In the history of American politics, there’s no shortage of presidents who promised to shake up Washington once they got to the White House. But Donald Trump may prove to be in a class of his own, and he appears more interested in beating the federal government into submission than recalibrating it.
In staffing his administration, Trump has shown an inclination to select people who distrust or even disdain the agencies that they’ve been chosen to lead, setting up a potential war of attrition between the incoming Republican president and American institutions.
“There’s been nothing like what Trump is suggesting to do,” said Doug Brinkley, a presidential historian. “We’re talking about dismantling the federal government.”
Trump’s approach will become even clearer this week as Kash Patel, his choice for FBI director, heads to Capitol Hill for an initial round of meetings with senators who will decide whether to confirm him to the post. A former national security official who has branded himself as an eager acolyte of Trump, Patel has talked about shutting down the agency’s headquarters, splitting up its responsibilities and targeting Trump’s perceived enemies.
Greg Brower, a former U.S. attorney who served as the FBI’s top congressional affairs official, said Trump seems to want to make the nation’s law enforcement institutions “part of his political operation run out of the White House.”
“That’s a major course change that I’m just not sure a majority of senators are willing to endorse,” Brower said.
Republican senators are already considering whether to support Pete Hegseth, whom Trump wants to lead the Pentagon, despite allegations of sexual misconduct, excessive drinking and financial mismanagement. Hegseth is an Army veteran and former Fox News commentator who has described the military as flooded with “woke” liberal ideology. He also wants to remove women from combat roles.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump’s transition team and the incoming White House press secretary, said the next administration wants to “shatter the Deep State,” a term for entrenched civil servants who have frustrated Trump and his allies.
“President Trump was re-elected by a resounding mandate from the American people to change the status quo in Washington,” she said in a statement. “That’s why he has chosen brilliant and highly-respected outsiders to serve in his Administration, and he will continue to stand behind them as they fight against all those who seek to derail the MAGA Agenda.”
Margaret Spelling, who served as education secretary under President George W. Bush, said it is “probably not a good management style” to treat government employees as adversaries.
“If you’re going to turn the tide or redirect the ship of state, you’ve got to have help doing it,” she said. “And that’s people who work there already.”
Spelling’s former department could be outright eliminated if Trump has his way. His choice of education secretary, Linda McMahon, has never worked in the field. She served for one year on the Connecticut Board of Education and is a member of the board of trustees at a private university. McMahon lead the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term, and she made a name for herself by running World Wrestling Entertainment, a cultural juggernaut that features musclebound men beating each other up in elaborately scripted fights.
Trump’s plans for the federal government blend conservative ideology, which has long viewed Washington as too intrusive in Americans’ daily lives, with his personal vendettas. After being plagued by investigations and contradicted by career officials during his first term, the returning president has no interest in a replay and he’s more skeptical of insider views that clash with his own instincts.
Some of his personnel choices have alarmed political opponents, but Trump’s approach could prove appealing to voters whose faith in government has sunk to record lows in recent years. Only about 2 in 10 Americans trust the government to do the right thing always or most of the time, according to the Pew Research Center, down from around 4 in 10 who said this in 2000 — before the upheaval of a global financial crisis, an inconclusive war on terrorism and a worldwide pandemic.
Kay Schlozman, a Boston College political science professor, said Trump’s nominees could be viewed as “an extension of his capacity to question the received wisdom and question the supposed elites who always run everything.”
Some of the largest gaps between expertise and personnel have been evident in public health. Trump chose Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services despite his reputation as one of the most prolific spreaders of unfounded theories about the supposed danger of vaccines.
Trump also picked Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a critic of public health measures like lockdowns and vaccine mandates that were used during the coronavirus outbreak, to run the National Institutes of Health, the country’s top medical research agency.
In other areas of government, loyalty has often been prized over expertise. Lee Zeldin, a former New York congressman, never served on any committees dealing with the environment during nearly a decade on Capitol Hill. Now he’s on deck to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
Brinkley said it’s not uncommon to have presidents attempt to change how Washington works. Richard Nixon tried to circumvent government agencies by centralizing decision-making in the White House, and Warren Harding stocked his Cabinet with business leaders.
But Brinkley said Trump’s approach is more venomous, and he seems to be setting up his staff to compete to be the most zealous.
“It’s got a gladiator feel,” he said. “They each want to show that they’ve got a scalp to punish the so-called deep state, the legacy media or the Democratic Party.”
Another way that Trump is taking on Washington is the Department of Government Efficiency, an independent advisory organization that will be run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Musk, the world’s richest man, and Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, plan to provide ideas on dramatically reducing federal spending and cutting the government workforce. They also said Trump should sidestep Congress whenever possible, setting up a potential constitutional clash.
Theda Skocpol, a Harvard University professor of government and sociology, agreed that Americans are often doubtful about Washington’s effectiveness.
“But it doesn’t mean there’s going to be an easy path to eliminating entire departments or functions of government because people will realize they have the stakes in those things,” she said.
However, Skocpol said, chaos might be the actual goal.
“Parts of American conservatism have been trying to make government a mess when they control it, and then use it as an argument for less government,” she said.
