PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump Jr. said Sunday that any resistance from the Washington establishment to his father’s unconventional Cabinet choices proves they are exactly the kind of disruptors voters demand.
The younger Trump insisted that the president-elect’s team now knows how to build a government, unlike when his father took office.
“The reality this time is that we actually know what we are doing. We actually know who the good guys and the bad guys are,” he told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “And it’s about surrounding my father with people who are both competent and loyal. They will keep his promises. They will stick to his message. They are not people who think they know better than unelected bureaucrats.”
After Donald Trump was elected in 2016, he populated his early administration with representatives of customary Republicans and business circles, drawing on figures like former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who was his first as secretary of state.
Today, Trump values personal loyalty over political experience.
That led to picks like former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who faced a House ethics investigation as attorney general, anti-vaccination activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, and Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic lawmaker, who has publicly expressed sympathy for Russian concerns in the past as director of U.S. intelligence.
On Sunday, Trump further rounded out his team, naming Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission’s top Republican, as its recent chairman.
Carr recently said the commission’s priorities should be “containing Big Tech” and outlined the FCC’s chapter of Project 2025, an agenda the conservative Heritage Foundation laid out for a second Trump term. Trump has claimed he knows nothing about trouble, but some of his issues are consistent with his statements.
The five-member commission has a 3-2 Democratic majority until Trump is allowed to appoint a recent member next year.
Some of his proposals could have difficulty getting Senate confirmation, even if Republicans held the majority in January.
Donald Trump Jr. said that was exactly the idea.
“Many of them will face resistance,” but “they will be real disruptors,” he said. “This is what the American people want.”
He said there are “backup plans” if Senate confirmation proves problematic in some cases, but “we’re obviously going with the strongest nominees first.”
Trump Jr. also looked back to eight years ago, when his father, a businessman, was recent to Washington and its ways. “A lot of this process is just something we didn’t understand in 2016 when he came to Washington, D.C., he had no experience,” he said.
Now, his son said, Trump knows what to expect.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said the president-elect has “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring about this change, permanently take on Washington and return power to the people.”
“You need people you trust to go into these agencies and have a real reform agenda,” Schmitt told “Sunday Morning Futures.” He said he sees “real momentum to confirm these nominations to actually deliver on what President Trump promised during the campaign.”
On the same broadcast, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said: “We don’t need Democrats to aid us. We have the numbers.” But, he added, Trump needs “a team around him to aid him. He can’t do it alone.”
Vivek Ramaswamy, the former Republican presidential candidate whom Trump selected alongside businessman Elon Musk to lead a recent effort to make government more capable, also predicted resistance from customary Washington to promised drastic federal cuts.
