Editorial | Trump’s cabinet picks could not be worse

Over the past week, President-elect Donald Trump began announcing his nominations for Cabinet secretaries — which are unremarkable at best and incredibly concerning at worst. While it would take several articles to properly appraise all of them, The Pitt News Editorial Board elected to briefly tackle a few of Trump’s most notable appointees.

Elon Musk, Department of Government Efficiency // Thomas Riley, Opinions Editor

No, the Department of Government Efficiency will not be a real federal agency, nor will Musk be appointed to Donald Trump’s Cabinet. This “department” will work outside the federal government and may not manage to do anything at all, but Trump still announced it in exactly the same manner as his official Cabinet picks. It feels wrong not to mention Elon Musk given how close he’s been with Trump the past few weeks.

Elon Musk is a national embarrassment, and I miss the days when Trump knew that, too. In fact, in 2022 he said on Truth Social, “When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it’s electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless … I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it.”

The simple truth is that Elon Musk is not a genius entrepreneur. He paid $44 billion to buy a website where hundreds of thousands of its users joke about killing him every day. He wastes his days away posting tweets that are so masturbatory they would lead to his swift demise in a Greek fable. Giving him his Redditor wet dream of heading DOGE only strokes his ego and empowers him to continue spending his endless time and money promoting anti-woke nonsense, which does nothing but deepen the hate in our country and alienate the only people who might have bothered to love him.

Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence // Alex Jurkuta, Visual Editor

On the surface, Tulsi Gabbard does not seem like a bad pick for this position. A veteran who served for over 15 years and a three-term congresswoman who served on the committees for Homeland Security, Armed Services and Foreign Affairs seems like the perfect fit for the title of Director of National Intelligence. However, when you look at her track record on foreign policy and the inconsistency of her positions, it is clear that she is one of the most dangerous picks that Trump has made so far.

After her campaign to be the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, she pivoted hard to the right. She became a regular on Russian state TV, where she repeatedly blamed the United States and NATO for the invasion of Ukraine and has been lauded by Russian state media, with some Russian papers claiming that many Ukrainians see her as an agent of the Russian state. She has also repeated the conspiracy theory that the United States was funding secret biolabs in Ukraine. Repeating this conspiracy is a dangerous indication of the beliefs and hoaxes Gabbard could believe and act on in her potential role in the Trump administration.

This is not the first time that she has cozied up to foreign leaders accused of war crimes. In 2017, when Bashar al-Assad was accused of dropping chemical weapons on civilians, Gabbard traveled to Damascus to have a secret meeting with him and, in 2019, claimed that “Assad is not an enemy of the United States.” During that same failed 2020 campaign, Gabbard repeatedly avoided calling Assad a war criminal and signaled that she was skeptical of claims that he dropped chemical weapons on Syrian civilians, a claim that independent investigators have well substantiated.

While Gabbard is easy to ignore as a more tame and normal conservative pick for our intelligence agency, the danger she poses is evident through her extensive history of cozying up to strongmen and denial of war crimes. In addition, her history of flipping policy positions whenever it benefits her political ambitions puts her among the most dangerous appointments the Trump administration has made thus far.

Matt Gaetz, Attorney General // Grace Longworth, Assistant Copy Chief

I’ve laughed at most of Trump’s picks for Cabinet positions thus far. I have to laugh about how ridiculously unqualified they are — otherwise, I’ll spiral into despair over the horrendous state of checks and balances in our government. When I read the news about — now former — Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz’s selection to lead the Department of Justice as our next attorney general, though, I gasped. 

Apparently, I wasn’t alone. According to inside sources, House Republicans gathered in a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill had similar reactions when the news broke. This is because Gaetz, if confirmed, would oversee the very department that investigated him in 2019 for crimes involving illicit drugs and paid sex with minors. That investigation was dropped, but the House Ethics Committee has continued to give him trouble. It launched a probe into Gaetz’s conduct in 2021 and deadlocked a vote on releasing an official report this week. 

Matt Gaetz doesn’t just lack the qualifications needed to hold this position. He has distinct disqualifications that should bar him from consideration, let alone confirmation. There is some good news, though — he seems to agree. On Thursday morning, Gaetz announced on X that he would be withdrawing his name from consideration for attorney general, citing the distraction questions over his confirmation have been causing for the Trump/Vance transition team. Shockingly enough, Trump picked an actual attorney general — Pam Bondi of Florida — to replace him.

Before we rejoice over this massive blow to Trump’s agenda and Gaetz’s newfound unemployment, we must acknowledge what this means for justice being brought in the investigation against Gaetz. Now that he is no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the House Ethics Committee or the scrutiny of the Senate, efforts to publicize the evidence against him are seriously hindered. 

However, there is precedent for releasing ethics reports on former House members, and the people of Florida have a right to the facts on their representative’s conduct — especially since he has paths to regain roles within the federal government. The Committee will vote on the issue again on Dec. 5. I can only hope one of the GOP members will break from party lines and put a stop to the House’s slimiest representative’s attempts to obfuscate justice.

Robert F. Kennedy, Secretary of Health and Human Services // Livia LaMarca, Assistant Opinions Editor

What can I possibly contribute to the commentary on RFK that hasn’t already been said? His family tried to warn us — this person is not the right fit for the job. It seems even his Kennedy political royalty status hasn’t sheltered him from the well deserved criticism. But as Trump appoints his most loyal of sheep to his future office, we now have an alt-right, vaccine-denying conspiracy theorist with zero public health knowledge taking the lead in arguably one of the most important secretary positions.

This role requires unwavering trust in science and public health, but RFK’s record displays no such qualities. His baseless claims and reckless disregard for established medical facts poses a catastrophic risk to the health of this nation and decades of progress. Despite overwhelming evidence that vaccines save millions of lives and billions of dollars, RFK has consistently championed the scientifically discredited notion that vaccines cause autism and do not actually work. 

His potential to manipulate public health policies because of his unfounded, granola mom-esque beliefs is discouraging to the progress of America — a country allegedly known for progress and innovation. Beyond vaccine misinformation, his appointment threatens SNAP benefits which millions of low-income families rely on. And even further, he is flirting with anti-choice groups, a direct threat to reproductive rights nationwide.

RFK’s history of prioritizing fringe ideology over empirical, evidence-based policy is a direct threat to vulnerable populations and every single citizen of this country. Entrusting him with this role is not just misguided — it would actively endanger public health, erode safety nets and turn back the clock on medical and social progress.

The Pitt News editorial is a weekly article written by the opinions editors in collaboration with all other desk editors. It reflects the collective opinion of the current Pitt News editorial staff.