Trump's Most Controversial Picks for His Cabinet and Beyond
President-elect Donald Trump, a controversial figure himself, is filling his future administration with people who have pasts that are raising concerns among the senators who have to vote on many of the appointees.
The picks range from Pete Hegseth, who paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault to prevent her from filing a lawsuit against him, to former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who secretly met with Syrian president Bashar Assad.
Trump had also tapped former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida to be attorney general, though Gaetz on Thursday withdrew from consideration. Gaetz, who was possibly the most controversial pick from Trump so far, said that his “confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition.”
“There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I'll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General,” he posted on social media.
Gaetz was previously the subject of a Justice Department sex-trafficking investigation that ended without federal charges against him. He was also under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations that he was part of a plot that led to the sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl. That investigation ended when he resigned from the House, and lawmakers on the committee have not reached an agreement to release their report after Democrats and Republicans on the panel split along partisan lines in a 5-5 vote.
Cabinet positions typically involve FBI background checks and most require confirmation by the Senate. However, Trump has proposed skipping FBI background checks for his nominees and expressed an interest in bypassing the traditional Senate confirmation process in favor of recess appointments. A Republican majority in the Senate means he could get what he wants.
Here’s a look at the controversial people Trump has tapped to serve in his administration and why they’re making headlines:
Pete Hegseth, Defense Secretary
Hegseth, a former Fox News host who Trump asked to serve as defense secretary, was accused of sexual assault in 2017 after a speaking appearance at a Republican women’s event in Monterey, California, but did not face charges after a police investigation. His potential post requires Senate confirmation.
An attorney for Hegseth denied any wrongdoing and said the interaction was consensual. He also said that Hegseth paid the woman who accused him of sexual assault as part of a financial settlement with a confidentiality clause.
And the Associated Press reported that Hegseth was labeled a possible “insider threat” by a fellow service member during his time in the National Guard because of a tattoo on his arm that says “Deus Vult,” which translates from Latin to “God wills it” and has been associated with white nationalist groups.
Elon Musk, Co-leader of the Department of Government Efficiency
Trump picked Musk to help lead a new advisory body, the Department of Government Efficiency, and offer guidance on “wasteful” government spending and target bureaucracy. Trump said the department would “provide advice and guidance from outside of government.” Musk would not need Senate confirmation for the post.
Musk has supported a wide range of conspiracy theories and promoted them on his platform on X. He has consistently courted controversy on the website, posting “my pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” in 2022, in a reference to Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert during the COVID-19 pandemic, who became a lightning rod for conservative backlash.
Musk, who is also the chief executive of SpaceX, is being sued by eight former SpaceX employees who accuse him of wrongfully firing them after they accused the company of tolerating sexual harassment in the workplace. The plaintiffs “experienced exposure to unwanted conduct and comments of a sexual nature by Elon Musk,” according to court documents.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Health and Human Services Secretary
Trump tapped Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, a post that would require Senate approval. Kennedy, who suspended his own independent and at times bizarre campaign for the White House and endorsed Trump in August, has a history of spreading discredited theories on vaccines and other public health issues. His nomination was met with “dread” and “uncertainty” among public health specialists.
Among the strange confessions Kennedy made during his own run for the presidency, he said that memory loss and mental fogginess he experienced in 2010 was “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.”
In early July, a Vanity Fair article alleged Kennedy sexually assaulted a former family babysitter. In response, Kennedy said that he has “so many skeletons” in his closet he wished they could vote.
He admitted to dumping a dead bear cub in Manhattan’s Central Park about a decade ago. And an article resurfaced from 2012 that involved Kennedy sawing off the head of a dead whale and strapping it to the top of the family’s minivan to drive it five hours home in the 1990s.
Kennedy also pleaded guilty to felony heroin possession in South Dakota in 1984. He spoke out about being a recovering addict during his presidential campaign.
Linda McMahon, Education Secretary
On Nov. 19, Trump said he was picking McMahon, a former wrestling executive, to lead the Education Department, an agency that he has promised to close so that he can send “all education and education work and needs back to the states.”
McMahon has been accused in a recent lawsuit of knowingly enabling the sexual exploitation of children by a World Wrestling Entertainment employee.
McMahon, who is the former CEO of WWE, was accused of failing to stop a WWE ringside announcer from grooming and sexually abusing children as early as the 1980s. She denies the allegations.
The lawsuit alleges that McMahon, her husband, WWE and the league’s parent company knowingly allowed former employee Melvin Phillips Jr. to sexually abuse underage boys who he recruited as “ring boys.”
The suit was filed on behalf of five John Does in October in Baltimore County, Maryland.
Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence
Trump’s pick of Gabbard for director of national intelligence alarmed U.S. intelligence analysts who point to her past criticism of Ukraine, comments supportive of Russia as well as a secret meeting with Assad, a close ally of Russia and Iran, despite U.S. sanctions and accusations of war crimes against his regime.
Gabbard, who would need Senate confirmation for the post, would oversee 18 intelligence agencies with a budget of about $70 billion. She has never worked in the intelligence community.
Kristi Noem, Department of Homeland Security Secretary
Trump chose Noem, South Dakota governor, as his next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. If confirmed by the Senate, she would lead one of the most closely watched agencies as Trump seeks to fulfill his many immigration-related pledges.
The governor faced pushback after publishing a book that detailed how she killed her 14-month-old wirehair pointer, Cricket, saying that the dog was “untrainable.”
Noem said the dog ruined a hunt and attacked chickens owned by a local family. She also said she shot a goat to death.
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