President Donald Trump made a clear calculus when he was stocking the highest ranks of his administration after the 2024 election: The premium would be on loyalty and disruption, often at the expense of demonstrated competency.
Many of his picks lacked traditional experience for the roles for which they were picked. He selected a Fox News host with oodles of baggage for Defense secretary, a vaccine skeptic with a long history of false medical claims as Health and Human Services secretary, and a former Democratic congresswoman with little intelligence experience as director of national intelligence.
As the months have worn on, that’s repeatedly come back to bite him.
These officials have been willing to shake things up as Trump wanted, and their willingness to go places others wouldn’t has been vital to the president’s overhaul of American government.
But they’ve also created plenty of needless problems for the administration with seemingly amateurish mistakes that could damage the whole project.
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