The president is surrounding himself with people who may be television-ready but are not prepared to lead the country.
Some presidents turn to think tanks to staff their administrations. Others turn to alumni of previous White Houses. Donald Trump has turned to Fox News to fill the ranks of his Cabinet.
Former Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth was confirmed to be secretary of defense Friday night in a dramatic vote worthy of cable news, if not the world’s greatest fighting force. After three Republican senators voted against Hegseth, Vice President J. D. Vance had to break a tie, making it the tightest vote for a defense chief ever.
Hegseth is unlikely to be the last Fox alumnus on the Cabinet. Pam Bondi, a former regular guest host, is on track to be confirmed as attorney general, while Sean Duffy, a former Fox Business host, will probably win confirmation as secretary of transportation. The outlook is murkier for Fox contributor Tulsi Gabbard, whom Trump nominated to be director of national intelligence. Michael Waltz, a frequent Fox guest, is already installed as national security adviser, a Cabinet-level role. And this list omits top officials appointed or nominated for high-level non-Cabinet roles, such as Border Czar Tom Homan, FDA Commissioner-Designate Marty Makary, and Surgeon General-Designate Janette Nesheiwat, all of whom have spent hours on Fox.
Unlike other traditional pools of top appointees, this group doesn’t represent any clear political ideology. A lack of commitment to any strong ideology can be a good thing in a Cabinet official if it means leaders are thinking for themselves. Ideologues tend toward tunnel vision and a bunker mentality, and they can cause a president both policy and political problems. Unfortunately the skulk of Foxes in the White House is not so encouraging. Their political histories and answers during confirmation hearings suggest less independent thinking or pragmatism than strong allegiance to partisanship itself, as does their collective history at Fox News. Wherever the Republican Party has been, Fox has tended to be as well. Whether it’s the GOP leading Fox or vice versa is not always clear or consistent. The channel was neocon during the Bush administration, Tea Party during the Obama administration, and anti-Trump before it was fiercely pro-Trump … and briefly Trump-skeptical again after the 2020 election, before it got back on the bandwagon. As I wrote in November, Trump and Fox have rediscovered a symbiotic relationship that has brought both back to a pinnacle of influence.
One reason Fox has been such a good farm team for the administration is that Trump appears to have chosen many of his nominees on two criteria: their allegiance to him, and whether they look TV-ready. Fox hosts check both boxes, but nearly blind partisanship is not an ideal trait in a presidential adviser. Cabinet officials need to be generally aligned with the president, but they also need to be willing and able to disagree and deliver difficult news—something Trump did not appreciate from his first-term Cabinet. Where Hegseth and Gabbard do have more developed ideologies, they are disturbing: for Hegseth, reported bigotry toward Muslims, opposition to women’s equality, and Christian nationalism; for Gabbard, an odd affinity for figures like Bashar al-Assad.
Many of the Fox alumni have little relevant experience. Hegseth served as an officer in the Army, but he has no other government work and has never run any organization nearly as large as the Pentagon—and those he has led have not gone well. Gabbard served in the Army and U.S. House but has no intelligence experience, but she’s been nominated to oversee the entire intelligence community. Hegseth also has extensive personal liabilities, including serial infidelity, an allegation of sexual assault (which he strenuously denies), and many reports of alcohol abuse. (Relevant, too, is Fox News’s reputation for messy hiring—it has seen a procession of serious personal scandals in its ranks over the years, many of them involving allegations of sexual misconduct.)
In confirmation hearings, Hegseth and Bondi were both able to use their experience on TV to come across smoothly and parry questions they didn’t want to answer. Bondi, for example, avoided questions about the 2020 election that might have either identified her as an election denier or angered Trump, but the result is holes in public knowledge about her views.
Despite their flaws, most (and maybe all) of Trump’s Fox appointees will be confirmed. For that, the president will be able to thank Fox itself, because the network’s coverage helps cheerlead his decisions to Republicans. Once the Cabinet is in place, its members will have to do the hard work of governance. It might not go well for the country, but it should make for good TV.
