By Hunter
Monday Nov 28, 2016 · 6:00 PM EST
There are three things that Trump's picks for top administration jobs so far have in common. The first is that they are, in general, profoundly inexperienced.
Indeed, Trump’s roster of key White House advisers and Cabinet officials could, in the end, rank among the least experienced in recent presidential history.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, headed right-wing news site Breitbart News before chairing the president-elect’s campaign. Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, previously ran the Republican National Committee. And Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a key presidential campaign strategist who is now being discussed as a White House adviser, ran his family’s real estate business before entering politics.
Later picks—for example, the curious decision to put an entirely unqualified Dr. Ben Carson in charge of Housing and Urban Development (despite no apparent prior interest in the subject, much less expertise)—are even more egregious.
The second theme in Trump's picks so far: They're opponents of the very duties represented by the departments they're being asked to head. Would-be education head Betsy DeVos has made a philanthropic career out of opposition to public schools in favor of privatized, for-profit versions. Would-be Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been an opponent of the Voting Rights Act and other civil rights legislation that his office would be implausibly tasked with enforcing. Would-be White House counsel Donald McGahn comes to the job after stints lowering the ethics bar for Tom DeLay and a Republican-blocked FEC.
The third theme: Money. Money, money, and more money.
Beyond Trump himself, who claims a net worth of more than $10 billion, the president-elect has tapped businesswoman Betsy DeVos, whose family is worth $5.1 billion, and is said to be considering oil mogul Harold Hamm ($15.3 billion), investor Wilbur Ross ($2.9 billion), private equity investor Mitt Romney ($250 million at last count), hedge fund magnate Steven Mnuchin (at least $46 million) and super-lawyer Rudy Giuliani (estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars) to round out his administration. [...]
Put together, Trump’s Cabinet and administration could be worth as much as $35 billion, a staggering agglomeration of wealth unprecedented in American history.
The Trump administration, in other words, will be a perfect representation of Trump himself. Fabulously wealthy, opposed to the very notion of government itself, and lacking any relevant experience that would allow them to do their jobs—or even clarify to them why those jobs exist or are important. It's the "put rich anti-government bastards in charge of everything and see what happens" administration.
What will happen? As dim as the prospects look, there's all sorts of different ways for things to go wrong. It's possible the inexperienced appointees will get railroaded by Washington long-timers and, lacking any base of support, will be rendered ineffective. It's possible that such widespread inexperience coupled with money-fueled hubris will result in appointees breaking laws that they hadn't even bothered to learn the existence of. It's possible they will surround themselves with like-minded but more experienced ideologues and be very, very successful in dismantling regulations, safeguards, and their own government departments.
It's likely to be all three, in fact. But "the government we all rely on will function normally" doesn't seem to be on the table.
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