President-elect Donald Trump is not ushering in an administration of conservative populism. He’s pushing a fringe kookery that is marinated as deeply in left-wing shibboleths as it is in right-wing grievances.
This should be no surprise: With very few exceptions, the only identifiably conservative successes in Trump’s first terms came either through merely transactional alliances or through the efforts of former Vice President Mike Pence and the people he placed into office.
Previous columns have discussed in significant detail how Trump failed at illegal immigration control until Pence’s “Remain in Mexico” negotiations bailed him out, how Trump failed to secure funding for the border wall, how Trump torpedoed efforts to repeal Obamacare, how Trump drove up the trade deficit, and how Trump was already taking government debt to unprecedented levels even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
For now, let’s just concentrate on his nominees and appointees for his incoming administration. Axios was right to call it “Trump’s liberal cabinet.” It isn’t just a hidebound Republican “establishment” that should feel betrayed, but also anybody remotely devoted to what modern conservatism has meant for three-quarters of a century.
Even three years ago, anyone would have been considered a loon for suggesting that Trump would build an administration around left-wing nut Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Bernie Sanders-endorsed Tulsi Gabbard, a leading investment partner of radical-left financier George Soros, a horribly pro-union defeated congresswoman, a doctor who encouraged Facebook to censor alternative views, a billionaire who got rich on government subsidies while donating more than $100,000 to former President Barack Obama, a dog-killing governor with no border experience to helm Homeland Security, and a TV doctor who applauded child sex changes.
Yet here we are. Trump has played conservatives like fools.
How in tarnation can conservatives countenance Kennedy to head Health and Human Services when he has pushed for a single-payer (socialized) health system, supported no-restrictions abortion throughout pregnancy, advocated severe limits on proven childhood vaccinations that have saved tens of millions of lives, pushed for an eight-year hiatus on life-saving pharmaceutical research and development, and promoted widespread access to psychedelic drugs?
How can Gabbard be confirmed for director of national intelligence when she is arguably a security risk herself? In some ways, an apologist for the aims of China and Iran, she is so much an apologist for the Syrian butcher President Bashar Assad and especially the Russian mass murderer President Vladimir Putin that she probably should bill them for her services.
Treasury Department nominee Scott Bessent essentially set up conservative archenemy Soros to become a billionaire funder of radical causes, all by short-selling the currency of the United States’s closest ally, the United Kingdom. Plus, putting a high-flying hedge fund profiteer at the Treasury is hardly the mark of somebody concerned with bricks, mortar, manufacturing, and other facets of what conservatives once called the “real economy.”
Moving on: Trump’s appointment of defeated Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer as labor secretary is bizarre. It runs entirely afoul of his appointment of big-talking Vivek Ramaswamy to cut the fat out of the civil service and of Education Department nominee Linda McMahon to wipe out the Department of Education. Chavez-DeRemer is extremely pro-union, including public sector unions that conservatives and even the late liberal former President Franklin Roosevelt all believe shouldn’t even exist.
Ramaswamy’s government-slashing partner is supposed to be Elon Musk, who got rich off government subsidies and was a major supporter of the aggressively “progressive” Obama. Conservatives should be wary of the sincerity of Musk’s sudden conversion to a kind of libertarianism. Meanwhile, conservatives are already outraged by the selection of Janette Nesheiwat as surgeon general, considering she spent the first 18 months of the pandemic so much on the freedom-restrictionist side that she applauded Meta for censoring alternative views.
For Homeland Security, Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) at least spouts off like a conservative firebrand. However, she has almost no relevant experience for the job and has done plenty to make some conservatives tremendously wary. For the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz is not a systems manager, considered by many to be a bit of a quack, and was one of the very early promoters of gender transitions for children.
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None of these are good conservative choices. Combine them with other nominees with serious ethical questions in their record, such as Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, Pam Bondi for attorney general, Matt Whitaker for ambassador to NATO, and Doug Collins for Veterans Affairs, and conservatives are left with a dog’s breakfast of an incoming administration that is in many ways hostile to our principles.
As with his first two nuptials in real life, Trump’s supposed commitment to conservatism was merely a political marriage of convenience. Now, though, conservatives are starting to learn what it must have felt like to be Ivana Trump.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
