Panned in Washington, Trump’s cabinet picks thrill many of his voters

To his detractors, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s Cabinet looks like a rogues’ gallery of people with dubious credentials and questionable judgment.

His supporters see something different.

“It’s a masterpiece,” Eileen Margolis, 58, who lives in Weston, Florida, and owns a tattoo business, said of Trump’s Cabinet picks unveiled over the past week. “If it was a painting, it would be a Picasso.”

A “brilliant alliance,” is how Joanne Warwick, 60, a former Democrat from Detroit, described many of the nominees.

“It’s pretty much a star cast,” said Judy Kanoui of Flat Rock, North Carolina, a retiree and lifelong Democrat who voted for Trump for the first time this month.

Democrats, and even some Republicans, worry that these nominees for top positions in government are inexperienced, conflicted and potentially reckless. But in interviews with almost two dozen Trump voters around the country, his supporters were more likely to describe them as mavericks and reformers recruited to deliver on Trump’s promise to shake up Washington.

In Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee for health and human services secretary, Trump’s supporters see a crusader searching for new solutions to chronic illnesses, not a conspiracy theorist promoting questionable and debunked ideas about vaccines and fluoride.

In Matt Gaetz, the nominee for attorney general, many Trump supporters look past the ethical investigation into allegations that he had a relationship with a 17-year-old girl and possibly violated federal sex trafficking laws, and see a provocateur who is willing to punish the Democrats who unjustly prosecuted the president-elect.

“I think it’s so crazy, and I love it,” Merrill McCollum, 60, of Bozeman, Montana, said of the nominees.

McCollum said she voted for Trump after becoming frustrated by bureaucracy, identity politics and the rising cost of living. She is excited by his appointments of people she sees as outsiders to Washington, D.C., a place she got to know while working there during tours in naval intelligence.

“What we’ve been doing in the past really hasn’t worked,” she added.

Not everyone is thrilled with every nominee. Some said the choice of Gaetz, a polarizing figure in both parties, could prove an unnecessary distraction and expressed doubts that he could be confirmed. Others thought the Cabinet was not anti-establishment enough, pointing to Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who was tapped as secretary of state.

Brian Kozlowski, a 40-year-old lawyer in Orlando, Florida, said even after Trump’s resounding victory, his own expectations were relatively low that his candidate would be able to bring about lasting change in Washington. But the Cabinet appointees have made him hopeful.

“It’s an actual fulfillment of a politician dispensing with the norms,” said Kozlowski.

“The No. 1 thing to me, and a lot of Trump voters, is getting rid of the swamp,” he added. “This is what is shocking some people — it may actually be happening.”

Among the nominees most praised in the interviews was Kennedy, who often speaks of addressing the rise in chronic health conditions.

Many health experts are alarmed by Kennedy’s unfounded claims that vaccines cause autism and by his threats to sue medical journals and fire hundreds of employees at the National Institutes of Health. They fear that as health secretary, he could undo generations of sound public health policy.

But voters who support Trump said they admired Kennedy’s focus on environmental toxins and his break with his famous family over his unorthodox views.

David Dollar, 71, a home improvement contractor in Durham, North Carolina, said he appreciated Kennedy’s push to examine how corporate agricultural and food manufacturing affects Americans’ health.

“I see the epidemic of obesity in our country,” Dollar said. “I really appreciate Mr. Kennedy’s passion for trying to change these things.”

Warwick said, “I bet there’s a bunch of people shaking in their boots” about Kennedy’s selection.

But in the end, she said, Democrats might like some of his policies.

Perhaps more than any other policy stance, Kennedy’s criticism of vaccines resonated with Trump supporters, many of whom said they were still angry about the mandates and business and school shutdowns during the pandemic. They blamed them on President Joe Biden, not Trump, who was president when the pandemic started.

The more criticism the Cabinet nominees elicit, Trump voters said, the more it proves that Washington is scared of change.

Donna Hutz, 60, of Hubbard, Ohio, said she has been happy about every appointment announced so far, particularly Gaetz, a former Florida member of Congress who resigned last week after Trump announced his nomination. Hutz believes that the allegations against Gaetz are false, which makes her root for his success even more.

The Justice Department under Biden declined to file charges in the case, and Mike Johnson, the House speaker, said he objected to releasing a report on an ethics committee’s investigation into the allegations because Gaetz resigned from Congress.

“It’s not what he’s done, it’s what was done to him,” said Hutz, a portfolio manager at an information technology company.

She said the backlash to some of Trump’s appointments does not surprise her, because in her view, his opponents have been blinded by the media.

“They’re losing it, and I’m enjoying every minute of it,” Hutz said of Trump’s critics.

Some people worried that the Cabinet would not work quickly enough to end the conflicts in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip. Cole Graham, 30, took issue with the selections of Rubio and Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host who was tapped to run the Pentagon.

Graham, who lives in Arizona, said those men appeared “too war hawkish.”

“I do not support further encroachment of Israel into Gaza or into the West Bank,” he said. “I was hoping we might be able to take a step back.”

Many Muslim voters backed Trump to protest the Biden administration’s unwavering support for Israel in its war against Hamas.

One of those voters, Khaled Saffuri, a Palestinian American of Fairfax County, Virginia, said he worried that Rubio is “pro-Israel to no limit.” But Saffuri believes if Trump keeps his campaign promises, he will step in to end the war.

“I didn’t think he was going to appoint angels,” said Saffuri, 65, who leads a foundation involved in foreign policy issues.

Sam Alasri, who heads a Yemeni political organization in Michigan, said he was also willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

He said that Trump’s nominations, including Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., for U.N. ambassador and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel, raised some concern.

But “we trust him,” Alasri said of Trump. “I trust his word.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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