This was a draft from earlier this year...
Now time to read John Nichols ... Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse - a field guide to the most dangerous people in America.
Now time to read John Nichols ... Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse - a field guide to the most dangerous people in America.
State: Rex Tillerson
Tillerson, 64, outgoing chairman of ExxonMobil after 41 years with the energy giant.Defense: James N Mattis
Only three years out of active duty, would require a congressional waiver of a federal law requiring a seven-year cooling off period for defense. Nicknamed “Mad Dog”.Homeland security: John F Kelly
Kelly, 66, retired marine corps general. After a 45-year military career
CIA director: Mike Pompeo
Pompeo, 52, a third-term congressman from Kansas. After the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, Pompeo falsely claimed that US Muslim organisations and religious leaders had not condemned terrorism. He called those at the CIA who participated in torture “heroes, not pawns in some liberal game being played by the ACLU and [former intelligence committee chair] Senator [Dianne] Feinstein”. Opponent of closing the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, a vocal critic of the Iran nuclear deal and a supporter of NSA bulk data collection. Has called for “the traitor Edward Snowden” to be executed
Treasury: Steven Mnuchin
Mnuchin, 53, campaign finance chairman. Former Goldman Sachs, hedge funder and Hollywood producer (Sully, American Sniper, The Legend of Tarzan). Son of Goldman Sachs employee, Yale grad. Swooped on doomed IndyMac bank as it sunk in the 2008 housing crash, acquired it and scored when the federal government bailed out the bank. They call him the “foreclosure king”. Democratic senator Sherrod Brown said: “This isn’t draining the swamp – it’s stocking it with alligators.” Announced he would oversee “the largest tax change since Reagan” and said his “No 1 priority is tax reform”.
Attorney general: Jeff Sessions
Sessions, 69, US senator from Alabama in his fourth term. Former US attorney, state attorney general. An immigration hardliner who was an early Trump adopter, becoming the first senator to back the eventual winner. Sessions’ last confirmation hearing, for a federal judgeship under Ronald Reagan in 1986, was derailed when former colleagues testified that he used the N-word, called a black assistant US attorney “boy” and joked that he thought the Ku Klux Klan were “OK until I found out they smoked pot”
US trade representative: Robert Lighthizer
Lighthizer, 69, a former deputy US trade representative in the Ronald Reagan administration. Lighthizer, in his current incarnation as a Washington trade lawyer with a top-flight corporate clientele, has testified before Congress that the US-China trade deficit is “a major threat to our economy” and recommended “a much more aggressive approach in dealing with China”
Labor: Andrew F Puzder
Puzder, 66, restaurant executive operating fast-food chains including Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s. Vehement critic of government regulation and staunch opponent of minimum wage laws and the Fight for $15 movement. Blames Obamacare for increased labor costs and has diagnosed a “government-mandated restaurant recession”
Health and human services: Tom Price
Price, 62, six-term Republican congressman from Georgia. Orthopedic surgeon staunchly opposed to Obamacare.. Attempted in 2015 to defund Planned Parenthood through a budget maneuver. Seen as opponent of women’s health programs. Described as having “a 100% pro-life record”
Energy: Rick Perry
Perry, 66, the longest-serving governor in Texas history, former two-time presidential candidate and Dancing with the Stars contestant. Perry, along with secretary of state pick Rex Tillerson and EPA administrator pick Scott Pruitt, is a climate change skeptic. Perry attempted in a 2011 presidential debate to say that he would as president eliminate the department of energy, but he forgot the name of the department. Once called Trump “a cancer on conservatism”
Housing and urban development: Ben Carson
Carson, 65, retired pediatric neurosurgeon. His mother, one of 24 children, raised Carson and a brother in poverty in Detroit and then in Boston, occasionally relying on food stamps and other programs. Carson, a critic of government welfare, has called for private charities to shoulder welfare needs. A purveyor of bizarre conspiracy theories and a provocateur who compares abortion to slavery and same-sex marriage to pedophilia.
Environmental protection agency: Scott Pruitt
Pruitt, 48, Oklahoma state attorney general. A climate change denier and longtime enemy of the EPA, whose rule he has called “unlawful and overreaching”. Part of legal action waged by 28 states against the EPA to halt the Clean Power Plan, an effort by Barack Obama’s administration to curb greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. On the overwhelming scientific evidence that human activity is causing the planet to warm: “That debate is far from settled,” he said in May. “Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.” Environmental groups say that Pruitt has been a “puppet” of the fossil fuel industry
Commerce: Wilbur Ross
Ross, 79, billionaire investor known for aggressive moves to agglomerate and sell failing steel- and coal-industry interests. Like Trump, a critic of US trade deals who has lamented the decline of American manufacturing. Net worth of $2.9bn, according to Forbes. Dubbed a “vulture” and “king of bankruptcy” because of his knack for extracting a profit from failing businesses. Helped Trump keep control of his failing Taj Mahal casino in the 1990s by persuading investors not to push him out. An explosion at a mine in West Virginia, which his company had bought a few weeks earlier, killed 12 miners in 2002.
Transportation: Elaine Chao
Chao, 63, former secretary of labor and deputy secretary of transportation. Married to the senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell. Daughter of a shipping magnate, she made more than $1m from serving on the boards of News Corp, Wells Fargo, Ingersoll Rand and Vulcan Materials in 2015, public records show.
US ambassador to the UN: Nikki Haley
Haley, 44, governor of South Carolina. Youngest governor in the country, first woman and first Indian American to hold the job in the Palmetto state. Fluctuating popularity. Praised for signing legislation to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state capitol and for leadership after 2015 mass shooting at a historic African American church in Charleston. Endorsed Marco Rubio in the Republican primaries and jabbed at Trump in a reply to the State of the Union address she delivered for the Republican party in January 2016.
Interior: Ryan Zinke
Zinke, 55, is a Montana congressman in his second term, former Navy Seal commander and decorated Iraq combat veteran. Born in Montana, he is described as a lifelong outdoorsman. A conservationist who favors the protection of federal lands and access for recreational use – but who also has voted in favor of oil and gas drilling projects on federal lands and who has supported controversial energy projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline
Education: Betsy DeVos
DeVos, education secretary. Daughter-in-law of Richard DeVos, co-founder of marketing company Amway. The family has a net worth of $5.1bn, according to Forbes. Her lobbying for school vouchers has been criticised for undermining public sector schools (which critics note neither she nor her children attended). DeVos’s brother is Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, a private security contractor notorious for its lucrative and deadly role in the Iraq war.
Small business administration: Linda McMahon
McMahon, 68, entertainment executive. For decades ran the premier pro-wrestling league in the country, now called World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), with husband and founder Vince McMahon, whose net worth Forbes pins at about $1bn. Spent tens of millions of dollars on a couple of senate runs, only to be rejected by the voters of Connecticut. She donated millions to Trump’s campaign and has given millions to his foundation, too.
National security adviser: Michael Flynn
Flynn, 57, retired US amy general and former director of the defense intelligence agency. A close Trump adviser known for his scandalously broad-brush criticism of Islam and flirtation with conspiracy theories. A vocal critic of the Obama administration. Flynn has falsely claimed that Sharia law is spreading across the US and that the nation is in the midst of a world war with radical Islamists. “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL,” he tweeted earlier this year. Son recently booted from the Trump transition team after tweeting credulously about fake news.
Chief of staff: Reince Priebus
Priebus, 44, chairman of the Republican national committee. Wisconsin native and a steady hand when things get weird. Once criticized for a failure to stand up to Trump, in retrospect praised for winning over his party’s insurgent and ascendant president-elect.
Chief strategist: Steve Bannon
Bannon, 63, campaign CEO, former chairman of Breitbart News. Harvard, Goldman Sachs, documentary film-maker, and Seinfeld, of all things. Boasted that he made Breitbart the “platform for the alt-right”, in reference to the far-right movement in the US. His web site was a clearinghouse for hate speech of all kinds including white nationalism, anti-semitism, immigrant-hatred and misogyny. Seen as opponent of the institutional Republican party, a former sharp critic of House speaker Paul Ryan
Counselor: Kellyanne Conway
Conway, 49 (birthday is inauguration day), Trump’s former campaign manager. A Republican pollster who initially backed Ted Cruz for president, Conway joined the Trump campaign last July and quickly became one of her boss’s most visible – and tenacious – surrogates. Has friends in high places, in the form of conservative megadonors Bob and Bekah Mercer. Also has tic of making veiled threats – or weren’t those really threats? – against Trump’s political opponents. She is the first woman in history to run a successful presidential campaign.
Press secretary: Sean Spicer
Spicer, 45, communications director of the Republican National Committee. In transition briefings has been heard to refer reporters’ questions to his boss’s Twitter account. A pugnacious critic of the notion that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee or that the Trump administration’s trade policies are undercooked. Prepare for a punchy press room.
Regulatory czar: Carl Icahn
Icahn, 80, founder of Icahn enterprises. Forbes estimates his net worth at $17.6bn. Like Trump, a Queens boy made good. Staunchly anti-regulation. Made a fortune as an “activist investor” using minority stakes in companies to do battle with corporate boards in order to wring out short-term profits. Said to advise Trump closely in his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, which Icahn has criticized, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
