The top names are confrontational hardballers – a bit like their boss
Donald Trump ran as Donald Trump and is going to govern as Donald Trump. The tweeting continues. “Very organized process taking place as I decide on Cabinet and many other positions,” he wrote. “I am the only one who knows who the finalists are!” The winners of this season’s Presidential Apprentice are likely, on balance, to be very conservative and very loyal.
Barack Obama tried to reach across the aisle during his transition from candidate to president. He invited Robert Gates, Bush’s defence secretary, to stay on and tapped Hillary Clinton, his primary rival, for secretary of state.
Trump, by contrast, has been handing out rewards to men who backed him beyond the call of duty. Senator Jeff Sessions, nominated for attorney general, and Michael Flynn, national security advisor, both lent their support early and enthusiastically.
Mike Pompeo, reportedly the new director of the CIA, was for Marco Rubio but switched when the winds changed. Reince Priebus, who will be chief of staff, ensured that a doubtful Republican machine remained loyal to the candidate during the election. And Steve Bannon, chief strategist and media mogul, was there from the start.
Bannon is one of the most controversial picks. He’s associated with the alt-Right, a rag-bag of farRight groups who have turned online trolling into a performance art.
Bannon’s traditionalism is so radical and his influence so fascinating that it slightly eclipses the boilerplate nature of the Trump team.
You might say that some are hardballers, like their employer, with a confrontational style. But they are familiar faces with familiar views. Let’s not pretend that Trump invented populist conservatism.
Jeff Sessions, a lawyer from Alabama, has been accused in the past of making racist statements, but supporters say that he has been misrepresented. He opposes gay marriage and wants to toughen up laws on immigration.
He will probably reverse his predecessors’ focus on police reform in favour of getting tough on crime and backing the cops. This will be hugely popular with the Trump base. Parts of America are blighted with a heroin epidemic and voters are tired of anti-police riots.
Michael Flynn, although a critic of Barack Obama, suggests a retreat to foreign policy orthodoxy.
Trump has often flirted with realism – he once even stated that the US was not an exceptional nation, as the Right typically insists, that 9/11 was George W Bush’s fault and Iraq was a disaster.
But Flynn is even more hawkish than Bush. As an intelligence officer under Obama his advice on Afghanistan was subtle and brilliant, but in recent years he has embraced a troubling theory that Islamism is allied with rogue states like Cuba and North Korea in a plot to bring down America.
Flynn is thought to have a more rational attitude than some hawks towards Russia, but his appointment confirms that accommodation with Iran is over.
Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee – former governor of Arkansas, talkshow host and evangelical preacher – has been rumoured as the possible ambassador to Israel. Huckabee denies it. If true it would be a mega-plus win for Israel fans. Trump could prove to be Tel-Aviv’s best friend since Harry Truman. And with Mike Pompeo taking over as CIA director, the security state looks safe in Trump’s hands.
Diversity does not seem to be important to Trump. The picture that emerges is a team of big, macho personalities bound out of loyalty to the boss and the desire to please. Trump plainly believes that a likeminded court is a happy court. That’s the way he ran his businesses. That’s the way he’ll run his White House.