Growing momentum for Cabinet picks who could define Trump’s second term
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
(CNN) — The Cabinet confirmation drama around Donald Trump’s most provocative picks isn’t only about Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard or Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It’s mostly about Trump himself, and the kind of presidency he wants, the one he will end up getting, and the hopes of his MAGA movement that he’ll stand firm on his vow to shake the federal administrative state to its core and enact his and their revenge.
The stakes were laid bare in recent days by a fierce pressure campaign on social and conservative media targeting Sen. Joni Ernst over her reservations about Trump’s Pentagon pick, Hegseth. His candidacy became increasingly important after Trump lost his first pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, over alleged sexual misconduct claims that the former lawmaker denies.
Last week, the Iowa Republican’s hesitations about Hegseth left the former Fox News anchor’s confirmation hopes imperiled due to the GOP’s narrow incoming Senate majority. Amid concerns about sexual assault and drinking allegations and his past opposition to women serving in the military, some of her colleagues had even floated Ernst, an Iraq war veteran who’s fought sexual abuse in the military, as a possible replacement candidate.
But on Monday, after rapidly rising pressure, including in her home state, Ernst said in a statement after another meeting with Hegseth that she would “support Pete through this process” and looked forward to a “fair hearing” while not committing to vote for his confirmation. (Hegseth has denied any sexual misconduct and was not charged over a 2017 incident in California).
The Iowa Republican had faced warnings on social media that she’d encounter a primary challenge in 2026 if she didn’t shelve her reservations about Hegseth.
The president-elect’s son, Donald Trump Jr., last week, for instance, amplified a post on X that pointed out that Ernst had been among almost all GOP senators who voted to confirm President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, saying that anyone who did so and then criticized Hegseth was maybe “in the wrong political party!” In a home-grown threat to Ernst, Steve Deace, a long-time conservative talk show host in the state, said he didn’t want to be a senator but was ready to challenge her in the 2026 GOP primary. “I think this is an inflection point, (a) tipping point for the right in America and it’s in our own backyard,” Deace said on his Blaze TV show on Monday.
And Brenna Bird, Iowa’s attorney general, warned in a column on conservative news site Breitbart.com on Friday that “D.C. politicians think they can ignore the voices of their constituents and entertain smears from the same outlets that have pushed out lies for years.” Bird didn’t mention Ernst or Hegseth, but the warning from such a prominent Trump supporter was unmistakable. “When voters select a president, they are selecting that president’s vision for a cabinet that will enact his agenda,” Bird wrote.
The message here and in Trump’s increasingly vocal support for Hegseth — in a Truth Social Post and in an NBC interview taped on Friday — is that he will fight for his prospective defense secretary — at least for now — and that any GOP senator who breaks with him will feel the heat.
Ernst, a two-term senator, is hardly a natural rebel. Her spokesperson last week shut down any speculation about her seeking the Pentagon job herself. She voted with Trump consistently during his first term and twice voted to acquit him in impeachment trials. She was endorsed by the far-right tea party movement in 2014 and 2020. But the fact that she now risks alienation from the Trump base shows how the GOP has changed.
Trump is sending disruptors into the heart of the US government
By selecting Hegseth to run the Pentagon, Patel for the FBI, Gabbard to be director of national intelligence, and Kennedy for the Health and Human Services Department, Trump is setting the tone for a turbulent second presidency.
Each of the picks is on record as vigorously criticizing the departments they were picked to lead. They’ve bought into Trump’s claims that he’s an innocent victim of persecution by the “Deep State” — intelligence agencies, bureaucrats, senior officials and Washington journalists. And all are deeply loyal to the once-and-future president and have pledged to enact his vengeance on defense, intelligence, medical and media centers of power.
If Trump’s picks seem poorly qualified and are bristling to purge the federal workforces they are set to lead, that is exactly the point for Trump supporters who think the government is corrupt and a threat to their worldview.
The president-elect has made clear he believes that his truest instincts were constrained in his first term by elite officials and generals who tried to manage him. Memoirs of former officials bear this out. And inside Trump world, figures like former Defense Secretary James Mattis, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former White House chief of staff John Kelly and others are reviled. The intent this time often seems less like an attempt to govern but to wage internecine conflict on government itself.
Steve Bannon — one of the ideological leaders of the “Make America Great Again” movement, who is perhaps closer than ever to seeing his vision realized for the “deconstruction of the administrative state” — argued on his “War Room” podcast on Monday that the Trump Cabinet picks represent a defining moment.
“It’s imperative that both Pete and Kash get confirmed, if nothing less than to send a message that President Trump is going to have the administration he wants,” said Bannon, who served as a top White House aide in the first term and recently left prison after being convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress.
Deace argued that Trump, whom he likened to a king, had shown more shrewdness and better tactics than in his first term, although he allowed the proposition had not yet been fully tested in the confirmation process. He asked his listeners and viewers, “How much is he willing to put his thumb on the scale and purge the court of the feckless and the treacherous?”
Growing momentum for Trump picks
The impact of the latest pressure appears to be creating traction for Hegseth, whose candidacy seems in better shape that it was a week ago. Patel — who is regarded by many Democrats and legal analysts as a far-right provocateur who could challenge the rule of law — had a smooth ride during his first day of meetings with Republican senators on Monday.
Gabbard, meanwhile, may have got a break from the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, since her meeting with the brutal Syrian dictator has been one of the chief questions surrounding her candidacy to head US spy agencies.
The extent to which Trump is ready to fight for Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, is yet to be tested. Dozens of Nobel prize winners on Monday urged the Senate to block his nomination in a letter, obtained by The New York Times, that cites his opposition to many “health-protecting and life-saving vaccines,” criticism of fluoride in drinking water and promotion of conspiracy theories about HIV/AIDS. There has been no sign yet that Kennedy’s nomination is in jeopardy.
The key development on Monday was building momentum behind Hegseth. Ernst said in a statement that the potential Pentagon chief, an Iraq and Afghanistan combat veteran, has committed to a full Pentagon audit and to name a senior official who will ensure that women in the service would not be subject to “quotas” and who would also strengthen her “work to prevent sexual assault within the ranks.”
The comment hinted at a compromise that may allow Ernst to eventually vote for Hegseth. The former Fox News anchor, who also faced concerns about his drinking, said in a post on X that he welcomed the senator’s “ongoing counsel” and that he was “grateful for Sen. Ernst’s support through this process.”
He later appeared on Fox News, saying he would support women service members, whom he called “some of our greatest warriors.”
But Hegseth isn’t home free yet. When asked by CNN’s Manu Raju, Ernst would not say if she’s confident with Hegseth’s denials over the past sexual assault allegation. He can afford to lose no more than three Republican votes in the expectation that all Democrats will oppose him. He has meetings this week with two other GOP senators who have yet to confirm their support, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. For all the pressure on Ernst, both these senators enjoy unique power bases and may be less susceptible to attacks from the president-elect’s media allies who have the ear of his political base.
Patel and Gabbard also enjoy significant support, although it’s not clear yet whether holdout senators will emerge to imperil their controversial selections. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a key Trump ally, said he was open to a yes vote despite differences with Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, notably over the Obama administration nuclear deal with Iran. “I know her, I like her,” the South Carolina Republican told Raju.
Gabbard also won an endorsement from Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty, who told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the DNI pick, a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve, had a “wonderful” military career. The former ambassador to Japan added: “President Trump has hired her for a very specific job. He’s in the process of doing that. And she’s actually raised questions with respect to the intelligence community, I think, that need to be asked, that need to be delivered upon.”
Like Trump, Gabbard is deeply suspicious of government surveillance authorities used by the intelligence community. She has also defended Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, who were behind two of the worst intelligence leaks in US history.
Patel is another true believer in Trump’s exaggerated or often false claims that the FBI and the intelligence agencies conspired against him in 2016 and in office. He has threatened to go after law enforcement professionals and Biden administration officials who investigated Trump and to prosecute journalists.
But his views about the Russia investigation and the probes into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election are widely shared by many Republicans who think the FBI especially needs to be purged, even if many of Patel’s remedies appear almost certain to politicize the institutions of justice more broadly than before.
“The whole context and pretext for this Russia thing that hampered the Trump campaign (and) the first several years – of his administration, all of this emanated from the FBI, all of it needs to be cleaned up,” Hagerty said.
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