Trump's cabinet A team of talents or a hodgepodge held together by fealty?

A team of talents or a hodgepodge held together by fealty?

- David Smith

During Donald Trump's first administration, his vice-president became the target of an angry mob amid calls for him to be hanged. His top diplomat was fired via Twitter and branded "dumb as a rock." His first attorney general was given his marching orders and called "very weak" and "disgraceful."

Despite it all, Trump has had no trouble recruiting a team eager to serve when he returns to the White House in January, even if his initial pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, was forced to back out amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

Trump's cabinet is nearly complete just three weeks after his election victory over Kamala Harris. To his MAGA (Make America great again) followers, it is a team of all the talents, poised to enforce an agenda of mass deportations, gutting the federal bureaucracy, and "America First" isolationism.

To critics with memories of Trump's first cabinet, however, it is an ideological hodgepodge glued together only by unquestioning fealty to the incoming 78-year-old commander-in-chief. Some have compared it to the gathering of exotic aliens in the Star Wars cantina. Others predict they will soon be fighting like rats in a sack as different factions compete for Trump's attention.

"The same thing that happened last time will happen this time," said Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group. "He cannot resist chaos. It is his drug. He will eventually start doing what he always does and turn on different people and start sandbagging his own choices for these various jobs. An 80-year-old man is not going to be a changed person."