Donald Trump’s early personnel picks have largely centered on national security, with the president-elect naming nominees for national security adviser, secretary of state, and ambassador to the United Nations. And for the most part, the Republican Party’s neoconservative wing likes what it sees.
To them, the picks are a demonstration that Trump is taking a serious approach to foreign policy and shirking elements of the GOP that embrace an isolationist worldview, veteran Republican policymakers told the Washington Free Beacon.
“These are clearly people who are part of the mainstream in Republican foreign policy, really they’re Reaganite,” said longtime diplomat John Bolton, who served for a year as Trump’s national security adviser. “The main thing is they’re people who have the capacity to do what I think senior advisers to the president need to do, which is give him their honest opinion and make sure that they’re all presenting the facts the president needs to make a decision and give him options.”
Bolton’s praise for Trump’s cabinet has prompted condemnation from allies of former Texas congressman Ron Paul (R.), a longtime isolationist, one of whom lamented, “Trump is making John Bolton happy.”
It’s not just Bolton, though. Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said Trump’s team enters with a clear-cut vision of how the United States needs to confront traditional foes such as Russia, Iran, and China.
He pointed to Trump’s decision to tap Rep. Mike Waltz (R., Fla.) as national security adviser and Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) as secretary of state.
“There was always a question mark over which Trump would show up for Trump version 2.0: the in-your-face populist or the no-nonsense realist,” Rubin said. “Happily, the appointments of Waltz and Rubio suggest the latter. Both understand the grave and growing threats our enemies—Russia, China, and Iran—pose to the United States, especially after four years of White House weakness.”
Victoria Coates, Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, similarly described Waltz and Rubio as “well-known voices in conservative national security circles with long experience in policymaking.”
Both picks, she said, “believe in robust international engagement and a strong U.S. defense” but have also been “cautious about overextending American commitments abroad.”
“Waltz and Rubio have held Biden-Harris fecklessness to account while advocating for the restoration of deterrence that President Trump established in his first term that can keep America out of wars and keep our people safe here at home,” said Coates, the vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy.
Rubio’s nomination was first reported Monday in the New York Times. Trump did not formally announce the pick until Wednesday afternoon, prompting speculation from isolationist voices that he could reverse the move. Then, in his statement, Trump called Rubio “a fearless Warrior who will never back down to our adversaries.”
Rubio and his allies in the next White House “understand what made 2017-2020 some of the greatest years in American foreign policy,” said Gabriel Noronha, a former State Department adviser on Iran during Trump’s first term in office.
Noronha also expressed optimism about the selection of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R.) as the next ambassador to Israel. The former governor is one of the Jewish state’s top advocates and is expected to restore America’s credibility with Israel as the Jewish state faces down Iranian terror proxies across the region.
“Huckabee is going to restore the U.S.-Israel alliance to what it should be: an ironclad relationship between the two greatest defenders of liberty and religious tolerance in the world,” Noronha said. “With Huckabee as ambassador, you won’t see daylight between our countries—he’s going to be a tremendous asset to President Trump.”
Trump’s late Tuesday selection of Army combat veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth as defense secretary surprised many in the president-elect’s orbit. It was nonetheless met with enthusiasm, with proponents citing Hegseth’s combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and years-long advocacy for veterans.
Hegseth will be the second-youngest defense secretary in U.S. history. For Coates, Hegseth’s nomination is “a literal breath of fresh air in the musty halls of the Pentagon where a radical woke social agenda has degraded our proud military.”
Richard Goldberg, who served on the White House National Security Council during Trump’s first term, also expressed optimism about Trump’s picks, including incoming U.N. ambassador Elise Stefanik. He described the new national security team as “foreign policy all-stars” who have an innate understanding of “the threats the U.S. faces [and] believe in ‘peace through strength’ as a national security doctrine.”
Hegseth is completely aligned with the incoming White House team’s foreign policy vision, Goldberg said, adding, “Dictators are shaking and the Deep State is quaking.”
Bolton, however, did express concern with one pick: former Hawaii Democratic congresswoman and Bashar al-Assad defender Tulsi Gabbard, whom Trump announced as his pick for director of national intelligence. “I have long favored abolishing [the Office of the Director of National Intelligence], and the time has now come!” Bolton told the Free Beacon.
