Trump charts new course with cabinet picks, tariff threats
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Indiana’s best political team split over whether President-elect Donald Trump’s reliance on outsiders will be an effective way to run his Cabinet.
Although some of Trump’s nominees, like Sen. Marco Rubio for Secretary of State and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum for Secretary of the Interior, come with fairly conventional policy resumes, others are better known for their firebrand media presence.
Notable examples include Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, a National Guard veteran and Fox News contributor, and Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic Congresswoman turned Fox News contributor, for Director of National Intelligence.
As part of this week’s panel discussion for All INdiana Politics, Democratic strategist Arielle Brandy said she doubts Democratic senators would back even someone like Rubio. She said many of Trump’s Cabinet picks are not qualified for the jobs they have been asked to take on.
“Democrats lost, but guess what? We still care about this country and how it’s going to be ran moving forward. And so we want qualified people to be able to do that,” she said. “And we think that when we formed our cabinet for the Biden Administration, we were able to deliver that for the American people. And I hope that Trump can do the same. Unfortunately, it’s not looking that way right now.”
Republican strategist Whitley Yates said the Biden Administration’s veteran policymakers delivered a botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, new conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East and inflation.
“How will you know their capabilities until you get into office, see their character and see the way that they lead?” she said. “When America gets back on the right track, which a majority of people voted for, with this administration, (Democrats) are still going to find ways to add barriers to progress.”
Trump also continues to threaten tariffs on products imported from Canada and Mexico unless those two countries take steps to reduce the flow of migrants and drugs, especially fentanyl, into the United States. Trump’s first term was marked by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a new free trade agreement that replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1993.
Asked whether Trump’s tariff proposal threatens his own trade deal, Yates replied the Biden Administration kept many of Trump’s first-term tariffs in place and called the issue of consumer costs “a red herring.”
Brandy called Trump’s threat another example of anti-immigrant rhetoric and said if the tariffs are enacted, prices will be passed along to consumers, thus driving up the very prices Trump claimed he would bring down.
All INdiana Politics airs at 9:30 a.m. Sunday on WISH-TV.