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Earlier this month, I shared a first-look at Trump’s transition team. Over the past two weeks the presidential cabinet for the second Trump administration has been nearly finalized. As mentioned in my earlier writing, one of the main threats posed by the second Trump administration is that there will be no “adults in the room”. Since his 2015 presidential run Trump has alienated many of the pragmatic individuals within the Republican party. While there was an effort by the Republican party to balance Trump’s ego and erratic decision making with more moderate figures during the first administration, few members of the initial cabinet remained after Trump’s first year in office.
Today, Trump’s cabinet is full of fringe figures and MAGA extremists that have been propelled to the highest positions of the federal government entirely due to their personal loyalty to Trump. While there is the possibility that Trump’s second administration repeats the high attrition rate of cabinet members seen during the first, we should recognize that everyone surrounding him is a true-believer in the MAGA agenda - if anyone’s leaving it’s not because political self-preservation, it’s because Trump wants them out.
That brings us to the first casualty of the second Trump administration: Matt Gaetz. As the MAGA world’s main champion against the “Deep State”, Gaetz’s nomination was announced in the midst of an ongoing investigation into allegations of sex trafficking . It’s possible that we will see the findings of the congressional inquiry published in the near future. Given that he resigned from his congressional seat shortly after his nomination, Gaetz is now completely out of government and has brought the GOP’s previous narrow majority in the House of Representatives to what is effectively a tie.
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