Trump supporters praise controversial Cabinet picks as the administration they want | Trump administration

In America’s heartland, they’re excited. Finally, the voters who put Donald Trump in the White House for a second time say they’re getting the president they’ve always wanted.

Leading Democrats have denounced Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks as “stooges of contempt, outrage and revenge,” but supporters of the former and future president say the picks signal that Mr. Trump has finally broken away from the Washington establishment. I interpret it as evidence.

Democrats want to put a vaccine denier in charge of health, a former Fox News host at the helm of the Pentagon and Transportation Department, and Elon Musk’s desire to control the sprawling federal bureaucracy. He is furious at the prospect of carving out his own path.

Even senior Republicans are less enthusiastic about some of Trump’s choices. Former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz’s bid to become U.S. attorney general hit a snag after just a few days over allegations that he had sex with a minor.

But many of those who voted for Trump have other priorities in mind.

Neal Schaefer, the Republican chairman of Howard County, Iowa, voted for Barack Obama twice, but with each election he leans more and more toward Trump, and even though he voted for Obama three times, he never voted for Trump. I was not enthusiastic about Mr.

“This time around, I was still a little lukewarm overall, but I was very impressed with the people he was around, especially Tulsi Gabbard, Bobby Kennedy, and Elon Musk. Each of these people Reform and streamlining is a big part of the appointment,” said Schaefer, who works on water conservation for the state.

“I like the idea of ​​having people outside the government look at the eyes of the real world and not Washington, D.C. It’s not the real world. It’s a dark, fabricated puppet government with the military-industrial complex, big pharmaceutical companies, and big agriculture in control. That’s why they want so much money. We’re eating the way we are now, and I’m actually surprised that he’s so well organized and that his name came up so quickly. .”

Schaefer is a Trump supporter who says former President Trump was unprepared for his surprise victory in 2016 and then fell prey to big business and the Republican establishment when making Cabinet changes. It shows the views that are often heard. He said that undermines Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp.”

“He was inundated with lobbyists and corporate interests and individuals who wanted to perpetuate the system rather than reform it,” he said.

Schaefer said this time around, President Trump has the experience of putting officials in place to represent his ambitions.

Among the most controversial and popular candidates among the president-elect’s supporters is the selection of Robert F. Kennedy, America’s most famous Democratic political scion, to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. His liberal critics see him as a crank who has refused to take the coronavirus vaccine and promoted false claims about a link between vaccinations and autism.

But many Trump supporters have focused on President Kennedy’s longstanding criticism of the power of the food and agriculture industry over what Americans farm and eat, and of the influence of prescription drug manufacturers over health care.

Corporate lobbyists helped the U.S. government spend more than $100 billion in subsidies for corn cultivation over the past 30 years. Some of that goes into high-fructose corn syrup, which is now found in most processed foods in the United States, from breakfast cereals to salad dressings and soft drinks, and is a major contributor to the world’s highest rates of obesity and diabetes. There is.

A meme comparing unhealthy ingredients in Heinz tomato ketchup, including corn syrup, made in the United States and the British version is circulating among Trump supporters enthusiastic about Kennedy’s appointment. The way Schaefer sees it, corporations are getting taxpayers to subsidize an industry that is killing them.

“I feel like I heard Bobby Kennedy say this the other day: If you go back to the 1960s and go back to where our health was then to where we are now, our DNA hasn’t changed. “And what prompted us to change our eating habits?” Schaefer said.

“Food is a big thing. I’m very happy to have him in a cabinet position.”

Beau Copley, a former West Virginia miner who now works as a salesman, said he was disappointed that President Trump didn’t act with more integrity during his first term. . He’s not convinced that will change, but thinks the former president may have learned from other mistakes, mainly in deciding who to appoint to positions of power.

“Opponents will think they’re radical, but for those who support him, he’s putting people in place to help get the job done. People who are shaking up the establishment in Washington, D.C. “We’re not looking for lobbyists to fill these positions. We’re not looking at people from big pharmaceutical companies to fill these positions,” he said.

Copley cited Kennedy and Gabbard, the former Democratic congressman who switched to the Republican Party and was nominated to be director of national intelligence earlier this year, as one of his favorite people.

Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador who challenged Trump in the Republican primary, criticized Gabbard on Thursday as a “Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer.” But Copley is the only one to welcome Gabbard’s skepticism about increased U.S. military aid to Ukraine, including this week’s decision by the Biden administration to send land mines and allow Russia to launch American missiles. isn’t it.

“One of the biggest stories when Donald Trump first took office was that he was going to start World War III and actually escalated the conflict. Hurricane in North Carolina When there are people affected by such a huge disaster, we send billions of dollars to Ukraine and give them $750 each if their lives are wiped out. That’s completely ridiculous to me. that’s what he said

Next is Elon Musk. Even before he was named head of the new Department of Government Efficiency, some wondered how long the self-serving billionaire would remain in Trump’s favor. But Schaefer is especially keen for Musk to follow through on his promise to sharply cut government spending after the national debt has increased by more than $2 trillion over the past year.

“I was in Washington, D.C., this summer, and every time I left my hotel, I passed this huge School of Education building. I thought, there’s no reason for this to be here. That money is ours. of local communities, the quality of education will improve dramatically,” he said.

Copley, too, is enthusiastic about the prospect of Musk “cutting back on the wasteful spending that’s going on in Washington.” He acknowledged that West Virginia, one of the poorest states in the country, relies heavily on federal aid to fund education, transportation and social services. A relatively high percentage of low-income people in the state receive welfare or health insurance.

“I know that many West Virginians have received money and are receiving payments like this, but I am committed to revamping the system so that people don’t abuse it and use it as a crutch for the rest of their lives. I’m all for it,” he said.

For Ed Bish, the desire to disrupt parts of the system is deeply personal. He lost his 18-year-old son Eddie to a prescription opioid overdose in 2001, becoming an early victim of the epidemic that has claimed nearly 900,000 lives. Bisch was a solid Democratic vote all the way until supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016, believing the party would take on the interests of Big Pharma, which created the opioid epidemic. But little changed.

Bisch then watched President Trump take office and decided he was the president most likely to challenge the pharmaceutical industry and what he saw as corruption in America’s medical and health regulations.

Mr. Bisch is enthusiastic about running Mr. Kennedy, a former heroin addict, and J.D. Vance, who wrote the best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy,” about growing up in a drug-ravaged area, as vice presidents.

He is also pleased with the nomination of Pam Bondi to become U.S. attorney general after Gates steps down. As Florida’s attorney general, Mr. Bondi shut down a “pill mill” that produced large quantities of opioid prescriptions at a time when more oxycodone pills were sold in Florida than in all other U.S. states combined. .

Mr. Bisch appears to want Mr. Bondi to prosecute the Sackler family, which owned the company that started the opioid epidemic with the powerful drug OxyContin. He also hopes that President Kennedy will follow through on his promise to “close the revolving door” between the pharmaceutical industry and Food and Drug Administration regulators. The Food and Drug Administration has been accused of lax oversight and allowing infections to spread by regulating too closely. Relationships with pharmaceutical companies.

President Kennedy has repeatedly criticized the FDA for conflicts of interest, accusing it of putting the interests of the pharmaceutical industry ahead of the public’s health.

And President Trump has promised to complete construction of the wall on the Mexican border. While this is primarily about immigration, Bish said it would also help stem the flow of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid responsible for most recent overdose deaths.

“I’m excited. Let’s get the border wall done. I agree with people that most of the fentanyl comes in through ports of entry, not open borders, but once we build the wall, The bottom line is that we can never stop it, but reducing supply is a proven way to reduce deaths. That’s the thing,” he said.

The desire to see President Trump take on a system that increasingly resembles a corporate oligarchy is driven by Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s authoritarian plan to impose right-wing control over the entire U.S. government, which also expands the power of big business. Questions still remain as to how this is connected. To be seen. President Trump has distanced himself from the plan, even though members of his first administration had influence in its development.

Schaefer is not a fan of Project 2025. He takes Trump’s assurances at face value and believes the president-elect understands that his supporters want corporate control over government to be broken.

“There are some fanatics on the left in the Democratic Party. There are some weirdos on the far right, and they concocted this list of priorities. There’s probably some good things, but there’s also a lot of trouble. “I don’t see those people coming to the table,” he said.

“President Trump will have enough free thinkers and people who are already clearly critical of a lot of what’s going on in the world. That’s going to be his leadership.”