Brooks and Capehart on the ‘chaos’ surrounding Trump’s Cabinet picks

New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart join Amna Nawaz to discuss the week in politics, including President-elect Trump’s key Cabinet appointments that offer a glimpse of what’s to come in his administration and Republicans secure the House, giving them control over Congress and the White House as they prep their agenda for the new year.
Amna Nawaz:
President-elect Trump has hit the ground running this week, announcing several key Cabinet appointments that offer a glimpse of what’s to come in his administration.
Meanwhile, Republicans have secured the House, giving them control over Congress and the White House as they prep their agenda for the new year.
To break all this down, we turn to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart. That is New York Times’ columnist David Brooks, and Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for The Washington Post.
Great to see you both, as always.
Jonathan Capehart:
Thanks, Amna.
Amna Nawaz:
Little bit of news I want to share with our viewers. We have another appointment from president-elect Trump. He’s just announced that Karoline Leavitt, who was his Trump campaign national press secretary, will be the White House press secretary as well.
But I want to ask you about some other notable nominees that we have been focusing on this week. Here’s a look at some of those names right now. Marco Rubio has been nominated for secretary of state, Matt Gaetz for attorney general, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, RFK Jr. for Health and Human Services, Kristi Noem for Homeland Security, and of course, Susie Wiles to be his chief of staff.
And then there’s this Department of Government Efficiency with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
David, this transition is moving so much faster than the previous one. What do you take away from not just who’s being named, but how quickly we’re seeing all these names rolled out?
David Brooks:
Well, there are two possibilities with the speed. Either they did a lot of pre-preparation or Trump’s just riffing.
And from what we know, it could be riffing, because Matt Gaetz was on a plane ride, apparently, with Trump. And if the reporting is to be believed Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was in the next room in the plane, and she had no idea what was happening. He had a conversation. He said, oh, why don’t you be attorney general?
So it may be just him going with his gut. As for the tone of the appointments, I have had a roller-coaster week emotionally. So, in the beginning, he nominated Marco Rubio for secretary of state. I said, oh, pretty good. Michael Waltz, national security adviser, oh, a professional. John Thune wins the Senate majority leader, non-Trumpy.
So I’m feeling like you have gone to the dentist, you expect it to hurt, and it’s not hurting. So you’re like, oh, this is pretty good.
But then comes Matt Gaetz, which is root canal. And then comes RFK Jr., another root canal. So it got crazier as the week went on. And we can talk about Gaetz, but just to pick Tulsi Gabbard, who is going to be director of intelligence, she’s never had an intelligence job.
Amna Nawaz:
Yes.
David Brooks:
She’s had no experience with intelligence. Like, who does that? She’s never really run anything like a lot of the people — like Pete Hegseth running the Pentagon, without much management experience.
It’s just like my only conclusion, he sent these people into these agencies to be agents of chaos. And that’s the core message I take away from a lot of these picks.
Amna Nawaz:
I want to talk about a few of them specifically, but, Jonathan, let’s get your take.
Jonathan Capehart:
Root canal without anesthesia, just to be clear.
(Laughter)
Jonathan Capehart:
Look, Donald Trump is the most predictable and easy-to-read politician I have ever had to cover, because he’s — he projects. He’s thin-skinned.
He told us he was going to do this. He told us, RFK, you should be the head of HHS, and we all thought he was crazy, because it’s nuts. But he’s following through. And what he’s doing in terms of the speed, he’s putting in loyalists. He’s putting in people who aren’t going to tell him no, also people who actually believe in what he wants to do.
You call them agents of chaos. A lot of people have come to Washington to wreck Washington. And so now they’re going to get into the federal government and wreck it from the inside. And I think the toughest vote that the Senate took was the one that elected Senator John Thune as majority leader.
Why? Because it was secret ballot. Every vote they’re going to take from now on is going to be for public view. They will have to put their names to saying no to Bob — to Bob Gates — to former Congressman Matt Gaetz, say no to RFK Jr.
I don’t think that they have that much courage to do the right thing and say no, Mr. President. But if they do have the courage to say no to Matt Gaetz and say no to the president, I actually wonder if naming Gaetz was a chaos play, because Todd Blanche, who was…
Amna Nawaz:
Meaning to distract from other things?
Jonathan Capehart:
To distract? Sure. But Matt Gaetz is so — what’s the word I’m looking for? He’s so toxic, unacceptable in the job.
But Todd Blanche, who was Donald Trump’s lawyer in the hush money case, he’s — he was named the deputy, correct? Matt Gaetz moves aside, put in your old — your lawyer. He’s infinitely better. He’s an actual lawyer, a real, respected lawyer who went to work for Donald Trump. I could see that possibly happening, but still…
Amna Nawaz:
You’re suggesting a real strategy here, though.
Jonathan Capehart:
I mean, it’s Donald Trump. I might be giving him more credit than is due.
Amna Nawaz:
Well, let me ask you about John Thune, because you did bring that up, and it’s a good point I want to get your take on here, David.
What does the election of Senator John Thune to be Senate majority leader, voted by his peers, his Senate colleagues there — it’s, A, a huge shift away from Mitch McConnell, right? He’s the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history, but it also marked the rejection, to some degree, of Rick Scott, who was also running for leader and was backed by Elon Musk and other big MAGA voices publicly, although Mr. Trump did not weigh in.
What does it say to you that they elected John Thune to be their leader about how Senate Republicans see their role in this next Trump presidency?
David Brooks:
Yes, I think these majority — these leadership position elections are all about personality and relationship. They’re like 50 Republican senators, basically, and they all know each other very well. It’s, who do they like? Who do they feel comfortable with?
So, John Thune has been in the Senate a long time, super nice guy, very normal Republican, not MAGA, particularly, but knows how to do the dance. And I thought some of his skill was on display this week, which was he was asked about recess appointments, which Donald Trump has sort of talked about doing all these appointments without Senate confirmation.
Amna Nawaz:
Right.
David Brooks:
And I thought he handled it — it was on FOX. He handled it, I thought, kind of skillfully. He said, I’m open to anything. But Donald Trump should know there’s all these barriers to doing recess appointments, that you have to have all the Republicans vote for it without a single dissent. You have to have this barrier, this barrier, this barrier.
So he was not, like, saying no to Donald Trump, but he was saying the process is going to take care of this. And he’s saying that about each of the nominees. So he’s not endorsing them. He’s saying, we have got a process here.
And if the Republicans want to use that process to turn down a Matt Gaetz, who I think is the most likely, if they turn down anybody, that process will be there. And I think it shows the Republicans are still, in the Senate, have been there a long time. They’re kind of normal.
Amna Nawaz:
You think Matt Gaetz is the only one they end up not going forward with? Are there others?
David Brooks:
Well, I wish…
(Crosstalk)
Amna Nawaz:
You seem to have questions about qualifications of many of them.
David Brooks:
I do have — and RFK Jr. is somebody I think is clearly unqualified.
Just one quick thing. We all live in Washington. We’re surrounded by people who live in the government, who are civil servants. They’re nonpolitical. They just do their job. And I have had so many conversations in the last week of people who are in that role, who are patriotic, who work 60-to-80-hour weeks, who just want to do their jobs. They’re not ideological.
And they’re thinking, should I quit? Am I going to get fired? Should I just hang on until retirement? And so there’s like a trauma going through the civil service. And these are people who are patriotic Americans who just want to do their job. And you see them thinking, I should get out of here.
Amna Nawaz:
Jonathan, are you seeing that too? I’m hearing that from some of my sources as well.
Jonathan Capehart:
Yes.
Amna Nawaz:
There’s a real consideration here.
Jonathan Capehart:
Yes, also because of Schedule F, which was an executive order, an order that Trump put in place just before he left back in 2021 that President Biden rescinded, but it’s part of Project 2025. It’s part of the plan.
And so these civil servants and the folks we have all been talking to, they’re worried about Schedule F being revived and then having — being put in a position of having to choose and then being fired.
Amna Nawaz:
I need to ask you about the Democrats too here, because there’s some deep soul-searching going on, I think it’s fair to say.
We asked Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker when he was on the show earlier this week about who is the leader right now of the Democratic Party. And he said there really isn’t any one person that he could point to. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told me yesterday that the Democrats are still very much processing their takeaways from Election Day.
Jonathan, how do they move forward here, the Democrats? How do they work with, as they say they want to, a man that they have spent years calling a fascist and a threat to democracy, or do they just spend years in the opposition?
Jonathan Capehart:
Look, I think, when Nancy Pelosi was speaker — and I think this carries over with Leader — with Leader Jeffries — it was, disagree where we disagree. Let’s work together where we can work together. Wherever there’s common ground, let’s find it.
I think Democrats have always been about, there are problems. We want to fix them. Let’s figure out how we can fix them. That’s — the governing piece is the piece I’m not worried about. It’s the leadership of the party and how the party learns from the lessons of this election and moves forward, to the point where in the midterms in 2026 they can have a reversal of fortune.
I mean, I think the party needs to do an autopsy on what happened, what they can do better, what they should do more of, do less of. But the one thing I don’t think they should do is run away from efforts and things that they have done in the past to respect the — to honor the dignity and respect of people who are looking to their leaders to protect them.
Amna Nawaz:
David, how do you look at it?
David Brooks:
I think they should take their time.
Jonathan Capehart:
Yes.
David Brooks:
Listen, these election results were not expected.
If you had asked me and most Democrats, would Kamala Harris do worse than Joe Biden among women voters, that would have been a shock to me. Do worse with Latino voters, maybe more predictable. Do worse with Black voters, do worse with young voters? Like, that just upsets the way a lot of people think the world is going to work.
So take some time to really think through this. But the one thing I would say not to do is to respond to every shiny apple, that Trump is going to do an outrage du jour. And if they think, oh, all we have to do is hit him on the outrage du jour — and I think this goes for us in the media too. Like, we know that didn’t work.
That did not work for four years during his first term. So try to rise above. Get — don’t just get into that tit for tat outrage du jour. Try to rise above and actually have a vision that’s somehow bigger than Trump.
Amna Nawaz:
David Brooks, Jonathan Capehart, always great to see you both. Thank you.