which doesn’t include a few positions vital to Trump that won’t need confirmation by the Senate:

On November 5, it was apparent Trump would have the electoral votes needed to return to the White House.  It was also clear, as counting continued through the night and for weeks, that any close U.S. Senate and House races were in peril, and Eric Hovde’s race in Wisconsin went down the very first night in the same way Trump’s presidential race there did four years ago.  Michigan’s U.S. Senate nominee, Mike Rogers, also went down by an eyelash in a state that has over 83% of its total population registered to vote when only 77% of any population is even over the age of 18.  Sam Brown’s lead in Nevada disappeared over that first week as, to absolutely no one’s surprise, Clark and Washoe Counties found ballot after ballot after ballot, until Jacky Rosen had enough to win reelection and suddenly there were no more ballots to be found.  The final act was the shell game in Arizona with massive ballot drops in no pre-announced order trickling in for the better part of a week until the media called the Senate race for Ruben Gallego.  Kari Lake knows what is going on there and even if she was going to be running behind Trump, it’s a bridge too far for most to think she ran eight pointsbehind him in a state that is more than twice as Republican by party registration as it was in 2020.

There are now 53 Republican Senators in the U.S. Senate, with most earning only a lowercase r in Republican, and many who would likely reclassify as Democrats if a party realignment rendering that party slightly less insane were to occur.  Hell, Lisa Murkowski was openly rooting for the Democrat to hold Alaska’s U.S. House seat.  What that means, ladies and gentlemen, is that the picks above must pass through that body of 53 professional bureaucrats who primarily hold loyalty to the government, the lobbyists who own them, and only the causes important to their constituents in the final push to a reelection campaign that lasts for just a vapor of time in a six-year term (which means you can probably expect the most favorable action from those up for primary or election in 2026, and the worst betrayals from those who just got elected, like John Curtis).

What that means is you may want Kid Rock to be Secretary of State instead of Marco Rubio, because you think the best approach to U.S. diplomacy is for the top diplomat to exit a plane in Europe to a musical masterpiece, head down to the yacht club, stick a middle finger in the face of every puppet master he can find, clothesline the wait staff, and go wheels up all in the span of ten minutes – but you have one problem:

He would need to get 51 votes to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate – and thanks to election rigging, compromised primaries, tricks, and deception, Murkowski (Alaska), Curtis (Utah), Susan Collins (Maine), Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) hold a disproportionate amount of sway over the confirmation proceedings.  No matter how badly you want something to happen, if it isn’t a possible solution per the minimum requirements, you’ll have to find another way – and you know good and well a businessman from New York with a penchant for creative decision making is looking for the simplest and most cost-effective means of getting there – which means on time and under budget considering all factors at play.

Now, let me clear up a few of my own positions here, before we dig deeper:

·      I do not like all of the picks so far

·      I do like some of the picks

·      I understand why most of the picks have been made, and many of them default to the rule of the Senate described above and the outcome of the Gaetz decoy

·      Not all of the crucial picks must be confirmed by the Senate

If you take the marathon, not a sprint approach, the Gaetz rejection is a simple setback, not a crippling outcome.  On the positive side, Trump now knows exactly which Senators have the knives out for any pick that may upset the apple cart (47 Democrats plus Murkowski, Collins, McConnell, and Curtis), and there may be some baiting-and-switching going on for not only that pick, but a few others.  Some requiring confirmation have some troubling ties, as have been discussed at length on social media, while others are inconsequential or seen as good or garden variety picks – take Linda McMahon, Doug Collins, Scott Turner, or Doug Burgum, for example.

There are also other positions that do not require Senate confirmation that are vital to the success of the Trump 47 administration, and most, but not all, of those picks have been received well.  Also recall that some of Trump’s outsider cabinet picks, like Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State, weren’t good at their jobs and became vocal critics of Trump, so a lot of gained knowledge is at work in how Trump has approached the staffing process.

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In this author’s opinion, here are the four most vital positions for the success of the Trump presidency and the furthering of the America First agenda for the foreseeable future:

I.                             Border Czar – Tom Homan

Surprise, guess which position doesn’t require Senate confirmation?  The “border czar,” who serves at the pleasure of the President of the United States.  Tom Homan, who is the man in the arena when it comes to enforcing what is expected to the be the largest deportation operation in American history beginning as soon as Trump takes his hand off the Bible on January 20.  Here is how he answered when asked if he was concerned about “separating families.”

Stephen Miller has suggested in recent days Trump will take significant executive actions immediately upon assuming office regarding the invasion of the United States.  Are you telling me you aren’t happy with this pick that is already etched in stone as a good to go? Control over illegal immigration and the threat of mass deportations is quite possibly the hallmark of the entire Trump agenda and where he made his mark as far back as 2015, and it appears he intends to carry that out and end this scourge once and for all.

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II.                         Defense – Pete Hegseth

I am not confident Hegseth is going to make it through the confirmation process with all the “me too” hearsay swirling, especially thanks to neocon scum like John Curtis seeping in from Utah (a small state that repeatedly insists on humiliating the rest of us who just want to unplug America’s toilet); nevertheless, his nomination is a clear indication that one of Trump’s main priorities is to think outside the box when it comes to the way we’ve done business in the defense realm.

While Hegseth doesn’t have too much on record about the isolationism most of us desire, selections like Tulsi Gabbard at DNI don’t jive with an expeditionary foreign policy, and those who have turned the military into a giant social experiment believe Hegseth is being fronted to take on the culture of wokeism in a force that exists to fight and win wars.  Another good measure of a candidate’s potential upside is how much opposition he receives from the political establishment and media, and Hegseth has high marks in that regard.  Remember this if he doesn’t get past the Senate and the boobirds come out when a replacement must be named.

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III.                      Health and Human Services – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.