Fox News host among Trump loyalists tapped for top White House jobs

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Donald Trump is tapping Fox News host and army veteran Pete Hegseth as secretary of defence and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as secretary of homeland security as he continues stocking his new administration with staunch loyalists.

Continuing to roll out his appointments at a brisk pace, the president-elect, who will take office Jan. 20, also on Tuesday evening appointed billionaire backer Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to run an outside group to advise him on how to cut the size and cost of government.

And Mr. Trump is reportedly planning to make Marco Rubio secretary of state, putting a former rival who has learned to love MAGA in one of the most powerful roles in his cabinet.

Mr. Hegseth’s surprise elevation to high office would put one of Mr. Trump’s cable television defenders in charge of the world’s most powerful military and an annual budget of more than US$800-billion. The 44-year-old served tours of duty in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan as a military reservist.

He later worked for conservative think tanks and advocacy groups, including Concerned Veterans for America, a group that has proposed partially privatizing the delivery of veterans’ health care. He has appeared on Fox since 2014 and currently co-hosts Fox and Friends, where he has touted Mr. Trump’s policies.

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In 2019, CNN reported, Mr. Hegseth privately lobbied Mr. Trump to pardon U.S. servicemen accused of war crimes. In 2021, he appeared to promote a conspiracy theory that Democrats were deliberately spreading new versions of COVID-19 to help them win elections. “Count on a variant about every October, every two years,” he said on Fox.

During the campaign, Mr. Trump talked about stopping “woke” inclusion efforts in the military and mused about using troops to put down civil unrest. “With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice – our military will be great again, and America will never back down,” Mr. Trump said in a statement.

Mr. Trump’s secretary picks must all be confirmed by the Senate. While Republicans will hold a 53 to 47 majority in the chamber, easing the way, it remains to be seen if they will accept an appointment as unexpected as that of Mr. Hegseth. He had previously received little mention for the post and lacks the level of military, government or business leadership experience previous heads of the Pentagon have typically had.

Ms. Noem, meanwhile, will be a key part of the administration group in charge of implementing Mr. Trump’s key election promises to undertake the largest mass deportation in U.S. history and harden the country’s borders against migration.

Ms. Noem, 52, has little direct policy experience in the area, but has backed Mr. Trump’s hard line. She has said arriving migrants are an “invasion” and sent National Guard troops from South Dakota to help Texas secure its border with Mexico. Ms. Noem attracted criticism this year when she wrote in her autobiography about shooting a dog to death on her farm after the animal ruined a pheasant hunt.

Mr. Trump has already given Mr. Musk unusual power within his nascent administration: the SpaceX, Tesla and X owner has been hunkered down with the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago, helping him work on personnel picks. Mr. Musk has also sat in on calls with foreign leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Mr. Musk, many of whose business interests rely on government contracts and regulatory decisions, spent nearly US$200-million to bankroll a campaign group that helped Mr. Trump win last week’s election.

On Tuesday, the president-elect formalized plans to have Mr. Musk run a Department of Government Efficiency, nicknamed DOGE after dogecoin, a cryptocurrency Mr. Musk supports. Also working on it will be Mr. Ramaswamy, who ran against Mr. Trump for the Republican presidential nomination on promises such as building a wall along the Canadian border and eliminating entire federal government departments.

DOGE will advise Mr. Trump on how to “dismantle” parts of the government and restructure agencies. Overhauling the federal government to increase presidential power over it was a key platform pledge. “This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!” Mr. Musk said in a statement.

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The New York Times and Politico reported Monday that Mr. Rubio, the 53-year-old Florida Senator, was in line to become Mr. Trump’s chief diplomat.

First elected in 2010, he staked out a position as a classic hawkish Reaganite in his time on the Senate’s foreign relations and intelligence committees. He has backed the U.S.’s commitment to NATO with a law preventing unilateral presidential withdrawal from the alliance – something Mr. Trump has considered – and taken a tough line with China, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.

But more recently, Mr. Rubio has shown himself amenable to Mr. Trump’s isolationism. Earlier this year, he voted against a US$95-billion bipartisan package of military aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. During the presidential election campaign, he said Ukraine would have to accept “a negotiated settlement” with its Russian invaders, a deal that would almost certainly entail Kyiv giving up territory to Moscow.

Mr. Rubio, who has pushed for the U.S. to directly help U.S. companies compete with China and to ban Chinese goods made with Uyghur slave labour, has put pressure on Canada to toughen its stance on Beijing.

For four years, he called on Canada to join the U.S. and its other Five Eyes intelligence allies in banning Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from its 5G networks over espionage concerns. The Justin Trudeau government finally did so in 2022.

This past summer, he attacked Canada’s decision to let in more Palestinian refugees, saying the country was allowing people “with potential terrorist ties” through its borders.

In his first term as president, Mr. Trump clashed with many of his own appointees for supporting American internationalism or interventionism. These included secretary of state Rex Tillerson, secretary of defence Jim Mattis and national security adviser John Bolton.

This time around, Mr. Trump is installing only people who have proven their fealty. “Any of these nominees or appointees are going to subjugate their personal policy preferences to implement what president Trump wants them to,” said Gordon Gray, an international affairs professor at George Washington University and former diplomat.