Trump's Wrecking Crew

Donald Trump wants to destroy our government institutions, and he's recruited just the team to do it.

LEFT: Elon Musk speaks during a campaign rally for Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images. MIDDLE: Former Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivers remarks at the Renaissance Phoenix Downtown Hotel. Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images. RIGHT: Former U.S. Representative from Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard speaks during an appearance on "Here's The Deal With Kellyanne.” Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images.

I am not an alarmist by nature. I believe the U.S. citizenry should be clear-eyed about the dangers our democracy faces, and that it’s important to identify, with as much specificity as possible, where the threats are most dire should, heavens forbid, Trump win reelection.

Those threats were initially detailed, of course, in the lengthy how-to manual for autocracy, Project 2025. Trump, being the savvy political creature he is, sought to distance himself as much as he could from its extremist policies. 

Project 2025 was the “what” of the plan to reshape American democracy into a Christian nationalist, illiberal state. The “how” of it all has been the subject of much speculation, but in order for any schemes or plans to take root, there is still the matter of “who.”

We now know a lot more about “who” Trump has in mind to serve in his administration, and the list reads like a wrecking crew for our Republic. In today’s piece, I want to focus on a few names that he and his transition team have raised as likely contenders for key roles and what those people intend to do once in positions of authority. This is not meant to paralyze us with fear, but rather motivate us to never allow such people to wield power in the first instance.

That’s because this election is about far more than Trump. It’s about how we intend to function as a civil society and democracy going forward. As I discuss below, it seems clear that a key goal of an incoming Trump administration is precisely to cause dysfunction and chaos, thereby paving the way for autocratic rule.

Elon Musk

The billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter (now X) has been out campaigning for Trump while donating tens of millions through his America PAC. Musk’s motivation to help Trump is tied to a direct quid pro quo: If Trump is reelected, Musk expects a high-level position in the cabinet as “chief efficiency officer,” with the express task of slashing expenditures by the federal government.

His public statements about this task have been extreme, with Musk promising to cut $2 trillion—a figure that is $300 billion more than the actual annual budget. To get there, he would have to eliminate nearly all discretionary spending. That’s no money at all for transportation, education, or even space exploration—something from which Musk himself has benefited greatly. Musk views austerity as imperative, saying that a sound economic future “necessarily involves some temporary hardship” today.

Combined with Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on all imported goods (resulting in an effective 20 percent sales tax for all Americans) and his plan to deport millions of undocumented workers (driving up the price of food and construction as labor shortages rise), this would result in a severe economic contraction, likely greater than the 2008 recession, according to many economists.

As nearly two dozen Nobel prize-winning economists noted in an open letter, Vice President Kamala Harris’s economic agenda “will improve our nation’s health, investment, sustainability, resilience, employment opportunities, and fairness and be vastly superior to the counterproductive economic agenda of Donald Trump.” By contrast, Trump’s policies of high tariffs and regressive tax cuts for wealthy corporations and individuals “will lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.” They further observed, “Among the most important determinants of economic success are the rule of law and economic and political certainty, and Trump threatens all of these.” 

But Musk sees that as a good thing, not a bad one. On Tuesday, Musk signaled in a response to a tweet that he would be perfectly fine with a situation where “markets tumble” and there is a “severe overreaction” in the economy, writing “Sounds about right.” 

Musk’s plan of intentionally causing economic calamity is doubly bizarre and alarming considering the strong economic growth, low unemployment, booming stock market, and stabilized prices we have now seen and enjoyed under the Biden Administration. Any leader who would deliberately choose to destroy all of those gains and cause chaos and misery certainly doesn’t have the best interests of the American worker or consumer in mind; as I’ll discuss below, he has far darker intentions.

RFK, Jr.

The presidential ambitions of RFK, Jr. were always a GOP-funded op, as evidenced by his biggest financial backer: Timothy Mellon, a “secretive billionaire plutocrat” as described accurately by Common Dreams, poured tens of millions into the campaigns of both Kennedy and Trump. When it became clear, however, that Kennedy was actually siphoning votes away from Trump by out-crazying him on the campaign trail, Kennedy gave up the pretense and struck a deal with Trump.

Like Musk, RFK, Jr. would endorse Trump, join the transition team if he wins, and then hold a position in the Trump administration and have free reign to play in his own weird area of interest: health policy, and specifically, anti-vax conspiracies. Trump recently made clear his intention to hand our national health policy over to Kennedy and “let him go wild.” Per reporting by The Daily Beast, at his MAGA hate rally at Madison Square Garden this past Sunday, Trump elaborated on Kennedy’s promised position:

“I’m going to let him go wild on health, I’m going to let him go wild on the food, I’m going to let him go wild on medicines,” Trump said of his former political rival, who once claimed a doctor found a dead worm in his brain.

What does this mean precisely? There are a few possibilities. He could name him Secretary of Health and Human Services or put him in charge of the Food and Drug Administration. In such a position, Kennedy could drive national vaccine policy or even order certain vaccines, from Covid to measles, off of the market completely. Or he could put Kennedy in charge of the Department of Education, where he could eliminate funding for any schools with mandatory vaccine policies.

“The only thing I don’t think I’m going to let him even get near is the liquid gold that we have under feet… oil and gas,” Trump said to the crowd at MSG.

For his part, Kennedy indicated that Trump intends to hand control of several key public health agencies to him. As Public Notice reported,

During a get out the vote call Monday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. disclosed that “President Trump has promised me control of the public health agencies,” including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Kennedy also said Trump plans to put him in charge of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Kennedy spoke via livestream, and his words should be chilling to any public health advocates, health professionals, and parents or caretakers of the sick or elderly:

“The key that I think—you know, that President Trump has promised me—is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its subagencies—CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others—and then also the USDA, which is—which, you know, is key to making America healthy.”

You can view the clip here.

On Wednesday, Kennedy’s new role drew support from Trump’s transition team co-chair, Howard Lutnick. In an interview on CNN, Lutnick said he’d met with Kennedy for two and a half hours and somehow came away convinced that vaccines are causing autism—a fringe theory that lacks sound scientific basis. Lutnick now sounds like an anti-vaxxer himself, spreading vaccine conspiracies during his interview. "Why do you think vaccines are safe?" he asked host Kaitlan Collins.

Kennedy’s anti-vax misinformation stoked fear and already caused an outbreak of measles in American Samoa that killed 83 people. If he is placed in charge of American health care, the U.S. population could be re-exposed to diseases that have long been under control or even eradicated, including measles, and even smallpox. And vaccine research, which is just starting to show great promise in treating cancer, could be kneecapped by a hostile Trump administration under Kennedy’s anti-scientific and extremist anti-vax views.

Judge Aileen Cannon

Among the names being bandied about for Trump’s Attorney General, one in particular draws particular disgust and alarm: Trump-appointed federal district court judge Aileen Cannon. A Trump transition plan document recently leaked containing her name among a list of other possible depressing choices, and it makes some sense for Trump to choose her, however revolting the idea.

While overseeing Trump’s criminal proceedings in Florida federal court, Cannon deliberately slow-walked the legal process and then ultimately tossed the charges out completely, latching onto a fringe legal theory that Special Counsel Jack Smith was illegally appointed. That dismissal is now on appeal, but she has already proven her worth to Trump as an obedient servant with no moral values or principles. 

And that’s precisely the kind of individual he will need in the position of Attorney General should Trump follow through on his pledge to go after his political opponents, whom he has labeled “the enemies within.” To bring charges that are unfounded in fact and fly in the face of the law, Trump will need an AG who values neither of these things but is obedient and understands the assignment. Cannon fits this bill, and she apparently has been auditioning for a higher position all along.

She could also oversee the appointment of loyalists within the Justice Department who, like the disgraced Jeffrey Clark, would be willing to abuse the power and authority of the Department to interfere with elections, initiate politicized investigations, and charge Trump’s opponents with all manner of crimes, even if lacking in evidence of legal support.

More importantly for Trump, Cannon could help ensure that any other charges against Trump go away, including Jack Smith’s January 6 case. She could launch investigations into local or state prosecutors seeking to hold Trump and/or his cohorts accountable in other jurisdictions, from Fulton County to cases in Michigan and Arizona.

Speaker Mike Johnson

On Tuesday, Speaker Johnson revealed a bit of his own intentions when speaking to supporters at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. As Heather Cox Richardson wrote in her newsletter this morning,

Johnson told supporters that Republicans will propose “massive reform” to the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” if they take control of both the House and the Senate in November. “Health-care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” Johnson said. Their plan is to take a “blowtorch to the regulatory state,” which he says is “crushing the free market.” “Trump’s going to go big,” he said.” When an attendee asked, “No Obamacare?” he laughed and agreed: “No Obamacare…. The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.” 

Trump has lied repeatedly about his efforts to get rid of Obamacare, claiming during debates and rallies that he tried to save it when in fact he tried multiple times unsuccessfully to kill it. One of the main targets for “reform” is the way in which those with pre-existing medical conditions are currently covered under the ACA. Johnson and the Republicans in Congress, with Trump’s blessing, want to place such individuals in different risk pools, making the cost of coverage for them far higher. That would undo many of the gains Democrats have made in ensuring health insurance coverage for millions of Americans.

Destruction of the ACA under the Republicans would have massive negative consequences for anyone with pre-existing conditions. As the Executive Director of CPT Healthcare, Dr. Rob Davidson, explained, before the ACA, diabetics who could not afford insulin or to see a primary care physician would often show up in ERs in crisis, sometimes going into diabetic comas. After children finished high school, they were no longer on their parent’s health plans, and any medical crisis could leave them with crushing medical debt. Preventative care, such as vaccinations, cancer screenings, and birth control, which are now covered, would be at risk. Over 50 million Americans could lose insurance coverage if the ACA was repealed.

But Speaker Johnson, who jokes about a “secret” he has with Trump on how to help Trump get reelected, believes that the ACA is socialized medicine and has its foot on the neck of the free market—the same free market that would price out those most in need of coverage. Under a Trump administration, with the help of Johnson, healthcare would no longer be a right but a way for big corporations to make a profit, while those least able to fend for themselves simply suffer or die. That is not hyperbole; as Davidson noted, “With Obamacare, expanded #Medicaid covers over 20 million individuals and saved over 27,000 lives between 2010 and 2022.”

With Johnson’s blessing, the U.S. would return to a pre-ACA world with thousands of otherwise preventable deaths annually, just as we are starting to see in a post-Roe world with abortion care.

Tulsi Gabbard

Like RFK, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard has always been out to undermine the Democrats, if not from within, then from outside the party after she “left” it. Along with RFK, Jr., Gabbard is often mentioned as a hero for having abandoned her party and stumped for Trump on the campaign trail. 

Gabbard represents a radical foreign policy view that blames the Biden administration (including VP Harris) for the war in Ukraine, rather than placing the blame with Vladimir Putin, whom Gabbard, like Trump, has praised openly. She has even defended Putin’s stated rationales for the invasion, and her statements have appeared on Russian television to help bolster Putin’s case to his own people. Per reporting by The Intercept:

Gabbard sought to blame the U.S. and NATO for supposedly provoking Putin’s attack on Ukraine and suggested that Americans would suffer from higher energy prices if Russia was sanctioned for invading Ukraine.

Gabbard even appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show to promote Russian propaganda and urge a different approach when dealing with Putin:

“These sanctions don’t work,” Gabbard told Carlson in an exchange screened for Russians. “What we do know is that they will increase suffering and hardship for the American people. And this is [the] whole problem with the Biden administration: They are so focused on how do we punish Putin that they don’t care and are not focused on what is actually in the best interests of the American people.”

Carlson is now openly promoting Russian state lies and is funded by Russia’s RT state media, according to recent court testimony by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Per reporting by The Hill, Gabbard indicated back in September that she would be “honored to serve” under a second Trump term. She also said she’s hoping for a role somewhere in foreign policy, perhaps as a national security adviser to the president. 

Both Gabbard and Kennedy are staunch anti-interventionists, meaning they would allow dictators from Putin to Xi to have free reign over their own claimed spheres of influence with little to no pushback from the U.S. That could quickly destabilize regions from Eastern Europe to the South China Sea, straining or breaking our military alliances and greenlighting regional conflicts over which the U.S. would wash its hands.

Russ Vought

While many of the above are almost household names by now, very few people have heard of Trump’s one-time Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought. We’ve written about Vought before in connection with Project 2025, and it’s worth reviewing what we said about him before:

It is no coincidence that the RNC platform was overseen by Russ Vought, who is a principal author of Project 2025 and is Trump’s former Director of the Office of Management and Budget. He wrote the chapter on “Taking the Reins of Government” in the Project 2025 blueprint, and he also oversaw the language signaling support for fetal personhood in the RNC platform, which would end abortion rights as we know them.

ProPublica was out with a story on Vought a few days ago. It detailed speeches that Vought has made over the past two years that provide a “sweeping vision for a Trump second term.” These include deploying the military in response to domestic unrest, defunding the Environmental Protection Agency and putting career civil servants “in trauma.”

Vought is the man who will most enable Trump to circumvent pushback from military leaders and government lawyers who might otherwise be able to put the brakes on an extremist agenda. Toward this end, Vought has spent years crafting legal justifications for Trump’s executive actions so that they can survive scrutiny, especially before a compliant Supreme Court.

These speeches were all delivered at private events organized by the so-called “Center for Renewing America”—a right-wing think tank that Vought leads. The Center has some of the most extreme far-right luminaries as advisors, including Trump’s co-defendant Jeffrey Clark and Mark Paoletta, one of Justice Clarence Thomas’s chief defenders.

While serving as OMB Director, Vought was a proponent of using Trump’s “Schedule F” order to strip away job protections for nonpartisan government workers. This year in a speech, per ProPublica, Vought said he was 

spending the majority of his time helping lead Project 2025 and drafting an agenda for a future Trump presidency. “We have detailed agency plans,” he said. “We are writing the actual executive orders. We are writing the actual regulations now, and we are sorting out the legal authorities for all of what President Trump is running on.”

Those legal authorities include how Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act to put down domestic unrest, a high priority for the Center. “We want to be able to shut down the riots and not have the legal community or the defense community come in and say, ‘That’s an inappropriate use of what you’re trying to do,’” he said. 

His plans for federal agencies are equally chilling. He wants to defund certain agencies while demonizing career civil servants including scientists and experts—a plan that aligns with Project 2025’s plans under Schedule F. 

As ProPublica reported:

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.”

“We want to put them in trauma.”

Adding it up

Any one of these individuals could wreak significant havoc upon our government, our health system, or our alliances if given the power and position to do so. Together, they comprise a dire threat to our democracy and democracies around the world.

As anti-fascist historian and critic Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat noted,

Each of these choices is designed to take down US democracy. Gabbard, a Friend To Autocrats, at defense; Kennedy for spreading disease and weakening the population. Cannon to rubber stamp authoritarian actions; Musk to wreck the economy and cause mass hardship.

Fascism thrives in chaos and misery, and that is what a second Trump term expressly seeks to create. And while Trump himself is a far weaker version of himself than eight years ago, the prospect that he could enable and empower the worst enemies of U.S. democracy is a catastrophe that cannot be ignored and simply cannot go unanswered. 

The best way to stop this timeline is to never allow it to happen in the first instance. For this and many other reasons, the stakes of Tuesday’s election could not possibly be higher.