From vaccine sceptic whose brain was ‘eaten by worm’ to senator who shot her own dog – meet Trump’s maverick top team
THEY are all the President’s men and women – the mavericks and hardliners who will do Donald Trump’s political bidding.
Gathered in Washington DC for his inauguration on Monday, his Cabinet and other appointees were in the spotlight.
With a fresh and decisive mandate from the American people, Trump has picked a motley collection of politicians, business folk and tech bros to implement his radical agenda.
Robert F Kennedy Jnr – a perma-tanned vaccine sceptic who claims part of his brain was eaten away by a worm – wouldn’t be everyone’s idea of a Health Secretary.
Donald J Trump does politics differently. Who else would put a senator who boasted of shooting her dog in charge of Homeland Security?
Oliver Harvey
But Donald J Trump does politics differently.
Who else would put a senator who boasted of shooting her pet dog in charge of Homeland Security?
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Vowing to fight “woke culture”, plug America’s southern border and roll back Net Zero policies, the President has picked a Cabinet he believes will bulldoze Washington vested interests.
In most cases the appointments will need to pass a Senate vote before taking up their new roles.
So are they really the Top Trumps needed to create a more prosperous, safer and fairer America?
You decide.
JD Vance
Vice President
VANCE once said Trump could be “America’s Hitler” and labelled him “dangerous” and “unfit” for office.
Now, aged just 40, the former Senator, lawyer, venture capitalist and Marine Corps veteran is the President’s heir apparent.
Intelligent and articulate, Vance came to prominence with the release of his best-selling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, highlighting social decay among America’s Rust Belt white working class.
Later made into a Netflix movie starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams, it was a harrowing delve into poverty, abuse and addiction.
Last year, he told a conference that the “first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon” might be “the UK since Labour just took over”.
Linda McMahon
Education Secretary
THE co-founder and former CEO of the WWE professional wrestling franchise, Linda McMahon, 76, has been a long-term backer of Donald Trump.
In 2007, when the President was starring in TV show The Apprentice, he made an appearance at WWE’s annual wrestling event, Wrestlemania, in Detroit.
It saw him shave off her husband Vince McMahon’s hair in the middle of the ring, after the wrestler Trump picked won the Battle of the Billionaires.
When Trump made her the head of the Small Business department in 2017 during his first term, a Democrat former political opponent called her “a person of serious accomplishment and ability”.
McMahon’s allies believe that her business experience will not only disrupt but also help reshape a department that has long been criticised by Republicans.
Pete Hegseth
Defence Secretary
THIS National Guard veteran and former Fox News TV host served in Afghanistan and Iraq, and was a prison guard at Guantnamo Bay.
A surprise pick for Defence Secretary, it’s since emerged that the three-times married 44-year-old was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a California hotel in 2017.
Police investigated the incident but it didn’t result in criminal charges.
Hegseth insisted he was joking when he said on air in 2019 that he had not washed his hands for ten years because “germs are not a real thing”.
In 2015, he accidentally hit ceremonial drummer Jeff Prosperie while taking part in an axe-throwing contest on the Fox And Friends morning TV show.
Hegseth wants to get rid of diversity programs in the military and to “bring the warrior culture back” to the department.
Kristi Noem
Homeland Security Secretary
ONCE a strong contender to become Trump’s Vice President, Noem has been awarded the Homeland Security brief for her tough stance on immigration.
The 53-year-old rancher and Governor of South Dakota said last year that the US was “in a time of invasion”.
The mum-of-three offered to send razor wire and agents to help shore up the border with Mexico.
She admitted shooting dead the family’s pet dog Cricket after it killed a neighbour’s chickens.
And she also shot her family’s goat dead after it turned “mean and nasty” and butted her children.
She has also faced criticism for plugging a cosmetic dentistry firm that had fixed her teeth.
Comparing her pet killing to a famous serial killer, one politico jokingly labelled Noem “Jeffrey Dahmer with veneers”.
Chris Wright
Energy Secretary
BOSS of Denver-based fracking company Liberty Energy, Wright has called Net Zero a “sinister goal”.
The man charged with actioning Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” policy, Wright has also said “there’s no such thing as clean energy”.
Wright, 59, who has no political experience, drank bleach on camera in 2019.
He raised eyebrows by downing a fracking fluid cocktail containing a collection of chemicals with colleagues after toasting the “long lives and healthier lives of billions of people all around the world from oil and gas”.
In a video posted to his LinkedIn profile in 2023, Wright said: “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.”
Wright has called climate change activists alarmist and has likened efforts by Democrats to combat global warming to Soviet-style communism.
Marco Rubio
Secretary of State
ONE of Trump’s least controversial picks, the Florida Republican senator has been made America’s most senior diplomat.
Hours after the inauguration, the US Senate rubber stamped the 53-year-old’s appointment by 99 votes to nil.
The working-class son of Cuban immigrants, he bitterly opposed Fidel Castro’s communist revolution on the Caribbean island.
He and Trump haven’t always been warm with one another.
In 2016 – when both stood for the Republican presidential nomination – Trump mocked Rubio as “Little Marco” while Rubio called Trump a “con artist”.
Now he must enact Trump’s foreign policy, which includes threats to seize the Panama Canal and buy Greenland.
Rubio has backed Trump’s “America First” philosophy and, despite the President’s reservations, he has described Nato as a “very important alliance” for the US.
Christian Craighead
One of Trump's personal bodyguards
THE SAS commando, the hero of the 2019 Kenya terror attack, has been made one of Trump’s elite protection team.
The non-political appointment came after the Brit led an operation to save UK and American hotel guests held captive by jihadists al-Shabaab in Kenya’s capital Nairobi.
Craighead – not his real name – is said to be “working in the shadows” around Trump.
Reports suggest he has been tasked with the key role of organising reconnaissance at locations where the President is due to appear in public.
Trump believes Craighead’s “eagle eyes” would have spotted the rooftop assassin who almost killed him in Pennsylvania last July.
Robert F Kennedy JR
Secretary of Health and Human Services
NEPHEW of assassinated US President John F Kennedy, RFK Jr has long made the debunked claim that childhood immunisations are linked to autism.
And he has vowed to remove fluoride – a cavity-fighting mineral – from the US drinking water saying it caused “bone cancer” and “IQ loss”.
He claimed that a bout of memory loss and brain fog was “caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”.
And he admitted dumping the carcass of a bear cub in New York City’s Central Park, along with an old bicycle, in a prank to look like the animal had been involved in a fatal accident with a cyclist.
Yet, Kennedy has pledged to take on so-called big pharma companies that push ultra-processed food on ordinary Americans.
Elon Musk
Chairman of the Department of Government Efficiency
TRUMP’S ‘First Buddy’ Elon Musk was set to lead the department known as DOGE alongside Vivek Ramaswamy – who stood as a presidential candidate.
Trump said DOGE would “pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren had used Musk’s X platform to point out: “Two people to do the work of one person. Yeah, this seems REALLY efficient.”
According to reports, Musk wanted his co- leader out.
On Monday, it emerged Ramaswamy was leaving DOGE to run as Ohio Governor.
Online critics accused Musk of doing a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration party.
Musk countered: “They need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”
Tulsi Gabbard
Director of National Intelligence
AN Army reserve officer, Gabbard served in Iraq and in 2000 ran for president as a Democratic Party member.
Only joining the Republicans last October, her National Intelligence role will mean she will oversee the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.
A champion of non-interventionist foreign policy, Gabbard, 43, has said she was “sceptical” that Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime was behind a 2017 chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of people.
On the day Russia invaded Ukraine, she said the war could have been prevented if the West had recognised Russia’s “legitimate security concerns” about Ukraine’s bid to join Nato.
Accused of echoing Russian propaganda, she claimed there were US-funded biolabs in Ukraine that could “release and spread deadly pathogens”.
Jared Isaacman
Head of NASA
TECH billionaire Isaacman conducted the first private spacewalk, thanks to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
“From here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” the 41-year-old said during it.
In 1999, aged 16, he founded a credit card-processing company which handles payments for a third of America’s restaurants and hotels.
Five years after starting flying lessons, he set a record for flying around the world in a light jet.
Isaacman also founded a firm that owns the world’s largest private fleet of military aircraft.
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Trump revealed at his inauguration that he wants US astronauts to plant the “stars and stripes” on Mars.
Isaacman says he’s “passionate about America leading the most incredible adventure in human history”.