Trump warned his second term would mean ‘retribution’. His alarming cabinet picks show he means it

A Fox News host who lobbied Donald Trump to pardon troops accused of war crimes and doesn’t want women serving in combat could be leading the nation’s military. An accused sexual predator who has taken up Trump’s promise to destroy his political rivals could be the nation’s top law enforcement officer. A prolific conspiracy theorist who doesn’t hold a single medical or public health degree but plans to immediately halt vaccine development could be in charge of the nation’s health agencies.

An Evangelical preacher who espouses end-times theology and has said “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian” could be the nation’s ambassador to Israel. A former congresswoman who secretly met with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and has blamed US and NATO for Russia’s assault in Ukraine could direct the nation’s intelligence. The world’s wealthiest man will recommend drastic cuts to the government’s budget in a made-up “efficiency” agency.

Two of his attorneys who helped him get off criminal charges have been nominated for top roles at the Department of Justice.

Trump’s first wave of cabinet nominations and White House appointments, within the week after he won the 2024 presidential election, have stunned members of Congress, veterans and active-duty service members, public health advocates and democratic advocates, who have warned for years that he is building a government of loyalists to fulfill his campaign-trail promises to deliver “retribution” by destroying the “deep state.”

They’re shocking choices, but they shouldn’t be surprising. When Trump formally launched his 2024 campaign from Waco, Texas, he declared himself a “warrior” and the election a “final battle.”

“To those who have been wronged and betrayed, of which there are many people out there, I will be your retribution,” he said.

There is no secret plan or conspiracy theory at work; putting an enemy of the “deep state” in charge of it, creating an agency named after a meme, naming widely loathed congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general — it’s the trolling as politics that Trump’s movement inspired. It’s an absurd attack on the institutions that Trump despises, and they’re laughing all the way to the White House. It’s what he campaigned on, and he’s fulfilling his campaign promises.

He has repeatedly pledged to “drain the swamp” in Washington, and he’s filing it with an army of loyalists left in its wake. But the punchlines will have consequences.

Tulsi Gabbard, who is nominated as director of national intelligence, said Trump’s election was a “mandate for change.”

“Of course there’s going to be resistance from the swamp in Washington — I think that’s kind of the point,” he told Fox News on November 14. “The American people are saying, Hey, stop looking at yourselves, stop focusing on your own power, your own positions, your own bank accounts. How about we have leaders in Washington who are actually looking out for the American people?”

Olivia Troye, a former homeland security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, said Gabbard’s nomination is a “slap in the face to intel officers, but that’s the point given Trump’s disdain for our national security community.”

“Having a Russian propagandist who spreads fringe conspiracies at the helm will likely lead to our allies refraining from sharing intel with us,” she said. “It will weaken our security posture [and] make us more susceptible to terrorist attacks on our homeland.”

If she is confirmed by the Senate, Gabbard will “demoralize the hell out of everyone” in national intelligence and the active duty service members and federal law enforcement officers relying on her leadership, according to Kris Goldsmith, president of veterans’ democratic advocacy group Task Force Butler and its Vets Fighting Fascism project.

“They’re not going to be able to trust their own boss,” he told The Independent. “She is a danger, and she’s more likely to side with Assad and Putin than she is with the people of the United States.”

Trump nominated anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, putting a conspiracy theorist in charge of the nation’s public health agencies, with the potential to upend vital research and derail life-saving vaccine development and distribution.

Kennedy has previously declared that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” and chaired the group Children’s Health Defense, which claimed that there is a “parallel between rising disease rates and the increasing number of childhood vaccines is hard to ignore.”

He also supports removing fluoride from water supplies, based on Cold War-era conspiracy theories, which health professionals say if put into practice would rot the nation’s teeth.

The department oversees critical public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Food and Drug Administration.

When he was running for president, Kennedy said he would immediately tell NIH to stop drug development and infectious disease research for eight years, and instead study chronic disease.

Kennedy has also speculated that exposure to chemicals in tap water or the environment could be making children question their sexuality or gender identity — amplifying a conspiracy theory infamously raised by Alex Jones, who said tap water is “turning the friggin’ frogs gay.”

His nomination is “disastrous for public health,” according to Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for public health at Georgia University Law Center.

Doctors and public health advocates have been sounding the alarm for months over their grave concerns that Kennedy — as president or the nation’s top health officials — could be in a powerful position to cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of life-saving medicine, and potentially accelerate a trend of parents rejecting vaccinations for their children.

Gaetz is widely expected to deliver the “vengeance” Trump has vowed against those he believes have wronged him and his supporters, including the end of criminal cases against the former president and potential prosecutions for the people who were leading them.

“I don’t care if it takes every second of our time and every ounce of our energy,” Gaetz told the Conservative Political Action Conference last year. “We either get this government back on our side or we defund and … abolish the FBI, CDC, ATF, DOJ, every last one of ’em if they do not come to heel.”

He resigned from the House of Represenatives moments after Trump announced him for attorney general, while a looming House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations that he raped a teenager – something he has repeatedly denied – was set to be released.

Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor and current district attorney for New York’s Westchester County, anticipates “mass resignations” across the nation’s law enforcement agencies if Gaetz is confirmed, emptying out the offices that prosecute corruption, civil rights abuses and national security threats.

“Which is maybe exactly what they want,” she said. “But Republican Senators need to really understand the chaos that will ensue.”

Pete Hegseth, one of the hosts of Fox & Friends on Fox News, was selected by the president-elect to run the Department of Defense, which oversees 3 million service members and civilian employees across all branches of the nation’s military.

Active duty troops “are extremely concerned about being given illegal orders and being deployed within the United States, or for a war just kicking off because Trump tweets,” Goldsmith told The Independent. “There are a lot of active service members who are rightfully terrified that they are going to have a completely unhinged and even less stable time than the last time he was commander in chief.”