Benjamin Franklin’s hope and warning, “A republic, if you can keep it,” resonates with too many of us these days. This has especially been the case watching the president-elect nominate his Cabinet, a wishlist of personnel that perfectly embodies Trumpism’s ultranationalist populism, nostalgia for a utopian White Christian past, and fixation with enemies, both internal and external—with a dash of violent rhetoric and staggering incompetence tossed in for good measure. What Trump is clearly asking for (and promising) is a Christian nationalist kakistocracy—a government by the least suitable, most unworthy people. If the Senate confirms these picks, that’s exactly what we’ll get.
The Christian nationalism element is evident when you look at someone like Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, who cosplays as a contemporary American Crusader, both in his writing and in his tattoos. In his book American Crusade he calls for treating “the Left” as an enemy, to be crusaded against—linked explicitly to the violence of the Crusades and the American Revolution, a favorite Christian nationalist mythical starting point. With a president and vice president who’ve repeatedly said that elected Democrats, university professors, journalists, judges, attorney generals and anyone else who opposes them isn’t just a rival but an enemy (and who’ve threatened to use the military to clear them from the streets), Hegseth’s rhetoric would have teeth and approval behind it.
Mike Huckabee—‘There are certain words I refuse to use’
Trump’s nominee for US Ambassador to Israel is Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas and noted Christian Zionist, as Ben Lorber points out. Christian Zionism in many cases is not about supporting Israel or about protecting Jews around the world—not in any real sense. It’s about urging Israel toward its destruction as part of the Christian apocalypse. Christian Zionism, Jerusalem, and the Trump administration have their own long history, of course, as Trump’s 2017 statements about moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem excited all kinds of evangelical fervor.
Huckabee’s brand of Christian Zionism is prone to missteps and faux pas—not to mention Holocaust comparisons—but in the current environment, his most important trait is a lack of a broader vision. Nethanyahu seems pretty convinced that Trump’s win will remove whatever theoretical guardrails might have existed, and the Christian evangelical reaction to Israel’s genocidal behavior seems to support that. As David Hearst recently pointed out in a Middle East Eye op-ed, “Within days of the election, Trump had already begun filling his cabinet with people who have made every case for Israel to spread the war around the region.”
Huckabee, in particular, has made it clear how he views the concept of Palestinian sovereignty, telling CNN in 2017:
There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.
This argument–a Christian Zionist one–is a permission structure for wiping out the West Bank, for unrestricted settler violence, for the end of Palestine.
Elise Stefanik—‘George Soros is trying to fund the downfall of America’
This particular dance around Israel and the lives and protection of Jewish Americans also comes into play with Elise Stefanik. Once elected to the House of Representatives as a moderate Republican, Stefanik is Trump’s pick for US ambassador to the UN. Stefanik made a splash by rebranding herself as defender of American Jews when she grilled university presidents over free speech policies after October 7th. At the same time she was parroting rhetoric from the White supremacist (and deeply antisemitic) Great Replacement Theory and pushing the antisemitic dog whistle that “George Soros is trying to fund the downfall of America”—to say nothing about the rest of her turn towards Trumpism.
Stefanik is no stranger to conspiratorial, frequently antisemitic, thinking—Great Replacement, QAnon echoes, the overt Soros links—but she’s also in support of an expressly Christian nationalist government. When she introduced Mike Johnson as her nominee for Speaker of the House in 2023, for example, Brian Kaylor and Jeremy Fuzy observed:
“Above the speaker’s chair in the House chamber, is our nation’s motto: In God We Trust,” she declared, sparking a standing ovation from Republicans. “The times in which we are living demand boldness, unity, and transformational leadership that begins with trust in God and each other. Trust is when the magic happens. In the story of King David, we are reminded that man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
The appeal to Davidic kingship is not new in MAGA America, and won’t be the first or last time the language of Christian monarchy is echoed in the halls of government.
Kristi Noem—‘I don’t recognize the country I had the opportunity of growing up in’
The former governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem is yet another devoted Christian nationalist (and unapologetic Trump loyalist) nominated to join the president-elect’s cabinet. She’s in good standing with the Christian Right, having bragged previously about being the nation’s “most pro-life governor.” Noem has signed numerous “pro-life”—that is, forced-birth—bills during her time as governor, even claiming that she had to hire an extra staffer to keep on top of all of her abortion-banning efforts. In addition, Noem has urged other Republican governors to enact draconian abortion bans similar to those in South Dakota, where abortion is banned even in cases of rape and incest, with the only exception being a danger to the life of the mother.
She’s also followed the Christian Right’s strategy to defend “religious freedom” through legislation, by which they mean the freedom for right-wing Christians to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, women, and religious minorities. On her first day as governor, Noem held a worship service in the capitol rotunda, during which a pastor declared: “You are Lord and King of South Dakota. We thank you Lord God that we have faith and that the Holy Spirit absolutely takes over every corner and every crevice of this Capitol and of this state.” It would be difficult to find a more straightforward exhibition of Christian nationalism.
In response, the Freedom from Religion Foundation sent her an open letter, criticizing Noem for violating the separation of church and state on her first day in office. But Noem was undeterred. Every pet issue of the Christian Right, from prayer in public schools to discrimination against trans children and adults, can be found in her policy portfolio. In 2021, at the Family Leadership Summit, Noem gave a speech that showcased her fluency in the stunning doublespeak of the Christian Right, while speaking about her granddaughter:
I hate this America we are giving her. I don’t recognize the country I had the opportunity of growing up in. When I grew up people were proud to have a job. They weren’t confused on the difference between boys and girls. We prayed in schools … and by the way in South Dakota I’m putting prayer back in our schools … We stood for the national anthem, we honored our flag, and we were proud of our history. That is not Joe Biden’s America. His America is built on hate and division, on pitting people against each other.
Bemoaning division and hatred while actively touting her hatred for “Joe Biden’s America” is quite the Orwellian feat—one familiar to those researching the Christian Right, where hate is all too often sold as love. Noem had previously demonstrated her cruelty towards those creatures she considers lesser (and, more importantly, disobedient) by bragging about shooting her puppy in a gravel pit because it hadn’t yet been sufficiently trained (which in turn inspired her to shoot one of the family’s goats).
But Noem’s cruelty isn’t limited to her pets. She’s a textbook example of the cruelty proponents of Christian nationalism can unleash upon those they don’t deem worthy of safety or rights—those who are unfit to be seen as both Christian and American. Noem has promoted and supported Trump’s draconian and racist immigration policies; offered to send the South Dakota National Guard and more razor wire to aid Texas Governor Greg Abbott in his border stand-off with the Biden administration (whom she threatened with civil war); and has personally been barred from entering the land of multiple tribes for claiming, without evidence, that their leaders had benefited from drug cartels. Noem is now unable to set foot on nearly 20% of South Dakota.
As Adam Serwer has stated previously, the cruelty is the point—the same goes for Noem’s positions, from the gleeful retelling of her puppy murder to her willingness to vilify and brutalize migrants. But as Amanda Marcotte analyzed in Salon when the puppy-murder story first broke, the core strategy of the Christian Right—and fascist movements more broadly—only works if its adherents also manage to cast the victim of their violence as the aggressor and a threat to some kind of “natural order.”
Those enacting the cruelty need to re-frame it as a heroic defense of an America under siege—which is the reason why the puppy-killing story fell flat even with MAGA supporters. But alas, puppy murder doesn’t seem to be an impediment to a cabinet position anymore (even if the alleged sexual assault of a minor has stalled Matt Gaetz’s bid to be Attorney General). For all we know, Trump hates dogs, too. Noem will work closely with “border czar” Tom Homan (a position that doesn’t require congressional approval) and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to implement the president-elect’s mass deportation plans.
Tom Homan—‘The whole family can be deported together’
Homan, who served as the head of ICE in Trump’s first administration has, for the past few months, been touring the country, auditioning hard for the position of “border czar.” When I saw him speak on a breakout panel at this year’s National Conservatism Conference, he sat comfortably next to panelists who espoused White nationalist talking points, and told gruesome tales of countless children allegedly sex-trafficked across the Southern border, and graphic stories of young women, murdered and sexually assaulted at the hands of undocumented immigrants.
During the first Trump administration, the draconian border policy of family separation was Homan’s brainchild, though images of kids in cages quickly ignited a heated (international) backlash against the measure. When asked in a recent 60 Minutes interview how he plans to avoid the same result given the 15 million mass deportations he’s promised to deliver, Homan calmly responded that “Families can be deported together,” which suggests that Homan is willing to deport entire families with mixed documentation status. Or, to put it more bluntly: he’s also willing to deport American citizens, such as the children of undocumented immigrants who were born on US soil (something which ties in neatly with Trump’s and Miller’s plans to end birthright citizenship).
Homan, like so many other Christian nationalists, parrots the narrative of a nation under siege; one beset by an “invasion” of violent migrants who must be stopped—by force if necessary. Should any Democratic governors and mayors refuse to comply with his plans, he’s threatened to: “take [sanctuary cities] to court” and to “start charging some of these politicians with crimes.”
In 2022, Homan accepted an invitation to AFPAC, the yearly conference put together by neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes (with whom Trump had lunch in 2022). When confronted by The Huffington Post, Homan declared that he had left early and that he didn’t know who Fuentes was. A few minutes later Homan called the journalists back to clarify his position on the neo-Nazi-led conference: “I’m not saying this is a bad group, I’m saying I don’t know.”
Stephen Miller—‘America is for Americans and Americans only’
Homan isn’t the only member of Trump’s cabinet who’s refused to distance himself from White supremacists and White nationalists—an embrace that isn’t exclusive to White Christians. Deputy chief of staff nominee, Stephen Miller, who is Jewish, was first brought into the Trump White House through his work with Christian nationalists like Michele Bachmann and Jeff Sessions. In fact, he has long allied himself with a wide range of White supremacist organizations, using the Islamophobia and anti-Muslim violence rampant after 9/11 to connect with David Horowitz, VDare, Richard Spencer, and others.
His anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric is long held, from high school and college, and Miller’s own uncle, David Glosser, has gone public and voiced his “horror” at his nephew’s views. Glosser cited their ancestry from Jews who came to the US as refugees, fleeing antisemitic pogroms in what’s now Belarus to point out Miller’s hypocrisy. During Trump’s first administration, 55 civil rights groups and 100 Democrats in Congress had called for Miller’s dismissal after more than 900 emails to a Breitbart writer had been leaked in which Miller promoted racist and White supremacist views.
Miller was the architect of Trump’s Muslim ban, and struck a succinctly authoritarian tone in response to judges who blocked it, declaring “the whole world will soon see” that President Trump “will not be questioned” when it comes to his executive powers. With Miller as deputy chief of staff in charge of policy, and Homan and Noem around to implement his domestic agenda, the likelihood of White supremacist violence is even higher.
This time around, Miller, who “will set the overall contours of American immigration policy,” according to MSNBC’s Hayes Brown, is promising large-scale “detention camps” for migrants; militarized mass deportations (including an end to birthright citizenship); and to “turbocharge” what he calls a “denaturalization program,” which would strip legal immigrants of their citizenship.
But beyond promised policies, it’s important to listen to his words. At the infamous Trump-Vance Madison Square Garden rally, Miller said “America is for Americans and Americans only!” It sounds as though he’s just talking about undocumented immigrants, but as Jean Guerrero has pointed out, what it means to Miller and the Trump administration is White Americans. And the line itself echoes the Klan banner, “America for Americans,” a deliberate hearkening back to the worst parts of the twentieth century, much like “America First.”
The Second Klan, which used that slogan, was an explicitly Christian nationalist—and more aptly, a Christian fascist—organization. This echo is not a mistake. The iconography, the rhetoric, all of it is deliberately recalling a time when Americans was understood to mean White, English-speaking, Protestant Americans. And despite not meeting all of those qualifications, Miller is happy to steer the country in that direction.
Tulsi Gabbard—‘[If we had only acknowledged] Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO’
Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was partly raised in a fringe Hare Krishna offshoot known for its homophobia and Islamophobia, and is now a practicing Hindu—the first elected to Congress in fact. In 2016, during India’s far-right Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the US, Gabbard presented him with her personal copy of the Bhagavad Gita, which fits neatly into the global far-right alliance Trump’s allies have been building—particularly at this summer’s NatCon in Washington, D.C., which featured several members of India’s BJP.
Gabbard is—at least at first glance—a quintessential Trump pick given her total lack of experience in the intelligence sector. In fact, her appointment has been widely seen as a major national security risk due to her previous defenses of dictators Putin and Assad, both of whom she sticks up for to this day. She’s been caught multiple times parroting Kremlin propaganda, sometimes word for word. According to the Washington Post’s Adam Taylor, just hours after Russia invaded Ukraine:
Gabbard wrote on the social network then known as Twitter that the “war and suffering” could have been avoided if the Biden administration and its allies had acknowledged “Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO.”
Putting her in charge of US intelligence agencies must have set corks popping in Moscow and perhaps with other hostile foreign governments around the world. Apart from being a loyal Trumper, what connects Gabbard to her fellow appointees is her Islamophobia, her comfort with White supremacist dog whistles, and her support of religious nationalism.
Vivek Ramaswamy—‘Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian values, there’s no doubt about it. It is a historical fact’
Trump’s nominee for the so-called “co-Director of Government Efficiency”—a theoretical advisory committee position alongside Elon Musk—Vivek Ramaswamy ran for the Republican nomination on a young MAGA platform, emphasizing his age and his entrepreneurial record (alongside his Eminem rap performances). But a great deal of his time was spent dealing with the issue of his race and religion in an ever Whiter, ever more conservative Christian primary. Despite being a Hindu, his solution was to lean in to the narrative of White Christian nationalism, declaring in a town hall that, “Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian values, there’s no doubt about it. It is a historical fact.” At that same town hall he argued that he was running for Commander-in-Chief, not Pastor-in-Chief, while also selling himself as an American Modi—but for Christians.
His campaign website’s list of “Truths” carefully constructed a language of Hinduism meant to appeal to Christians—“God is Real” reads the first—and White supremacist—“Reverse racism is racism” reads another—while emphasizing standard MAGA talking points. While his approach clearly didn’t work Ramaswamy certainly made his openness to a Christian nationalist America crystal clear. And given the dropping of any pretense of religious pluralism at GOP events this past summer it was a savvy move.
By White Christians, for White Christians
Of course, as we’ve seen in the case of Matt Gaetz, there’s no guarantee that all of these nominees and appointees will survive the confirmation process (even if, as Trump has threatened, he circumvents the Senate via recess appointments). And history tells us that some of them will annoy the president-elect and be out of the running before the process even begins.
But the wishlist has a great deal to tell us about what he wants in a Cabinet and for his administration. It’s clearly not about governing efficiently—he chose people with almost no real world experience for a number of major positions. Nor is it about defending the Constitution—as is evident in the switch from at least some professionals the first time around to the Yes Men and Women proposed for the second.
What Trump appears to want (or what he’s putting together at least) is a kakistocracy, a government consisting of the least suitable people—the Matt Gaetzes, Pete Hegseths, and Elon Musks of the world. But while this Christian Nationalist Kakistocracy may be incompetent, its goal is to create a government by White Christians, for White Christians, at the expense of everyone else. God help us if they manage to make it work.
