Trump Takes On the Pillars of the ‘Deep State’
President-elect Donald J. Trump is wasting little time in taking on the three governmental institutions that most frustrated his political ambitions during his first term and making clear he will not brook resistance in his second.
With his selections of lieutenants to lead the Justice Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies, Mr. Trump passed over the sorts of establishment figures he installed in those posts eight years ago in favor of firebrand allies with unconventional résumés whose most important qualification may be loyalty to him.
The choices of Matt Gaetz for attorney general, Pete Hegseth for defense secretary and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence in the past few days shocked a capital that perhaps should not have been all that surprised. Anyone who listened to Mr. Trump’s promises and grievances on the campaign trail over the past couple of years could have easily anticipated that he would elevate compatriots willing to execute his hostile takeover of government.
If confirmed, Mr. Gaetz, Mr. Hegseth and Ms. Gabbard would constitute the lead shock troops in Mr. Trump’s self-declared war on what he calls the “deep state.” All three have echoed his conviction that government is seeded with career public servants who actively thwarted his priorities while he was in office and targeted him after he left. None of them has the kind of experience relevant to these jobs comparable to predecessors of either party, but they can all be expected to take “a blowtorch” to the status quo, to use Stephen K. Bannon’s term for Mr. Gaetz.
“You tried to destroy Trump; you tried to imprison Trump; you tried to break Trump,” Mr. Bannon, a onetime White House strategist for Mr. Trump, said on his podcast on Wednesday after Mr. Gaetz’s nomination was announced. “He’s not breakable. You couldn’t destroy him. And now he has turned on you.”
