As 2024 ended and Donald Trump’s cabinet picks were rolled out, commentators scrambled to decide which one was the worst. Was it Matt Gaetz for attorney general? Or Pete Hegseth, for secretary of defense? Or maybe Robert F Kennedy Jr to lead the Department of Health and Human Services?
Soon after, the White House crowed that Trump had assembled “the greatest cabinet of all time”.
Gaetz didn’t even make it to a confirmation hearing. But the others did, most narrowly squeaking through on party-line votes.
The result was what commentators labelled a “clown car cabinet”. Others pointed out the utter absurdity of the president’s choices.
As professor Warren Blumenfeld wrote last February, Trump chose “a man who spreads vaccine conspiracy theories to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, a woman who cozies up to vicious dictators like Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad to become director of national intelligence, an election denier and someone with an enemies list who intends to conduct a massive Stalinesque purge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to run the FBI, (and) a woman who is a professional wrestling magnate to serve as secretary of education even though Trump wants to abolish the Federal Department of Education”.
He went on to say that the president had nominated “so many other utterly unqualified candidates for other offices that they should more fittingly fall into the category of disqualified”. Robert Reich, former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, joined him, saying that the cabinet “is filled with bottom-feeders, frauds, fanatics, and fools”.
Whatever label we choose to apply, they led the United States through a disastrous year.
In terms of their “expertise, competence, experience, operational effectiveness, ethical standards, scandals … and the ability for cabinet members to challenge the president without repercussions”, it is already clear that Trump’s cabinet ranks as the worst in American history.
So bad has his cabinet’s performance been that, with less than 12 months of service, many have faced calls to resign.
Take Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. From the start of her service, she seems to have focused as much on the perks of her office as on her performance.
For example, after moving into the home of the former Coast Guard commandant, where she lives rent-free, her department spent more than $200m of government funds to buy not one but two luxurious private jets for her travel needs and those of her staff.
And as Politico reports, even some Trump loyalists “are frustrated with how she’s managed the agency” and “fear she’s bungled the billions of dollars in new funding her agency received this year from Republicans’ domestic policy and tax legislation”. They think she is “unserious”.
To be called “unserious” in a clown car cabinet is a pretty serious accusation.
During an appearance on 11 December before the House homeland security committee, Bennie Thompson, the ranking Democratic member, summarized what many people think: “Rather than you sitting here and wasting your time and ours with more corruption, lies and lawlessness, I call on you to resign … Do a real service to your country and just resign – that is, unless President Trump fires you first.”
Noem is not the only member of the cabinet whose performance in office has drawn such condemnation, and not just from Democrats.
Recently, the Republican congressman Don Bacon called Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth an “amateur person” who has done great damage to the culture of the military in this country. He has driven out senior military leaders, accusing them without evidence of being “woke”.
In addition, he has made a series of management blunders. As the Atlantic’s Tom Nichols puts it: “The halls of the Pentagon are apparently strewn with rakes these days, and Hegseth has managed to step on almost all of them, including security blunders, needless fights with the press, and envious, unmanly whining about the medals on the uniform of Senator Mark Kelly, a veteran of higher rank and far greater achievement than Hegseth himself. Like Trump, Hegseth thinks his job is to get even with people he views as enemies.”
Additionally, he has overseen a dangerous transformation of the military’s mission, enabling it to shift its focus to patrolling American cities. The warrior culture that Secretary Hegseth seeks to instil in the military does not belong in Los Angeles, Memphis, Portland, Washington DC or any other part of the country. Recall Trump’s remarks about wanting to use American cities as a training ground for the military. And who can have confidence in Hegseth’s maturity and judgment after his expletive-spiked description of the lesson of the incursion in Venezuela and capture of Nicolás Maduro? Maduro, he said “effed around and he found out” about “the long arm of American justice”.
Then there is health secretary Robert F Kennedy, who has led a rollback in funding for critical medical research, including work aimed at finding treatments and cures for the most serious diseases. Kennedy, breaking a promise he made during his confirmation hearings, has brought his anti-vaccine fervor to the department he leads, filling critical positions with people whose views of vaccines turn scientific understandings on their head.
He has, as Elizabeth Jacobs and James Alwine wrote, “all but destroyed the CDC. Having dismantled its ability to track and report disease outbreaks, he’s now making it a megaphone for anti-vaccine disinformation.” As if that were not enough, Kennedy led the charge to revoke $11bn in public health funding for cities and counties.
And showing his Hegseth-like management style, soon after taking office, he blamed the 82,000 people who work in the Department of Health and Human Services for a decline in Americans’ health. But in truth, with moves like Monday’s rollback of recommendations for childhood vaccination, it seems that RFK is determined to lead the way in endangering the safety and wellbeing of everyone in the United States, including its most vulnerable people.
Finally, I would like to mention attorney general Pam Bondi. Working at the president’s direction, she has transformed the Department of Justice into an instrument of his revenge.
Recall her responsiveness to the president’s publicly expressed wish that she initiate prosecutions of his political opponents, including the former FBI director James Comey and New York state attorney general Letitia James. Within days of his Truth Social post, both were indicted, although the indictments were later dismissed.
By the time the attorney general leaves office, the department she leads will have been changed in ways that will render it less independent, less professional, and more susceptible to political pressure.
I could say more, but that is enough to give a taste of the damage done by Trump’s cabinet this year. Other presidents have assembled cabinets that have also not served the American people well. But none compares to what Noem, Hegseth, Kennedy, Bondi and their colleagues have already done.
Scholars point to the cabinets of Presidents Warren Harding and Ulysses Grant as among the worst ever assembled. Until this year, they led the way in corruption, incompetence and disregard for the wellbeing of the American people.
However, as the new year begins, those cabinets will have to make room for the group assembled by Trump. And we shouldn’t be surprised by its dismal performance. After all, Trump valued loyalty, not capability in his cabinet choices.
In the past, Americans may have been tempted to dismiss the significance of the people whom the president picks for cabinet posts, but this year, we learned a hard lesson about the damage they could do. In 2026, Americans must demand that Congress hold them accountable for that damage and be vigilant in trying to get them to prioritize the interests of the people.
Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty
