By Alexis Simendinger & Kristina Karisch
It helps to have experience hosting television programs, preferably with good ratings.
Telegenic males with money, name recognition, interesting bios and elite degrees are prized. Their established enthusiasm for President-elect Trump and his worldview is required. Bold personalities known for challenging conventions (and critics) are celebrated. From those candidates, a government is poised to get organized next year.
Trump’s appointees, should they be confirmed, are accepting the president-elect’s assignment to show voters they can remake governance, lower consumer prices and interest rates, seal borders and end wars, as Trump promised during his campaign. They vow to cut spending and waste and unravel President Biden’s environmental policies.
Trump on Tuesday announced that his transition co-director Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, is his choice to be Commerce secretary, to “lead our Tariff and Trade agenda, with additional direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative,” he said in a statement. One caveat: as created, the U.S. trade representative reports to the president directly.
Lutnick, 63, was reportedly in a candidate pool for the Treasury Department, but Trump has not unveiled that pick and has booked more meetings with potential candidates. The president-elect has been searching for a Treasury secretary who would embrace tariffs but also calm financial markets, where enthusiasm for higher tariffs is spotty.
“He wants somebody who will be deeply loyal, and he wants someone who will be deeply reassuring to markets. Since markets are fearful of the tariff agenda, it’s hard to square both things,” Lawrence Summers, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, told The New York Times.
The elderly, disabled and the poor: Trump on Tuesday said he will nominate Mehmet Oz, a physician and television personality, to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which has about 6,700 employees and controls more than one-fifth of the total federal outlay. Federal spending on Medicare alone accounts for about 3 percent of GDP. Medicaid is financed by the federal government along with the states.
Oz, 64, who lost a Pennsylvania Senate race in 2022, would serve, if confirmed, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department, “to take on theillness industrial complex and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake,” the president-elect said in a statement.
Lessons ahead? Trump told voters he would dismantle the Education Department to cede control to states, but he is expected to nominate Linda McMahon, 76, who was his Small Business administrator during his first term, to be Education secretary. She is serving with Lutnick as a co-chair of his transition.
The Washington Post: Trump’s decision to flout transition rules, law and tradition amounts to a “hostile takeover” of government, says one ally.
Meanwhile, Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance and other influencers are lobbying Republican senators personally to confirm former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Defense secretary-designee Pete Hegseth, Kennedy and former House member Tulsi Gabbard, nominated to manage national intelligence. They are among Trump’s most controversial choices to date for roles that historically favor federal management experience.
▪ The Hill: Will a House Ethics Committee report detailing allegations that Gaetz had sex with a minor and used illicit drugs, among other assertions, be released to senators as part of their considerations? The former lawmaker denies all wrongdoing; no charges were brought. Committee members today are expected to weigh whether to release the panel’s findings.
▪ The Washington Post: Damaging information about Gaetz, drawn from lawyer communications in a civil lawsuit, was hacked by a party or parties unknown.
▪ The Hill: If Gaetz is confirmed as the nation’s top law enforcement officer, he could launch a Justice Department crackdown on Big Tech.
▪ The Washington Post: Will Trump heed federal ethics guidelines covering presidents and their wealth while in the White House? Unclear.
