President Trump is arguably winning this election, but we need to shoot for more than a razor-thin victory. We should shoot for a landslide. We need a critical mass of Americans supporting him, not just to get him into the White House but to enable him to enact the conservative agenda that will revitalize this country and, to borrow a phrase, make America great again. That means he needs the support of not only the Trump Devoted but also the Trump Curious as well as the Trump Dubious. He gets that by showing he is serious about governing. He scored big in 2016 when he put out a list of potential Supreme Court justices. That gave a bunch of wavering people the final nudge to take a risk on Donald Trump. He needs to do that now for the heavy hitters who will populate Trump 2.0 administration.
Listing the Team 47 superstars will demonstrate that a second Trump administration will be serious about governing. Famously, some people in the 2016 administration were less than serious. A bunch of them were outright ridiculous. Rex Tillerson? Anthony Fauci? Mike Esper? Trump would have been better off with Omarosa at State, as the Chief Medical Advisor to the President or as SecDef than those buffoons. When you have a national security advisor whose mustache is more competent than the rest of him, that’s a problem.
But this time, Trump is not going into office without a Rolodex. There are tried and true Republicans out there who are both ideologically correct and administratively competent. Trump’s greatest weakness is the impression that he’s not a serious guy, that he’s all mean tweets, Playmates, and bizarre rhetorical tangents. But that’s not so. He eventually put together a pretty good team. The results speak for themselves, leaving COVID-19 and the 2024 election aftermath aside. What he needs to do in 2024 is demonstrate to people that what they already hope will be true will be true – that the Trump administration is going to be filled with serious people ready to rebuild our fallen country.
Everybody’s been talking about the vice-presidential sweepstakes, and The Donald has got a bunch of good presidential apprentices to pick from. But the vice president isn’t the big story. His key picks are to fill the critical offices, people who will enforce his America First agenda for their left-leaning departments. Remember, much of the federal government is dominated by lazy communist parasites who will do everything they can to undermine the will of the people, all in the name of Our Democracy. Every Trump department and agency head must understand that he’s entering hostile territory. Every one of them must be willing to confront the bureaucrats with a whip and a chair and literally beat them into submission. They will attempt to co-opt him. They will attempt to bamboozle him. They will attempt to make him an institutional cheerleader for whom the department’s short-term advantage is the priority. Look at Jeff Sessions. That human rutabaga truly loved the Justice Department. That made it easy for the Justice Department to play him like a banjo and do incalculable damage. Anybody who prioritizes his department over putting America first is a loser. We don’t have time for that nonsense this time. We need steely-eyed killers out for figurative bureaucratic blood.
Here’s my dream team, a list of brutal pipehitters that Trump can announce right now and demonstrate his seriousness about keeping those promises he’s making about draining the Swamp. These guys are all based because they understand that this is a death struggle with the Marxists. All of them are – in their own way – utterly ruthless. There’s no time to be nice. There’s no time to take guff. There’s no time to accept excuses from time-serving bureaucrats. It’s time for the bureaucrats to fear their bosses rather than vice versa. And this is my dream team that will do that.
Let’s start at the White House. Every President needs a solid chief of staff. Frankly, the CoS choice can make or break an administration. This is the guy who runs things, who makes the machine hum. He’s got to be somebody who can reach out to Congress, to the cabinet, and even across the aisle to make things happen. You don’t need a bomb thrower, but you do need someone who wants to accomplish what the bomb thrower wants to accomplish, only with less noise and explosions. You need a silent assassin and chess grandmaster.
Reagan had James Baker, and Trump should have Robert O’Brien, his former national security advisor. Robert ran a large law firm in Los Angeles – there are few bigger viper pits – and he was one of the most respected and universally trusted advisors in the first Trump administration. This guy can talk to anyone – he was a hostage negotiator for the Trump administration. He knows how to work behind the scenes, yet he can still present well in public. O’Brien would provide the iron discipline a Trump White House needs to function. He’s also a Trump whisperer – he gets the President, and the President trusts him. Robert, a personal friend, will probably be mad at me because he’d rather be Secretary of State – he’s perhaps the foremost theorist of the Trump Doctrine – but I think he could do the most good (at least in the first year of the administration) wrangling cats at the White House. An Army vet, Robert knows you deploy where you are needed, not necessarily where you want to deploy.
Another friend is Ric Grenell, who should be the first secretary of state. Ric is the consummate diplomat. He knows how to talk to people, both behind the scenes and in public, and he’s an outstanding judge of character. He’s smart, but he also listens to advice. He is focused on the mission. This guy is urbane and sophisticated enough to mingle with snooty Europeans, but he also went running with the Marine embassy guards when he was our ambassador to Germany. He understands the problems with the State Department, and I guarantee that with Ric in charge, you’re not going to see anyone in Foggy Bottom agitating to support Palestinian terrorists over our Israeli allies – at least not more than once. I can’t say enough good about Ric, and the right people can’t say enough bad about him.
There are several solid candidates for the Department of Defense. I’m thinking Mike Pompeo if he’s not picked for Veep. Pompeo is a West Pointer, but this Officer Candidate School grad won’t hold that against him. He was a solid Secretary of State and a solid CIA Director, and he has the understanding of bureaucracy that you need to take on the Pentagon and win. The fact is that our military needs a complete rebuilding from the ground up. The culture is broken. It needs a guy who gives orders, not suggestions, and who knows the games officers play when they don’t want to conform. You could do a lot worse than somebody whose alma mater motto was “Duty, Honor, Country” when choosing the guy to fix a command structure so broken that it thought it was a good idea to get rid of “Duty, Honor, Country.” Give him a few retired colonels and senior noncommissioned officers to go out and be his hatchetmen and you will incentivize those three and four stars who have sat idly by as our military has declined into woke ridiculousness.
We need an Attorney General who will turn the Department of Justice back into the Department of Justice instead of the Department of Democrat Tyranny. I’m thinking Tom Cotton, if he is not the Veep pick. His Arkansas seat is safe, and this veteran and lawyer – he went to Harvard, but that was when they had the occasional token conservative – is completely ruthless. As an Army officer, he’s used to issuing orders and that’s what needs to happen there. Not suggestions, not hugs, orders. “This is what our president, the guy the American people elected, wants us to do, folks, and that is what this Department is going to do.” He also needs some high-level executive experience to complete his CV for his future presidential campaign. Plus, as a senator, he’s likely to be confirmed with very little hassle. Of course, the new Attorney General needs to find places for Harmeet Dhillon and Mike Davis, both of whom could do the AG job, too.
Trump should put Ben Carson back in at Health and Human Services. If he doesn’t select Doug Bergum for vice president, which wouldn’t be a bad idea, the Gov would make a great Energy Secretary with a mandate to make us independent in fossil fuels and the world leader in nuclear power. If Glenn Youngkin is not picked for vice president, how about making him treasury secretary? Youngkin knows how to get things done and this would burnish his credentials for running for a Virginia Senate seat, or even for President down the road, on a revitalized economy.
The Department of Transportation seems to be the place you send young guys who think they have bold new ideas, so let’s send someone who actually does – Vivek Ramaswamy. For Homeland security, we need somebody hugely competent, tough, and who understands the issues. Representative Mark Green, a former special operations doctor and congressman, would be excellent. Put Lee Zeldin in to replace the grotesque Chris Wray at the FBI – or, better yet, put in no one and shut it down.
For communications, why not pick a real comms pro? How about Townhall’s own Larry O’Connor, a seasoned radio host and former Broadway theater manager? Hey, if you can handle Val Kilmer, you can handle Jake Tapper.
There are other jobs and other candidates for them out there, but these are the big ones. These are the ones the voters will be looking at because these are the departments and agencies that are the biggest problems. The folks I’ve listed are problem solvers. That’s what we want. That’s what America wants. America wants Donald Trump to come back in and fix this mess, and to win, he should name his dream team right now.