The NPR Politics Podcast - Roundup: Here Are Trump's Picks To Run Government Agencies

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

President-elect Trump has named Pete Hegseth to run the Department of Defense, Matt Gaetz to run the Department of Justice and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services. Here's what to know about them and the rest of Trump's picks, who will need to be confirmed by the Senate.This episode: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, national security correspondent Greg Myre, senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Jen and Alex and we are in Seward, Alaska. We are here to go explore the Kenai Fjords National Park. This podcast was recorded at 11.03 a.m. on Friday, November 15th, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Okay, here's the show. Okay, Kenai reminds me of the Disney movie Brother Bear, if anyone remembers the iconic film. If not, that's fine. I highly recommend an extraordinary Phil Collins soundtrack.

Now you have an assignment for the weekend. Go watch that movie. Oh, no, it is all coming back to me. Yes, Kenai and Koda, the bear. So good. So good. All right. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

We have finally made it to Friday. I'm Deepa Shivram. I cover the White House. I there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. We have finally made it to Friday. I'm Deepa Sivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House.

All right. So today on the roundup, it's really like a mega roundup today. Who President Trump has nominated to staff his administration? We have a lot of names so far, a lot to get through. Greg, I'm going to kick it off with you. Let's dig in with national security here. Tell us about the person that Trump has picked to run the Department of Defense. This is a man named Pete Hegsatz.

Yeah, that's right. And if you're familiar with him, you probably saw him as a co-host on Fox and Friends on the weekend for the past six, eight years. And he often uses that perch to be highly critical of the Pentagon brass. He says troops are poorly served by what he calls woke generals. He says they're more concerned about DEI and cultural issues than for the ability of the US military to fight wars. He's been, for example, an outspoken opponent of women serving in combat roles. He's been, for example, an outspoken opponent of women serving in combat roles.

He's aggressively defended U.S. troops convicted of war crimes, and in fact, President Trump pardoned some of them. Now, Hegseth is just 44, and he did serve in the military. He was a major in the Minnesota Army National Guard, served honorably in Iraq and Afghanistan. So he's got a military background, but not the kind we've seen previously. Even if we think back to Trump's first term, Trump's choice as his defense secretary was James Mattis, who was a retired Marine general and was well known for his roles in the wars in the Middle East. Yeah, I mean this is a management job. This is a very big management job. I was talking

to Leon Panetta, who was defense secretary during the Obama administration. Before that, he'd been a White House chief of staff, member of Congress, and also CIA director. He said going from the CIA to the Department of Defense was like going from being the manager of your corner hardware store to being the manager of Home Depot or maybe a whole region of Home Depots. Yeah and Tam just to put some numbers on that if you take the active duty military members you add in the civilian employees at the Defense Department and reservists you're pushing three million people scattered across the United States and around the world.

Everybody who served in this position has talked about how big and massive and how hard it is to get your arms around this. And a lot of them have had senior managerial experience when they went in. And something I want to get into, Greg, is that Trump is a person who has talked in the past about wanting the best generals around him, like he has talked about that in a previous you know administration when he was the president, the choice of having someone who doesn't have that leadership experience, who doesn't have that managerial experience, what does that say about you know the way he's trying to structure his administration here?

In a word, Trump is looking for loyalists. He felt that he was being attacked by the military intelligence community. He's picked people who he thinks will serve him in these institutions and push back. He's talked about firing generals, particularly those involved in the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. So he wants somebody to go there and disrupt the status quo. And it's a very hard thing to do in a bureaucracy that large, but he wants somebody who's going to move things around, disrupt, and protect Trump. It's clear what he's looking for in this choice and several of the other choices we've seen.

Yeah, and during the campaign, he talked about wanting to use the military to go after enemies from within. Which he clarified to say was Democrats. Yes. And, you know, during his time as president, he wanted to use active duty military to, for instance, tamp down protests during the summer of racial justice protests. And a lot of the pushback that he got since he left office and even when he was in office came from people

who served as military leaders during his time in office. And former secretaries of defense who came out publicly and said that he would be a danger as president. That is how his previous military leaders have responded to him. And he clearly saw that as a mistake, putting those people in place. And he is looking to learn from his mistakes and to get people into top positions who will be, as Greg says, loyal to him. And we should also talk about some of these other folks that he's picked for the intelligence

agencies, Tulsi Gabbard, a former congresswoman from Hawaii who was once a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, and John Ratcliffe, who he's picked to run the CIA. Who are some of these people and how do they sort of fall into the loyal to Trump methodology, if you will. Yeah, I think absolutely they squarely fit into that category. Now Tulsi Gabbard just four years ago, as you noted, was a Democrat running for president. She then became very critical of Democrats and has become an enthusiastic Trump supporter. Beyond that, the criticism of her is that she is not experienced

enough, does not have any background in the intelligence community, and many of the positions she's taken which are far outside the mainstream. I'll mention two countries in particular, Russia and Syria. Back in 2017, when she was still a Democratic congresswoman, she went to Syria, met with Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, who's been accused by the international community of gross human rights abuses in the civil war in Syria, where hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed. And in Russia, she's put out time and again things that are seen pretty much as Russian

talking points. It sounded sympathetic to Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader. One thing that people have glommed onto also is that just three days after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, she went on social media, put out a video calling for Ukraine's President Zelensky, for Putin and Biden to quote, embrace the spirit of Aloha, respect and love. And this just really struck people at a moment when hundreds of thousands of Russian troops had entered Ukraine and were trying to seize the capital, Kiev. She was making comments like this. She's blamed the West and NATO for

starting the war in Ukraine. So comments that have just been completely out of line with mainstream national security thinking in this country. And what about John Ratcliffe? So John Ratcliffe is similar. A very conservative congressman from Texas, did not have intelligence experience, and in 2019 Trump first raised his name to be director of national intelligence. There was a lot of pushback from Democrats saying he's not qualified for this job. Trump set him

aside for a few months and then in 2020 nominated him. Ratcliffe was confirmed as the director of national intelligence and did serve in that role during the final months of Trump's first term and now Trump is putting him in as CIA director. And in fact Radcliffe would be the very first person to serve both in these top two intelligence positions, director of national intelligence as he did in 2020, and now CIA director. And you just have to sort of step back for a moment and look at the level of qualifications. The current CIA director is William Burns. He was a career diplomat, the ambassador to Russia,

dealt with Vladimir Putin for many years in Moscow. He was the man who's seen as a driving force before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, who helped push out classified intelligence, or declassified intelligence, I should say, to show what the U.S. knew of this looming Russian invasion. He was seen as handling that very skillfully and helping to galvanize the international support. John Ratcliffe just doesn't have that kind of background or experience. So this is the difference between somebody who's been in that field as a producer and consumer

of intelligence throughout his career, somebody who just hasn't had that experience aside from this brief period at the end of Trump's first term. I'll add that there are a couple of other names that are not getting the same level of pushback as the ones we've just talked about. That is Marco Rubio for Secretary of State. He's the Senator from Florida and is widely seen as someone who is serious about foreign policy,

certainly is aligned with Trump on wanting to push back on China. And, you know, in talking to people who've worked in national security, they say, hey, here's somebody who is qualified to be Secretary of State and is a good pick. And then Mike Walz, who is a congressman as well from Florida, he is the pick for national security advisor. That doesn't require Senate confirmation, but it is a very important job in the government. And even President Biden's current

national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, said, "'Yep, he's somebody that we can definitely work with, "'we wanna work with, we want him to succeed.'" I will say though, I mean, zooming out when we look at all of these choices here, I mean, I was talking to a person who's considered an expert on presidential cabinets and she was saying, you know, all cabinet positions have their importance and their different weights and roles in the government, right? When you look at Department of Defense, the State Department,

intelligence agencies, I mean, these are roles that have an enormous impact on safety of people in the United States to live safe and free lives and security. And when we talk about security on a global stage as well, there are elements here that are very, very, very intricate. And it's not so much a matter of just validating your boss, right? Trump has picked people who are loyal to him first, but there are massive, massive impacts to that if you lose the ability to be able to provide clear and accurate information to the commander-in-chief of the United States. Yeah, Deepa, I think that's a really important point and I would

make that distinction, especially in the intelligence community and also at the Pentagon, where the expectation is that you're providing the best available information and analysis and you're not just telling the president what he wants to hear. And we've got a perfect example sitting right out there that Trump will have to deal with on the day he's inaugurated, and that is the war between Russia and Ukraine. Trump has said on the campaign trail he can end that war in a day. He has given no indication of how he'll do that, but he certainly

indicated he thinks there could be a negotiation to bring that war to an end. Now, if you're the intelligence community, you need to be gathering the best information you can find. Maybe you'll discover that Russia and Ukraine are exhausted and they're both willing to negotiate. They're just not saying so publicly. Or maybe you'll find the opposite. They're both very dug in and prepared to keep fighting for years down the line.

Now, the intelligence community is expected to give that information, that best information and analysis they can to the president whether he wants to hear it or not, whether that's his expectation or not. And so that's where there really is seen as this need to not play politics with intelligence. All right. We're going to take a quick break. Greg, thanks so much for joining us.

Sure thing, Deepa. We'll be right back. And we're back with Kerry Johnson. Hey, Kerry. Hey, Deepa. We'll be right back. And we're back with Kerry Johnson. Hey, Kerry. Hey, Deepa. Okay. So Matt Gaetz for attorney general leading the Justice Department. Tell us about Matt Gaetz and what your reaction maybe was to the news this week and how people are responding. Yeah, Matt Gaetz is a firebrand conservative, a member of Congress from Florida. He just resigned his seat this week, but he really came to national attention for the way he tried to roast senior Justice Department

officials when they came before the House Judiciary Committee for oversight hearings. He has very much been a person who adopted conspiracy theories about what happened at the Capitol on January 6th, has supported some of those people and introduced resolutions to help them. He also leaned on former Vice President Mike Pence in the weeks before the certification. So the idea that this guy who has what's considered to be minimal legal experience could be the nation's chief law enforcement officer is really something else. And this week, the reaction from inside the Justice Department and out has been described to me as shell shocked.

At first people thought it was kind of a prank. Matt Gaetz is not considered to be a serious legal or law enforcement mind, but he seems to have had the criteria that was most important to future President Donald Trump and that is loyalty and animosity toward the Justice Department and the FBI. Well he had an active Justice Department investigation against him, hanging over him for quite some time right?

Yeah he absolutely did. Gates had been investigated for years by prosecutors and FBI agents over allegations. He engaged in sex trafficking of an underage girl and may have obstructed justice. That investigation appears to have closed last year with no criminal charges, and Gates has firmly denied all of those allegations. But there is a sitting issue out there, or at least there was as of the time of his nomination, and that's that there was a house investigation of him too. Yeah, a house ethics committee investigation and definitely a person who is very divisive, even amongst his own colleagues in Congress, like not exactly universally liked even in

his own party. Carrie, some of the other picks that, you know, Trump has selected for DOJ, they do have more traditional backgrounds. Who are these folks? Yes, these are people with more traditional backgrounds, but they all happen to have been participants in the criminal defense of former President Trump in the last couple of years. Okay? So first we have Todd Blanche. Todd Blanche is a former prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, one of the major U.S. attorney's offices in the country.

Todd Blanche was also the top criminal defense lawyer for Donald Trump in New York and in Florida and here in D.C. with respect to the January 6 case. Blanch is Trump's pick to be number two at justice, the deputy attorney general. And then the principal deputy to Blanch will be this guy, Emil Beauvais. Beauvais is also a former federal prosecutor, has done clerkships and has a lot of experience. He's going to be the first guy on the ground in the Justice Department after the inauguration. And he will be running the DOJ day to day as the acting person in charge until Trump gets his other nominees confirmed. So Bovet is going to be a very central figure.

And then finally, there's John Sauer. John Sauer, you'll remember, made the case for former President Trump at the Circuit Court here in DC and then at the Supreme Court in that major immunity case. Sauer is a former Supreme Court clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and will be the Solicitor General for Donald Trump. And I think I should note that people like Rod Rosenstein, who was the Deputy Attorney General in the first Trump Justice Department, have come out in support of these picks. Todd Blanch, Bovay, and Sauer basically saying that these guys are going to uphold the rule of law.

But the big question is whether they will be overruled by Matt Gaetz if, in fact, he becomes the attorney general and the top of the DOJ. Cari, how unusual is it for a president to pick his political allies? I mean, we are talking very close political allies for posts that are very high up, right, in the administration. You know, compared to what has happened historically, how do these picks from Trump stack up against what we've seen in the past? You know, I've been thinking about this for the last few days, and it's not unusual for presidents

to pick people they know and they know well, maybe even as confidants to lead the Justice Department. Ronald Reagan had Ed Meese, Obama had Eric Holder as his first attorney general and they were certainly social friends as well as professional colleagues and then of course maybe the most famous example was President Kennedy. John Kennedy actually picked his brother, Robert Kennedy, to run the Justice Department. There is traditionally a wall since Watergate between the DOJ's law enforcement apparatus and the White House. Donald Trump wants to tear down that wall.

All right. And speaking of Robert Kennedy, Tam, his son, RFK Jr., was a candidate for president at some point in this election. He's a nutrition and anti-vaccine activist. He was tapped to run the Health and Human Services Department. How has that played out? This has gotten really mixed responses with some people saying, hey, maybe this will be okay, and others from the science and public health community saying that an anti-vaccine activist should not be in charge of public health.

He is a big promoter of the idea that childhood vaccines cause autism. This is something that has been debunked repeatedly and is wrong, but what would he do at the head of this department that has so much underneath it, including the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, Medicare and Medicaid. It's a huge part of the federal budget and impacts everything from school lunches, which he has opinions about, to which drugs are approved. And interestingly, he actually supports abortion rights in a way that many Republicans would disagree with,

and it will be interesting to watch his confirmation process, though I am watching some senators saying things like, well, we should have a robust confirmation process. We'll move very quickly, but there should be hearings. Yeah. And in the building that I cover, the open question is whether Senate Republicans and Democrats will really actually get that House Ethics Committee report on Matt Gaetz, which apparently was about to be released before he resigned from Congress. Before we move on to our next break, are there any other names that were announced this week that stand out to you guys just briefly?

Well, there is the DOGE, that is the Department of Government Efficiency that Trump announced would be headed by Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk. These are two people who have definitely been part of the Trump inner circle and posse over the last several months. Trump last night at an event at Mar-a-Lago joked that he can't get Elon to leave. He's just hanging out and then said, but actually I like having him around. And he has become part of the Trump inner circle. What is interesting, although they are calling it a department, the announcement also said that they would be outside of the government. So it's not clear at all how this is going to work. I mean, the idea here is that Trump came in with a mandate to shake things up. And these two men are in theory

going to be recommending how to do that. All right, we're gonna take another quick break and then it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back and it's time to end the week like we always do with Can't Let It Go, where we talk about the things we just can't stop thinking about politics or otherwise. The vibe I am

gathering post-election is that we are definitely leaning to the otherwise side of it. And, Tam, I'm going to kick it off. You can go first. What I can't let go of, and I'm hoping that our justice correspondent can help me understand the scheme here because I'm a little confused by it, but four residents of the Los Angeles area were arrested this week after the California Department of Insurance revealed that they allegedly used a life-sized bear costume and some meat shredding hooks to commit insurance fraud. This was uncovered as part of something called Operation Bear Claw. And allegedly these people had someone dressed

in a bear costume rummage through and wreck the interior of several very fancy luxury cars. And then the suspects provided video of the alleged incident to their insurance company. They got about $150,000 in insurance payouts. What I don't understand is why do you dress as a bear to wreck your own car? And how are they making money on this? And what is the point? Carrie, can you explain it? I can't explain anything, especially since whenever I need something from my insurance

company, they never pony up and they're giving money to people who are wearing bear outfits. I can't believe it. I'm such a fan of the bear can't let it go's though. Like bear force one, fat bear week, like give me more can't let it go of the bear variety. I love this. Apparently this bear was a little bit too dextrous to be a real bear and didn't leave enough of a mess. The opposable thumb will get you every time. Yeah, oh my god. All right, well since Carrie doesn't have an answer to that,

Carrie, what's your, can't let it go. Yeah, mine is another thing you almost can't believe. It's the idea that the satirical publication, The Onion, has won an auction for Alex Jones's Infowars, and that the Onion leaders intend to turn this site into like a satire of the kinds of conspiracy theories that Alex Jones had been propounding for so many years. And in fact, the Onion folks are partnering with the group Everytown for Gun Safety and some of the families who

won legal settlements against Alex Jones after he cast terrible aspersions on the tragedy at Sandy Hook School in Connecticut all those years ago and the murders of those little kids. So they are trying to use some of that money for good and we will see if the onion actually is able to pull off this incredible incredible idea of taking a site use for one purpose and turning it into another altogether. That's really fascinating. Yeah, I don't understand how you make parody of conspiracy theories without potentially just birthing new conspiracy theories. I do feel like if there is any organization that could figure out how to do it though, it is the onion. Like I kind of have some faith here.

Yeah, I am eager to watch how this turns out. Deepa, what can't you let go of? Okay, so mine is of the silly variety. There have been a lot of lookalike competitions recently. I don't know if you guys were tracking in New York. There was a Timothy Chalamet lookalike competition that Timothy Chalamet himself showed up at. Did track that one. Yes. And so then after that, I feel like it kind of ballooned. And so there was recently a Paul Mezcal lookalike competition. Oh, I miss that. I would have gone to that one. Right?

And then this week I was reading in the skim that there was a Dev Patel lookalike competition in San Francisco. And I just loved the backstory so much. It was basically just like a couple friends in the Bay Area who were like, oh, it'd be kind of fun to do this. And they just randomly posted flyers around their neighborhood. And like 50 plus people showed up, like a bunch of press came, and it was just like a lot of dudes who think that they look like Dev Patel. And the funniest thing was that the guy who won was just like, yeah, my girlfriend made me cum. Like she always said I look like Dev Patel. But anyway, it brought me a lot of joy.

And I just feel like we should keep the ball rolling so anyone who is anyone should have a lookalike competition. Should NPR host a Steve Inskeep lookalike competition, I kind of think we need to do that. Except nobody knows what any of us look like. Maybe it's time to reveal all of that at once. A politics pod lookalike like everyone's up for grabs. That's a wrap for this week. Our executive producer is Mathony Maturi. Our editor is

Eric McDaniel. And today is his last day on the podcast. So everyone snaps for Eric. We appreciate you so much. Bon voyage on your next venture. Our producers are Jung Yoon Han, Casey Morell, and Kelly Wessinger. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.