Donald Trump has made many promises to the American voters. He has said that, as the 47th president, he’ll deport illegals, vanquish the Deep State, end the Russia-Ukraine war, free innocent J6ers, even out the lopsided trade deficit with China, make America healthy again, clean up the rot within the Department of Justice (DOJ), “drill baby drill,” and more. 

In other words, Trump’s pitch to the American voters was the promise of a complete upending of the corrupt, moronic, and possibly treasonous policies of the Joe Biden administration. Voters responded with a resounding, “You’re hired!”

Of course, Trump’s potential to deliver on his promises will depend on, in large part, the men and women he hires to fill his Cabinet. During a marathon conversation with podcaster Joe Rogan just before Election Day 2024, the 78-year-old Trump did an unusual thing. He admitted that during his first presidential term he hired some people he shouldn’t have. Names such as John Bolton, Rex Tillerson, H.R. McMaster, and Mike Pompeo come to mind. 

Has Trump learned to avoid hiring people who don’t buy into the America First agenda? Here we’ll look at some of Trump’s most important Cabinet choices, and you can decide for yourself.  

He’s back: Against formidable odds, Trump made it back to the White House, and he’s ready to implement his America First agenda. While his intentions certainly seem good, some of his Cabinet picks might not be. (AP Images)

Susie Wiles

Shortly after Election Day, Trump appointed his camera-shy campaign manager, Susie Wiles, as chief of staff. Wiles is credited, in large part, with bringing focus, organization, and discipline to Trump’s reelection campaign. 

The chief of staff helps execute the administration’s agenda. Wiles will also have a say in who gains access to the president. That type of gatekeeping power has some in MAGA Land worried, given Wiles’ Establishment pedigree. Former Trump campaign strategist Steve Bannon said on his War Room show, shortly after the announcement of her appointment, that Wiles’ comment about keeping the “clown car away from the White House” might be code for keeping MAGA purists away from Trump. 

Wiles is the daughter of legendary NFL broadcaster Pat Summerall. In 1980, she worked as a scheduler for Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign. In 1988, she was the deputy director of operations for Dan Quayle’s vice-presidential campaign. Wiles also worked under the late New York Representative Jack Kemp back in the 1970s, and for Jacksonville, Florida, Mayors John Delaney and John Peyton. She ran Senator Rick Scott’s successful campaign for governor of Florida in 2010. When Mitt Romney ran for president in 2012, she served as co-chair of his Florida advisory council. She also had a brief stint running the 2012 presidential campaign of former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman. And she has championed environmental causes and created support for more government spending on local services. 

Wiles has an extensive record as a lobbyist. She represented 42 clients, including corporations, government contractors, and business associations, between 2017 and 2024, according to a report from Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer-advocacy organization. 

Wiles joined Trump’s campaign team in Florida in 2016, a decision that prompted some head scratching among the political class. Republican consultant Tim Miller told the Tampa Bay Times that Trump was so far removed from the ideology he knew Wiles subscribed to that he couldn’t understand how she could work for him. Wiles’ excuse was that the GOP had fallen into “expediency culture,” which she believed would seriously damage the country, and that Trump was the change vehicle the party needed.

After Trump’s 2016 victory, Wiles stayed in Florida and managed Ron DeSantis’ successful campaign for governor. She and DeSantis, however, had a falling out afterward. She came back into the Trump orbit just in time to defeat DeSantis in the GOP presidential primary. 

Marco Rubio

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is Trump’s pick for secretary of state, a position considered to be the most important diplomat in the world. Rubio is a poster boy for neoconservatism, the exact type of person who makes the MAGA faithful question whether Trump has learned his lesson. 

The secretary of state is fourth in the line of succession to serve as president, after the speaker of the House. He leads the U.S. Department of State, the primary agency responsible for foreign affairs. U.S. foreign policy has been a major vehicle for bringing about a global government. The U.S. military has more than 800 official bases on foreign soil, and about 200,000 military personnel stationed outside the United States. Rubio’s voting record indicates he doesn’t usually have a problem with this. In December 2023, he voted against bringing U.S. troops back home and out of Syria. Two months before that, he voted against pulling troops out of Niger. 

Much to the chagrin of noninterventionists, Rubio is an interventionist. Back in 2016, in response to Trump’s position that the United States gives more than it gets from its interactions with the international community, he said, “The world without American engagement is a world none of us wants to live with.” During Trump’s first term, Rubio also co-sponsored legislation that would make it more difficult for Trump to withdraw from NATO by requiring two-thirds of the Senate to ratify a withdrawal.

Rubio is also a China hawk. His Senate biography describes him as someone who is “leading the charge to rebalance our relationship with Communist China.” In his most recent report on the country’s industrial policy, he said, “Through theft, market distorting subsidies, and strategic planning, Beijing now leads in many of the industries that will determine geopolitical supremacy in the 21st century.” In 2020, China targeted Rubio and other U.S. officials during a round of tit-for-tat sanctions between Beijing and Washington. 

Regarding the Middle East, Rubio has criticized Iran and staunchly supported Israel. 

The right man for the job? While he is certainly an effective communicator, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has strong neoconservative tendencies. Trump’s picking him for secretary of state has some of the MAGA base scratching their heads. (AP Images)

Rubio has served as a U.S. senator for more than a decade, and his votes aligned with the Constitution 66 percent of the time, according to TNA’s Freedom Index. As TNA pointed out more than 10 years ago, Rubio has never been in danger of being confused for a proponent of limited government. However, there is hope, or perhaps a glimmer of it. In April 2024, Rubio voted against the $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. He’s also made comments indicating agreement with Trump that the war in Eastern Europe needs to end. He told NBC News in late September, “Unfortunately the reality of it is that the way the war in Ukraine is going to end is with a negotiated settlement.”

Also, during consideration of the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) proposed an amendment to clarify that a NATO treaty doesn’t supersede the constitutional requirement for a congressional declaration of war. The amendment failed, but Rubio was among the 16 who voted for it. 

Tom Homan and Stephen Miller

Whatever concerns the MAGA faithful might have about Rubio or other Trump Cabinet picks, they are unlikely to feel the same way about Tom Homan and Stephen Miller.

Homan will oversee the mass deportations Americans were promised. And given his track record and matching rhetoric, there’s little reason to doubt he’s the right man for the job. 

Homan has been a police officer, a Border Patrol agent, and a special agent with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service. He served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2017, and was also Trump’s senior immigration official during his first term.

As far as carrying out Trump’s deportation agenda, Homan said he will prioritize public safety and national security threats. That alone will be quite a task. In December 2024, news outlets reported about an illegal from Guatemala who lit a sleeping subway passenger on fire and calmly watched as she burned to death. Before that, numerous bouts of violence by illegals rocked the Big Apple. In a September letter to Representative Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), Immigration and Customs Enforcement Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner noted that at least 435,000 illegal-alien criminals are roaming about in the United States — and those are just the ones officials know about. 

Mainstream media have tried to smear Homan as a heartless cop who gets a kick out of separating poor, innocent migrant families. On October 27, he appeared on 60 Minutes, where the interviewer asked if there was a way to carry out mass deportations without separating families. Homan’s answer: “Of course there is. Families can be deported together.” Then he made the commonsense argument that even citizens who commit crimes are separated from their children when they’re arrested. 

The immigration battle is going to get intense. Leftist activist lawyers have for months worked to draw up obstructive strategies. Becca Heller, founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project, told The New York Times, “We literally have a blueprint of what they are planning to do, and so we had months and months to figure out how to protect people.” Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said his organization has spent the last nine months planning for a Trump presidency and is “prepared to go to court as often as necessary.” The lawsuits are expected to come in fast and pile up high the moment Homan and company hit the ground running. 

Stephen Miller, another anti-illegal-immigration bulldog, has been appointed as deputy chief of staff for policy. He is credited with shaping Trump’s immigration policies during his first tenure in the White House. Miller is expected to play a major role in staffing the government — especially areas that intersect with immigration policy. 

Before joining Trump’s 2016 campaign, Miller worked for several congressional Republicans, including former Representatives Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), and former Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). After Trump’s first term, Miller launched the America First Legal Foundation (AFL), a litigation outfit that challenged several Biden administration policies and other illegal and despotic behavior on the part of public and private entities. AFL sued to stop the Biden administration’s “catch-and-release” border policy during the Covid-19 pandemic. In conjunction with 16 attorneys general, the group also sued and eventually won a lawsuit to stop the Biden administration’s attempt to grant mass amnesty to illegals. AFL also sued and won to have the Arizona secretary of state produce a list of illegals who were registered to vote, and with another lawsuit prompted United Airlines to backtrack on racist DEI hiring practices. 

Tulsi Gabbard & John Ratcliffe

In 2020, former CIA Director John Brennan joined a group of 51 “intelligence community” veterans and signed a letter charging that news reports in the New York Post about damaging information on Hunter Biden’s laptop smacked of “Russian disinformation.” This was false. The laptop was real, and the contents within were genuine.

This episode illustrates the condition of America’s intelligence community. Intelligence agencies have become so rotten that they can no longer even pretend to be a legitimate benefit to the public. Patriotic Americans hope Trump’s picks will change this.  

Former Democratic Representative and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is Trump’s choice for director of national intelligence. Some commentators have dubbed this the most important appointment. Gabbard, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, will oversee the nation’s massive intelligence apparatus. Her nomination comes with the hope that she’ll find out and disclose just how much American intelligence agencies are spying on Americans and causing mischief abroad. 

The 43-year-old Hawaiian is a former member of the globalist-oriented foreign-policy think tank Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which has been integral to the construction of a global government. She was also listed in the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders program, a designation she says happened without her permission or knowledge.  

Gabbard left the Democratic Party in 2022. She is a longtime critic of U.S. military and foreign policy, and possesses an understanding of who’s really in charge. In July, while speaking to Fox pundit Laura Ingraham, Gabbard said the Deep State was running the military-industrial complex: “Our foreign policy decisions are being made by unelected people in the military-industrial complex, who are profiting from us being in a constant state of war, and the national security state that has more power to undermine our freedoms and liberties when we are in a state of war.”

Gabbard’s congressional tenure lasted from 2013 to 2020. As a legislator, she amassed an abysmal score of 29 percent in TNA’s Freedom Index, meaning her votes aligned with the U.S. Constitution only 29 percent of the time. Her record indicates a soft spot for climate-change measures. In September 2020, she voted for the Clean Economy Jobs and Innovation Act, a 1,206-page climate bill that aimed to reduce net greenhouse-gas emissions to zero by 2050, which aligns with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A year earlier, she voted against a bill that would have annulled the Paris climate agreement.

But when it comes to issues more aligned with her prospective position as director of national intelligence, Gabbard’s record improves. In December 2020, she voted against the NDAA for fiscal 2021, which authorized $740 billion in military spending and undercut the president’s legitimate authority as commander in chief by restricting his ability to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, Germany, and South Korea. Then-president Trump vetoed the measure, but was overridden by the House. In March 2020, she voted for the Iran War Powers Senate Resolution, which directed the president to terminate the use of U.S. armed forces against Iran or any part of its government or military unless Congress declared war or produced specific statutory authorization. She also voted to remove U.S. armed forces from Yemen. 

Gabbard voted against renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 2018, and introduced legislation in 2020 to repeal Section 702 of the act, which allows surveillance of Americans who are not charged with any crimes. Last month, though, she seemingly reversed her position and came out in support of Section 702, calling it a “vital national security tool,” perhaps to assuage concerns among Senate Republicans in order to garner enough votes to get confirmed. She claimed that “significant FISA reforms have been enacted” since her time in Congress, and promised to “uphold Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights.” 

To help run the intelligence agencies, Trump nominated John Ratcliffe, a former representative from Texas and director of national intelligence from 2020 to 2021, to be director of the CIA. During his half-decade in Congress, Ratcliffe accrued a Freedom Index score of 69 percent. Like Gabbard, he voted against FISA; but unlike her, he didn’t vote against U.S. military intervention in Yemen. 

Ratcliffe stood with Trump during the “Russian Collusion” hoax. He said it “appeared that there were crimes committed during the Obama administration” and that he saw “no evidence” that Russian interference in the election helped Trump win. He described court-appointed surveillance of the Trump campaign as spying, and said the “Russian Collusion” probe was tainted by a criminal conspiracy. 

Ratcliffe was also a member of Trump’s impeachment advisory team. He called the impeachment charade, triggered by Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “the thinnest, fastest and weakest impeachment our country has ever seen.” 

Ratcliffe believes America’s biggest threat is China. Writing in a December 2020 Wall Street Journal op-ed, he said, “The intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically. Many of China’s major public initiatives and prominent companies offer only a layer of camouflage to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Kash Patel

If confirmed as director of the FBI, Kash Patel will face the unenviable task of reforming a thoroughly corrupt and morally bankrupt agency within the U.S. government. Moreover, he would lead an organization that has even spied on him. 

Some patriots argue it would be better to abolish the FBI altogether, but until that happens, putting Patel in charge will have to do. Former Trump National Security Advisor Robert C. O’Brien said Patel is “one of the most experienced people ever to be nominated for FBI director.” Patel is a former federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice. He served as chief of staff to acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Christopher C. Miller, and senior advisor to acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, both during Trump’s first term. He also led the interagency team that took down ISIS. 

Patel worked as a staff member for the House Intelligence Committee during Trump’s first term, when he exposed illegal surveillance activities by the FBI. He was the main author of the committee’s memo detailing FBI and DOJ abuses of the FISA process in obtaining a surveillance warrant of Trump campaign staffer Carter Page. He exposed within the DOJ a desire to conceal from Congress the fact that the FBI had a spy in the Trump campaign in 2016, and played a key role in the investigation that uncovered the name of the FBI/DOJ spy.

Patel has said that he’ll focus on fighting crime rather than surveilling Americans, and has promised to “clean house” at the Hoover Building and hold accountable all those who “abused their power” during the Russiagate “witch hunt.”  

Pam Bondi

If allegations of sexual deviancy against former Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) didn’t crop up, it’s likely this section would bear his name. Trump’s first choice to lead the Department of Justice fell through after threats to publish a damaging ethics report prompted the firebrand to withdraw his name from consideration. The House Ethics Committee eventually voted to make the report public anyway, likely to keep Gaetz away from the levers of power permanently. He has compiled a long and entertaining highlight reel of him embarrassing Biden administration officials, so it’s no surprise he’s not welcome in the Swamp.

MAGA justice? Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick to head the Department of Justice, is a strong Trump ally who built a tough reputation as Florida attorney general. She has promised to root out the corruption in the DOJ. (AP Images)

Trump’s second choice for attorney general (unless he was playing 4-D chess, as some believe) is Pam Bondi, Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019, a Trump ally, a D.C. lobbyist, and, as the media like to point out, an “election denier.” 

Bondi served as a member of Trump’s White House legal team during his 2020 impeachment. During her time as Florida AG, she was integral to tackling human trafficking in the Sunshine State. She was a leader in the crusade to bring down ObamaCare; she fought to maintain Florida’s ban on same-sex marriage; and she made central to her agenda combating “pill mills,” facilities where doctors recklessly prescribe pain medications.

Over the past six years, Bondi has worked as a Washington lobbyist for one of the top firms in the country, Ballard Partners, representing corporate giants Amazon and Uber, among others. Ballard reportedly also has ties to Trump and incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Some believe that as AG Bondi will order more John Durham-style special-counsel investigations. As special counsel, Durham released a report in May 2023 concluding that the FBI rushed into the “Russian Collusion” investigation without adequate evidence and ignored evidence undercutting the premise that Russia helped Trump get elected in 2015. Bondi’s rhetoric reinforces this. She said in a TV appearance in August 2023, “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated. Because the Deep State, last term for President Trump, they were hiding in the shadows. But now they have a spotlight on them, and they can all be investigated.”

Pete Hegseth

Pete Hegseth is a former Army National Guard officer who served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and earned two Bronze Stars as a result. He’s a Princeton University graduate and a political commentator for Fox News. He may soon add U.S. secretary of defense to his résumé, assuming he can overcome the torrent of Swamp opposition in the Senate. 

After Trump announced Hegseth’s nomination, CNN dug up a seven-year-old police report filed in a Monterey, California, court in which the prospective defense secretary is accused of sexual assault. According to the report via CNN, a California woman told police that Hegseth “physically blocked her from leaving a hotel room, took her phone, and then sexually assaulted her even though she ‘remembered saying “no” a lot.’” Hegseth was never charged with a crime, but his attorney acknowledged that a settlement with his accuser that included a secret payout and a confidentiality clause was reached. 

Perhaps Hegseth’s greatest sin, according to detractors, is his common sense. He has railed against “woke” leadership in the U.S. military. He told veteran podcaster Shawn Ryan that “the dumbest phrase on planet earth in the military is ‘our diversity is our strength.’” Moreover, he told Ryan, “We should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, [but it] has made fighting more complicated.” By opening combat positions to women, Hegseth believes, we’ve lowered standards and “the capability of that unit.”

Hegseth has also had the gall to question NATO. In his book The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,he criticizes NATO members for not spending enough on their own defense and refers to them as “self-righteous and impotent nations asking us to honor outdated and one-sided defense arrangements they no longer live up to.”

He also advocates for the implementation of a 10-year ban on generals working for defense contractors after retiring from the military. If the Senate confirms him, not only might the Defense Department deep-six wokeness in the military, but the department could be renamed. Hegseth has suggested a reversal to its original moniker, the War Department.  

Kristi Noem & Mike Waltz

Given Alejandro Mayorkas’ disastrous, possibly treasonous, tenure as Department of Homeland Security head, it was nearly impossible for Trump to appoint someone worse. He nominated South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, considered a conservative stalwart by most Americans. The appointee will be pivotal in carrying out Trump’s immigration plans, in addition to the agency’s duties surrounding cybersecurity, anti-terrorism, and emergency response.

During the peak of the border invasion, Noem was in the chorus of vocal opposition to such insane policies. She also led her state during the peak of Covid mania in a manner that made it one of the most desirable places to visit. Along with Florida, South Dakota was known for being a free state where people could party and buy groceries like it was 2019. 

But within the Mount Rushmore State, Noem has made some enemies. A couple years ago, carbon-capture pipeline companies arrived there to install their ludicrous underground contraptions throughout the state. As far as many of her constituents are concerned, carbon-capture pipelines are nothing more than a money-making scam that violates basic property rights and destroys perfectly fine farmland. South Dakotans have fought back against the pipeline company Summit Carbon Solutions for carrying out surveys of farmers’ land without their permission and bullying landowners to sign easement agreements. And Noem, as far as they’re concerned, has done nothing to help fend off the pipeline companies. Many of her constituents believe she doesn’t have the dedication to individual liberty she claims to.   

As for national security advisor, Trump appointed Representative Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), a war hawk “fully aligned with the worst prongs of bipartisan DC consensus,” according to an assessment from independent journalist Glenn Greenwald. 

Waltz is a former Army Green Beret who, as a legislator, has harshly criticized China and urged NATO members to pay more for defense, and expects Trump to push Ukraine and Russia toward a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine. 

He has served two terms in Congress, and accrued an underwhelming 67-percent cumulative score in TNA’s Freedom Index. Waltz has voted to reauthorize warrantless spying on Americans via FISA, to dole out piles of cash to Ukraine in its inevitable loss to Russia, and against pulling U.S. troops out of Syria. 

Doug Burgum

Trump nominated as his interior secretary a man who, as governor of North Dakota, set a goal in 2021 for the state to reach net-zero emissions by 2030. Doug Burgum believes in man-made climate change. But his plan to meet the net-zero carbon target doesn’t include abolishing fossil fuels. Instead, he sees carbon-capture pipelines as the way to reduce or offset fossil-fuel emissions. 

If the cries of the environmentalists are a true gauge, Burgum might do some good as secretary of the interior. According to Kierán Suckling, executive director at the Center for Biological Diversity, “Burgum will be a disastrous Secretary of the Interior who’ll sacrifice our public lands and endangered wildlife on the altar of the fossil fuel industry’s profits.”

Burgum, if confirmed, will head the department that oversees hundreds of millions of acres of federal land and other natural resources the incoming Trump administration needs to boost domestic oil and gas production.

Scott Bessent & Howard Lutnick 

When Trump announced he was nominating former George Soros employee Scott Bessent for treasury secretary, Elon Musk dubbed it a “business-as-usual choice.” However, none other than the most RINO of RINOs, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), called it an “outstanding” choice. That, in a nutshell, may be all we need to know about this pick. Nevertheless, we’ll be a little more thorough. 

Bessent is a homosexual and a CFR member. He worked as Soros’ top money manager, his chief investment officer, from 2011 to 2015. He joined Soros Fund Management in 1991, and is credited as being one of the driving forces behind the firm’s bet that the British pound would collapse. Other versions of the story say Soros essentially “broke the Bank of England” by shorting the pound. Those who favor Bessent, including Wall Street, see him as a stabilizing force who understands markets and will preserve the status quo. 

Bessent, if his rhetoric is genuine, has some redeeming ideas. He has called for rolling back government subsidies, deregulating the economy, and raising domestic energy production. He also favors one of Trump’s economic weapons, tariffs. Moreover, Bessent is a cryptocurrency enthusiast — at least, again, in rhetoric. He said in an interview with Fox Business in July, “I have been excited about [Trump’s] embrace of crypto and I think it fits very well with the Republican Party, the ethos of it. Crypto is about freedom and the crypto economy is here to stay. Crypto is bringing in young people, people who have not participated in markets.” 

Speaking of crypto, Trump’s pick for commerce secretary — Howard Lutnick, the man Musk preferred for treasury secretary over Bessent — is a proponent of Tether. 

Lutnick is the billionaire CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, the international financial services firm. According to investigative journalist Whitney Webb, Cantor Fitzgerald and its subsidiaries “are multinational in scope, promote the implementation of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (which have major implications for debt politics and economic activity), and are even directly partnered with foreign state-owned firms that recently came under scrutiny following the release of the contents of the laptop of ... Hunter Biden.”

The Commerce Department has become a major weapon against China’s tech sector. It has authority over export controls on sensitive U.S. technologies, and investigates anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases that can result in tariffs. Lutnick, like his future boss, is a big fan of tariffs. “Tariffs are an amazing tool [for] the president to use,” he said in an October appearance on CNBC, adding that the incoming Trump administration should use tariffs to bolster American industry. “If we want to make it in America,” he said, “tariff it, or if we’re competing with it, tariff it.”

Lutnick has also floated the idea of ending the federal income tax, echoing similar teasers from Trump. Abolishing the federal income tax would allow hardworking Americans to keep more of their money while impeding the government from redistributing it to other countries and through welfare schemes. 

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and Dr. Marty Makary

This is the state of American health according to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr:

Americans have fallen an average of six years in life expectancy compared to Europeans; 74 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, including 50 percent of children; America’s health crisis is so severe that 77 percent of otherwise eligible men and women can’t serve in the military; about 18 percent of American teens have fatty liver disease, something that used to only affect late-stage cancer patients; young adult cancers are up 79 percent; one in four American women are on antidepressants; 15 percent of high-school students are on Adderall; and half a million American children are on antidepressants. No other country has this. 

Kennedy has made such remarks to multiple audiences. Trump’s own comments indicate that he believes there’s something to what Kennedy is saying, and he nominated RFK, who also ran for president in 2024, for health and human services secretary. RFK’s publicly stated goal as HHS secretary is to curb chronic illnesses and crack down on ultra-processed foods. But his antagonistic views of vaccines in general have many on Capitol Hill worried that he’ll finish the job of undermining all vaccines.

Unlike the neocons vying for positions in the Trump administration, Kennedy has never even pretended to be a true conservative. He still believes in abortion, affirmative action, and man-made climate change. But he’s been tasked with getting America healthy again, and, according to Trump, “Bobby” isn’t going anywhere near the oil. 

If all pans out in the confirmation process, RFK, Jr. will have a kindred spirit over at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which he would oversee. Trump has nominated Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for NIH director. 

In March 2020, just as Covid hysteria was ratcheting up, Bhattacharya had the temerity to ask, “Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?” He argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that Covid lockdowns and quarantines were not based on scientific data. Former NIH Director Francis Collins has publicly attacked Bhattacharya as a “fringe epidemiologist,” but Bhattacharya may soon occupy Collins’ former chair. 

Bhattacharya works as a professor of medicine at Stanford University. He was one of the authors of “The Great Barrington Declaration,” which called for “focused protection” of vulnerable people, freedom for everyone else, and an evidence-based approach to tackling Covid, as opposed to the one-size-fits-all lockdowns that the United States and many other countries leveled against their citizens.

Former White House health advisor to the Trump administration Katy Talento told The Epoch Times that she expects Bhattacharya to “reform the funding process to ensure that priorities for research grant approvals are driven by uncovering the root causes of the chronic disease epidemic in the United States rather than symptom mitigation medications.” Kennedy has said that he would direct the NIH to fund research that investigates the cause of America’s chronic health crisis. 

Dr. Marty Makary, another Covid critic, albeit a timid one, has been tapped to head the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Makary is on the executive board of a telehealth company called Sesame. 

Unlike RFK and Bhattacharya, Makary supported lockdowns and masking during the Covid era — until he didn’t. He said in September 2020 that America should have introduced early shutdowns and universal masking policies to control the spread, but later criticized those policies because of the obvious economic and social harms they were wreaking. He also had a problem with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention inflating the numbers of Covid deaths and the government’s forced vaccination attempts, though he did not oppose the vaccines themselves.

When it comes to America’s food system, there’s no daylight between Makary and Kennedy. Speaking at a congressional roundtable discussion hosted by Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Makary said, “We have poisoned our food supply, engineered highly addictive chemicals that we put into our food.” He blames chemicals for damaging gut bacteria and gut lining, which leads to chronic inflammation that drives the chronic disease epidemic raging through the bodies of Americans from coast to coast. 

Make America healthy: While RFK, Jr.’s desire to “Make America Healthy Again” is noble, the federal government should not be involved in healthcare. Kennedy should start by working to abolish all federal healthcare agencies, particularly the FDA. (AP Images)

A spokesman for the Trump transition team told The New York Times that Trump’s Cabinet picks will “slash wasteful spending in our broken health care system that cripples our nation’s budget” and “return health care to the Gold Standard.” Of course, as many readers of The New American know, government involvement in healthcare is unconstitutional, but any spending cuts are a welcome step in the right direction.

What Now? 

These appointments and nominations offer a glimpse into the second Trump presidency. For many, MAGA purists specifically, Trump could have and should have done better. And while that’s obviously true, it’s also true that no matter how great a Cabinet Trump assembles, no matter how many red-pilled anti-globalists occupy the offices of the West Wing over the next four years, it doesn’t absolve the electorate of its responsibility in the American self-government process.

Yes, leadership matters, but the United States of America is a constitutional Republic, wherein the people choose their leaders, and by extension, the policies they want implemented within the restraints of the Constitution. Though efforts to undermine the people by corrupting that process exist, and in many instances have even succeeded, Trump’s rise and victory show that the people still hold more power than the elites and Deep State. 

But the work has just begun. Now is the time for patriots to push harder, not lay off the pedal. Americans need to increase their political involvement and ratchet up pressure to implement policies that foster true liberty and prosperity. And they need to do so with a foundation of understanding that will truly make America great again.

For those who want to get involved, we recommend our parent organization, The John Birch Society. The JBS has chapters nationwide and a massive archive of research and educational resources. With 66 years of experience in activism and education, and nearly as much experience in fending off smears and unfounded lies, no organization has stood the test of time and withstood attacks like the JBS. 

You can contact your local coordinator at https://jbs.org/coordinator/ to get plugged into a chapter near you. Let’s make America greater than it ever was!