Loyalty has been one of the essential criteria that Donald Trump has followed when choosing the members of his new cabinet. His television skills have also been another of the requirements that the magnate has applied, which has turned the related network Fox News into the quarry for many of his appointments.
The people who will be in charge of Defense, Energy, Transportation or National Intelligence come from Fox, as well as the future “czar of the borders.” Other names are not directly linked to the network, but they are also famous on television, such as the future United States ambassador to Israel or Dr. Mehmet Oz, who will manage Medicare.
Oz will go from selling vitamin supplements online to leading the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency that oversees health insurance coverage for more than 160 million Americans. During the pandemic, Oz promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, a treatment that Trump said he followed despite the lack of evidence on the effectiveness of these products and the risk involved.
Chris Wright, who has no prior experience in politics, caught Trump’s attention thanks to his appearances on the Fox network and will now be the new Secretary of Energy. Wright is the CEO of Liberty Energy, a fracking located in Denver.
Former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, with a pro-Russian profile and who will now be the director of National Intelligence, was one of Fox’s favorite faces. The future Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, rose to fame in the 90s thanks to a reality show on MTV and until his nomination he had been hosting a show on Fox Business.
Tom Homan, the “border czar” as Trump baptized him, has been a regular face on the Fox network, although he had already served in the Republican’s previous presidency as one of the architects of the immigration policy consisting of separating families.
Christian television star and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee will be the new US ambassador to Israel. Trump plans to send an evangelist to the Holy Land in the midst of the maelstrom of violence promoted by Tel-Aviv in the region.
Linda McMahon, who with her husband founded the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) conglomerate, has been chosen for the Department of Education, which Trump has proposed to dismantle. The WWE is one of the great audiovisual platforms of professional wrestling.
Even when choosing Pam Bondi as his new attorney general after Matt Gaetz withdrew from the nomination, Trump took her television appearances into account when selecting her.
Although surely the most explicit case is that of Fox’s weekend host, Pete Hegseth.
If the Senate certifies it, Hegseth would go from being in charge of the program Fox & Friends to oversee 1.3 million active duty troops as he heads the Pentagon as Secretary of Defense. Beyond being a well-known face of the network, Hegseth also sports a series of tattoos that are linked to white supremacy (such as “Deus Vult”) and he is accused of sexual assault against a woman.
Although Gaetz resigned in the middle of the investigation for having had sexual relations with a minor, the main motivation for his resignation was because he would not achieve enough support in the Senate for his case to be certified. The few wayward senators who have dared to go against Trump’s designs are unlikely to want to expose themselves to more pressure from the party machine. So it cannot be guaranteed that Hegseth will suffer the same fate as Gaetz.
Trump’s penchant for Fox network figures is nothing new. The revolving door between the Republican government and television already existed during his first term.
Between 2017 and 2020, there were at least 20 moves from Fox to Trump’s cabinet, including Anthony Scaramucci, Richard Grenell, Heather Nauert, Morgan Ortagus and Bill Shine.
Trump, who built a good part of his fame thanks to reality The Apprentice, He highly values the ability of his people to know how to handle themselves in front of the cameras. Deep down, the president-elect seeks to create a government that, in a certain way, is a replica of himself: loyal figures aligned with his agenda and with the reflexes that television requires.
During an interview, Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s former adviser during his first term, said that the president-elect values having a team “that knows how to be public” and be able to convey a clear message. As an example, Conway gave Joe Biden’s administration, which despite having spent the entire mandate trying to convey certain messages, these have not reached ordinary people. The truth is that one of the big problems with Biden’s economic policies was that despite achieving good macroeconomic indicators, he failed to convey the message that the economy was doing better.
That Trump wants a team that knows how to communicate is not new either if we take into account that the Republican has been able to return to the White House thanks to a campaign marked by lies and that prioritized creating a story – fictitious, in many cases – to be based on facts.
With four years ahead and a list of electoral promises to fulfill, such as the “largest mass deportation in the history” of the United States, it is necessary to have a team that knows how to sell any small progress as a supposed achievement.
#Trump #Fox #friendly #network #quarry #Government
