Trump’s Cabinet: Monopoly Capital’s New General Staff

Jacob Montag

With the arch-reactionary Donald Trump having assumed office on Monday (January 20), hearings regarding who will staff the top positions in his administration have begun in the Senate. President-elect Trump, himself a multi-billionaire real estate tycoon, has filled his slate of nominees for key Cabinet positions with the representatives and members of the monopoly capitalist class. The political records of the incoming Cabinet members are consistently characterized by the utmost subservience to the interests of the ruling class, staunch support for U.S. imperialism, and bitter cruelty towards working people throughout the world.

For Secretary of State, Trump has nominated Florida Senator Marco Rubio, whose political career has been bankrolled by dark money from billionaire monopolists. Beginning his tenure in the Senate as a Tea Party Republican in 2010, Rubio campaigned on cutting corporate taxes, slashing Medicare and Social Security, and prioritizing military spending. Throughout his career, Rubio has gained a reputation as a strong proponent of U.S. imperialism and one of the premier foreign-policy hawks in the Senate, particularly for his advocacy for greater brinksmanship with Chinese social-imperialism. In 2011, he was one of the leading supporters of efforts to pass a bipartisan Congressional authorization for the NATO military intervention in Libya. From 2015 onward, he has supported the U.S.-Saudi blockade and bombing campaign against Yemen, which has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians. A staunch Zionist, Rubio has been a consistent supporter of the ongoing U.S.-Israeli genocide against the Palestinians.

For Secretary of Defense, Trump has nominated Pete Hegseth, the beneficiary of a seven-figure post as a prominent host on Fox News, the touchstone of the Rupert Murdoch media empire. Hegseth, who was paid millions to tell working people what billionaires wanted them to think, is a reactionary Christian nationalist who has called for an “American Crusade” against, among other things, Marxism and Islam, reflecting both his hostility towards the working class and his chauvinism towards the third world. Hegseth is an open defender of U.S. war crimes abroad. He was one of the foremost advocates of pardoning the four Blackwater mercenaries who carried out the Nisour Square Massacre in U.S.-occupied Iraq and has called for U.S. soldiers to ignore the Geneva Conventions. Prior to his career at Fox News, Hegseth served in the Army National Guard, during which he was deployed as a prison guard at Guantanamo Bay, a CIA prison camp infamous for imprisoning suspected combatants from the third world without trial and torturing them.

For Secretary of the Treasury, Trump has nominated multi-millionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent. Bessent was an executive at the Wall Street investment management giant Soros Fund Management (SFM) from 1991 to 2000 and again from 2011 to 2015. Upon leaving SFM, Bessent went on to found Key Square Group, another multi-billion dollar finance monopoly. Bessent is a major donor to the Republican Party who has advocated for corporate tax cuts, anti-worker austerity measures, deregulating the financial sector, and raising tariffs on foreign imports, the latter of which reflects the growing bipartisan consensus promoting protectionism to prepare a war economy for upcoming imperialist wars of redivision, while selling themselves through populist chauvinism as defenders of American workers against foreigners.

For Attorney General, Trump has nominated Pam Bondi, a Republican lobbyist and former attorney general of Florida. Bondi was employed by Ballard Partners, a major lobbying firm in Washington DC with close ties to Trump. Through her work with Ballard Partners, Bondi has developed strong ties with the lackey regimes backed by U.S. imperialism in Qatar and Kuwait, providing legal advice to multinational finance conglomerates with ties to the two regimes regarding potential violations of the Global Magnitsky Act, which imposes sanctions on government officials implicated in human rights abuses. Bondi also provided legal representation to President Trump during his first impeachment trial. Throughout her career as a mercenary lawyer-for-hire, Bondi has been well-compensated, holding millions of dollars worth of assets in publicly-traded companies connected to Trump. As Florida attorney general, she was a leading proponent of judicial efforts to overturn legislation preventing health insurance monopolists from charging higher premiums for patients with pre-existing conditions.

For Secretary of Homeland Security, Trump has nominated South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. Born to a wealthy agribusiness owning family, Noem ran for Congress in 2010 after working for the family business and a brief career in local politics. A Tea Party Republican, Noem campaigned on cutting corporate taxes, deregulating the financial sector, and cutting funds for public healthcare spending. Throughout her political career, Noem has been a staunch supporter of draconian anti-immigrant policies, supporting bans on refugees as well as the Trump administration’s 2017 travel ban. As Governor of South Dakota, she deployed the National Guard to the southern border of the United States, in a theatrical and reactionary act of turning the military against the masses of the third world. During her Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of Homeland Security, Noem described Latin American immigration to the United States as “an invasion” and called the area around the U.S.-Mexico border “a war zone”, indicating her support for the Trump administration’s planned crackdowns on migrants and a militarized approach to immigration law enforcement.

For Secretary of Energy, Trump has nominated fossil fuel executive Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy, the second-largest fracking company in the U.S. after Halliburton. Wright denies the scientific consensus on climate change, which kills tens of thousands of workers annually, especially in the third world, claiming that “there is no climate crisis”. Wright is a major Republican fundraiser associated with the Koch network of political donors, which has provided millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Trump and other Republicans. The Koch network represents some of the most overtly reactionary sectors of the monopoly capitalist class, promoting corporate tax cuts, deregulation of industry, the repeal of labor protections, anti-worker austerity, and subsidies for the energy industry.

For Secretary of Health and Human Services, Trump has selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a member of one of the top political families in the United States. Kennedy has been a prominent promoter of anti-scientific views regarding health and medicine, providing crank medical advice to the public as a radio host for the Pacifica talk radio network. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy trafficked in the masses’ interests against pharmaceutical monopolies and grievances around the government bureaucracies’ handling of the pandemic. He promoted unsound treatments for the virus such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, both of which are manufactured by major pharmaceutical monopolies. He has resurrected the anti-communist myths about fluoride in drinking water and raised a sister slogan to Trump’s chauvinist slogan—Make America Healthy Again, challenging the classically-liberal public health bureaucracy through a hyper-individualist focus on health, devoid of any class analysis.

For Secretary of Education, Trump has selected entertainment industry executive Linda McMahon. A top Republican donor, McMahon has contributed millions to bankroll Trump’s political campaigns since 2016. During Trump’s first term in office, she served as administrator of the Small Business Administration, supporting the 2017 Trump tax cuts and the Trump administration’s deregulation initiatives. McMahon is an advocate for the privatization of public education in the United States, expressing support for increased public funding for both private schools and charter schools—a partisan for the attacks on the people’s right to education and the busting of the teachers’ unions.

Photo Credit: Ted Eytan 

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