By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press
PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump Jr. said Sunday that any pushback from the Washington establishment around his father’s unconventional choices for Cabinet proves they are just the kind of disruptors that voters are demanding.
The younger Trump insisted the team now around the president-elect knows how to build out an administration, unlike when his father first took office.
“The reality this time is, we actually know what we’re doing. We actually know who the good guys and the bad guys are,” he told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures. “And it’s about surrounding my father with people who are both competent and loyal. They will deliver on his promises. They will deliver on his message. They are not people who think they know better, as unelected bureaucrats.”
After Donald Trump was elected in 2016, he stocked his early administration with choices from traditional Republican and business circles, tapping figures such as former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who was his first as secretary of state.
Today, Trump is valuing personal allegiance above political experience.
That has translated into selections such as former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who faced a House ethics investigation, as attorney general, anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services and Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic lawmaker who has in the past publicly expressed sympathy to Russian causes, as director of U.S. intelligence services.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (R) talks with former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz and his wife Ginger Luckey Gaetz at the America First Policy Institute Gala held at Mar-a-Lago on November 14, 2024 in Palm Beach, Florida. President-elect Donald Trump has been announcing a number of nominees for his upcoming administration, including Kennedy, who has been tapped as Health and Human Services secretary, and Gaetz as the next U.S. attorney general, according to published reports. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
On Sunday, Trump continued to round out his team, naming Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, as the new chairman.
Carr said recently the commission’s priorities should be “reining in Big Tech,” and drafted the FCC chapter of Project 2025, an agenda that the conservative Heritage Foundation sketched out for a second Trump term. Trump has claimed he doesn’t know anything about the effort, but some of its themes have aligned with his statements.
The five-person commission has a 3-2 Democratic majority until next year, when Trump gets to appoint a new member.
Some of his picks might face difficulties getting confirmed by the Senate, even with Republicans holding a majority in January.
Donald Trump Jr. suggested that was precisely the idea.
“A lot of them are going to face pushback” but ”they are going to be actual disrupters,” he said. “That’s what the American people want.”
He said there are “backup plans” if Senate confirmation is problematic in some cases, but “we’re obviously going with the strongest candidates first.”
Trump Jr. also looked back to eight years ago, when his businessman father was new to Washington and its ways. “A big part of that process is just something that we didn’t understand in 2016, where he came to Washington, D.C., he had no experience,” he said.
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Now, his son said, Trump knows what to expect.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said the president-elect has “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to deliver that change, to take on permanent Washington, return the power back to the people.”
“You have to have people you trust to go into these agencies and have a real reform agenda,” Schmitt told “Sunday Morning Futures.” He said he sees “real momentum to get these nominations confirmed to actually deliver what President Trump promised on the campaign trail.”
On the same show, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said, “We don’t need any Democrats to help us. We have got the numbers.” But, he added, Trump needs “a team around him that’s going to help him. He can’t do it by himself.”
Vivek Ramaswamy, the former Republican presidential candidate tapped by Trump along with businessman Elon Musk to lead a new effort on government efficiency, also predicted pushback from traditional Washington to promised steep federal cuts that he said showed the need to “score quick wins through executive action.”