People Would Serve in a Second Trump Administration

By Dominic Pino

Wednesday, May 22, 2024

 

After seeing the way Trump treated many of the people he hired during his first term as president, it’s not unreasonable to wonder who in his right mind would want to serve in a potential second Trump administration.

 

Trump prizes loyalty, but the first Republican senator to endorse him in 2016, Jeff Sessions, soon fell out with Trump after a tumultuous tenure as attorney general. Rex Tillerson took a massive pay cut to leave ExxonMobil and become secretary of state only to be fired by tweet before the midterms. The Department of Homeland Security, in charge of Trump’s most important campaign issue of border security, had two Senate-confirmed secretaries and two whose appointments were later ruled unlawful. And the January 6 riot spurred the resignations of several top officials who have since repudiated Trump for poor character.

 

So who would want to work for the guy if he became president again? Lots of people.

 

The United States has an imperial presidency. It shouldn’t, and conservatives should work to restore a proper balance between the three branches of government, as the Constitution prescribes. But so long as the U.S. has an imperial presidency, lots of people will want to be close to the emperor, no matter who that is.

 

People work their entire careers in Washington to set themselves up for cabinet positions. After shaking the right hands and scratching the right backs for a decade or more, many people would not turn down an opportunity to be a cabinet secretary simply because they don’t like the president who can make that appointment.

 

There’s a long tradition of people burying the hatchet of intraparty disputes and working for unsavory presidents. Even before Watergate, it wasn’t a secret that Richard Nixon was a snake, and people still lined up to work for him, several of whom went on to have honorable careers. Kamala Harris accused Joe Biden of being a segregationist and now serves as his vice president.

 

Mike Pompeo, Bill Barr, Nikki Haley, Sonny Perdue, Jim Mattis, Mark Esper, Eugene Scalia, Betsy DeVos, Dan Brouillette, Gina Haspel, H. R. McMaster, and Robert O’Brien all served in the Trump administration in much the same way they would have in any other Republican administration. They probably all sleep well at night knowing they did the best they could in the positions in which they served.

 

As Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote for the May issue of National Review, there are a few different ways a second Trump administration could go. Trump might cling to all his personal grudges and appoint a cabinet of sycophants. But if a second Trump term looks similar to the first, there would be people similar in stature to the list of officials in the previous paragraph, and some of them might themselves serve again.

 

Trump’s cabinet nominees would have to be confirmed by a majority of the Senate, and even if Republicans did well in November and regained control of the chamber, they wouldn’t have many votes to spare. The marginal members of the majority would be from competitive states whose voters would likely oppose extreme nominees.

 

We have heard a fair amount of talk about the possibility of Trump appointing extremists to cabinet posts, and about qualified Republicans not wanting cabinet posts, but talk is cheap. If Trump actually wins, it will be difficult for him to fill a cabinet with crazies, and it will be difficult for others to turn down a cabinet post if offered one.

 

While the U.S. has an imperial presidency, serving in the executive branch is an effective way to make positive policy changes. Even just rolling back the executive actions of the Biden administration would require effort and skill. If Trump wins, people would serve in his administration, even people who might now seem unlikely to because of their past disputes with Trump. Don’t be surprised if it happens.