Trump’s monsters
Donald Trump has nominated about two dozen monsters in an administration that is sure to inflict serious damage on workers and the oppressed in the US and beyond. Trump’s team members want to cut taxes for the wealthy and slash whatever paltry regulations exist to protect workers and the environment from capitalist greed. Many of them are anti-abortion and determined to make life hell for undocumented migrants and trans people. They’ve climbed their way up the slimy ladders of far-right politics and corporate America; now they’ve found themselves at the top of the most powerful state in the world.
Trump’s top picks—all announced in quick succession on X—are a who’s who of the US far right, from Fox News presenters to prominent conspiracy theorists and arch-reactionary billionaires. This is hardly surprising. Trump has spoken of migrants “poisoning the blood” of the US, accused Haitian migrants of eating pet cats and dogs, floated using the national guard or military to handle “radical left lunatics” and suggested that police be allowed “one really violent day” to crack down on retail crime. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance has supported a nationwide abortion ban and espoused the far-right “great replacement” theory.
One of the first nominees was Matt Gaetz, a Republican congressional representative from Florida, as attorney general. After just a week, he stepped aside to avoid the release of details of an investigation into allegations that he had sex with a minor. Gaetz was quickly replaced by Pam Bondi, previously the attorney general of Florida and on Trump’s defence team during his first impeachment trial in 2020. Trump also selected his lawyer, Todd Blanche, for deputy attorney general.
On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly pledged to deport all undocumented migrants living in the US, estimated by Pew Research Center to number more than 11 million people. He’s announced two candidates to enforce this most fascist of his policies. Tom Homan, the new “border czar”, was head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement last time Trump was in power and has since defended heinous policies like removing children from their parents at the border. On a podcast with Donald Trump Jr last week, Homan said his anti-migrant campaign will be one of “shock and awe”.
He will be assisted in this by Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota and nominee for Homeland Security secretary, who boasted at a National Rifle Association convention last year that her one-year-old granddaughter already owned two guns. While governor, Noem deployed South Dakota National Guard members to the US-Mexico border in Texas. She was recently banned from the land of all nine Indigenous tribes in her state over a comment that tribal leaders focus more on benefiting from drug cartels than they focus on the wellbeing of their own children.
Trump has nominated China hawks Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida, and Mike Waltz, another Florida Republican and a former Green Beret, for secretary of state and national security adviser, respectively. This area has had the most continuity in US politics over the last decade: both Democrats and Republicans agree that it’s time to prepare for World War Three. Rounding out the foreign policy trio is Pete Hegseth as defence secretary. Hegseth is an army veteran turned conservative media personality, hard-right culture warrior and defender of US soldiers accused of war crimes. His body is covered with tattoos of iconography associated with far-right Christian nationalists and white supremacists.
Then there are the billionaires. Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, poured in at least $130 million to Trump’s campaign, for which he is now being handsomely repaid. His personal wealth has soared by at least US$80 billion since markets responded to Trump’s election with glee; along with fellow billionaire and Trump acolyte Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk will be heading the new Department of Government Efficiency.
Despite the meme acronym, this is no joke—their remit is to slash and burn jobs, spending and regulations across government agencies. It should be noted that DOGE isn’t an official government department but a presidential advisory committee. The intention is for Musk (who cut 80 percent of Twitter’s staff when he bought the company in 2022) and Ramaswamy to draw up a list of targets to be presented to Trump, as the pair outlined in a recent Wall Street Journal article. They’re promising US$500 billion in cuts, including, in their words, to “progressive groups like Planned Parenthood”—a women’s health body. Presumably Musk will also recommend Trump take the axe to areas like the Environmental Protection Agency that have been a thorn in the side of his own companies.
Howard Lutnick, a billionaire financier who donated at least $6 million to Trump’s campaign, has been nominated for commerce secretary—the role responsible for enacting Trump’s promise of significant tariffs on imports. Alongside him will be hedge fund billionaire Scott Bessent as treasury secretary. Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment and Trump’s fourth-largest donor, will be education secretary.
Trump’s energy policy, as articulated during the campaign, is “drill, baby, drill”. Doug Burgum, the billionaire governor of North Dakota, the third largest oil and gas-producing state in the country, will be secretary of the interior (responsible for managing public lands) and the new “energy czar”. Chris Wright, chief executive of the world’s second largest fracking company, is set to become secretary of energy. In a 2023 video, Wright declared: “There is no climate crisis”.
Perhaps the craziest picks in this new madhouse are those responsible for the health of 330 million US citizens. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the anti-vaxxer in chief and enemy of fluoride in the water, will now be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr Mehmet Oz, a TV personality and grifter who peddles quack supplements and weight loss products from which he financially benefits, will serve under Kennedy as the head of Medicare and Medicaid.
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters”, wrote Italian communist Antonio Gramsci from a fascist prison in 1929. He was describing a time of great upheaval for global capitalism, and the political “monsters” produced by the system as a consequence. History, once again, repeats.
