PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump Jr. said Sunday that the team now around the president-elect knows how to choose a Cabinet and build out an administration, unlike the time before his father first took office.
Any pushback that Donald Trump's unconventional choices face from the Washington establishment proves that they are just the kind of disruptors the new administration and voters are demanding, the younger Trump said.
“The reality this time is, we actually know what we’re doing. We actually know who the good guys and the bad guys are,” he told Fox News Channel’s "Sunday Morning Futures. “And it’s about surrounding my father with people who are both competent and loyal. They will deliver on his promises. They will deliver on his message. They are not people who think they know better, as unelected bureaucrats.”
After Donald Trump was elected in 2016, he stocked his early administration with choices from traditional Republican and business circles, tapping figures such as former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who was his first as secretary of state.
Today, Trump is valuing personal allegiance above political experience.
That has translated into selections such as former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who faced a House ethics investigation, as attorney general, anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services and Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic lawmaker who has in the past publicly expressed sympathy to Russian causes, as director of U.S. intelligence services.
Some of his picks might face difficulties getting confirmed by the Senate, even with Republicans holding a majority in January.
Donald Trump Jr. suggested that was precisely the idea.
“A lot of them are going to face pushback” but ”they are going to be actual disrupters," he said. "That’s what the American people want.”
He said there are “backup plans” if Senate confirmation is problematic in some cases, but “we’re obviously going with the strongest candidates first."
Trump Jr. also looked back to eight years ago, when his businessman father was new to Washington and its ways. "A big part of that process is just something that we didn’t understand in 2016, where he came to Washington, D.C., he had no experience,” he said.
Now, his son said, Trump knows what to expect.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said the president-elect has “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to deliver that change, to take on permanent Washington, return the power back to the people."
“You have to have people you trust to go into these agencies and have a real reform agenda. And that’s why I think there’s real momentum, real momentum to get these nominations confirmed to actually deliver what President Trump promised on the campaign trail,” Schmitt told “Sunday Morning Futures.”
On the same show, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said, "We don’t need any Democrats to help us. We have got the numbers." But, he added, Trump needs “a team around him that’s going to help him. He can’t do it by himself.”
Vivek Ramaswamy, the former Republican presidential candidate tapped by Trump along with businessman Elon Musk to lead a new effort on government efficiency, also predicted pushback from traditional Washington to promised steep federal cuts that he said showed the needed to “in the early months, score quick wins through executive action.”