By James Oliphant and Helen Coster
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Less than a month after his victory, President-elect Donald Trump has assembled a team ready to carry out two of his biggest priorities: retribution against his political adversaries and a wholesale reshaping of the U.S. government.
Trump's pick of former White House deputy Kash Patel to lead the crime-fighting FBI brought into sharper focus the president-elect's seriousness about striking back at those he believes have wronged him. Patel is an outspoken critic of the bureau who has vowed to go after Trump's perceived enemies.
He is also the latest of a host of nominees who reflect Trump's preference for outsiders with a wrecking-ball mentality over practiced Washington hands, people who could disrupt the system from the inside and transform government in a way that may be unprecedented in modern times.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s choice for Health and Human Services secretary, wants to purge the agency of corporate influence. Pete Hegseth, nominated for secretary of defense, has denounced "woke" policies at the Pentagon and called for an overhaul of senior leadership. Linda McMahon looks set to dismantle the Department of Education she has been chosen to lead, fulfilling one of Trump's campaign pledges.
Traditionally, cabinets served as instruments presidents used to build and develop programs, not demolish them. Republican George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind program sought to improve public education through testing. Affordable healthcare was Democrat Barack Obama's signature plan.
Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20 following his Nov. 5 triumph, has selected a team with other ideas in mind, said Elaine Kamarck, an expert on governance at the Brookings Institution.
“They're chosen for their hostility to the institutions, their loyalty to Trump, their promise that they're going to shake everything up," she said.
Trump supporters say Washington needs a shake-up. Many view the federal government as an unaccountable, corrupt and self-perpetuating bureaucracy that hampers economic growth, targets citizens unlawfully and fails to keep the country secure.
That belief departs from a broad bipartisan view of the federal government as a positive force that enforces and administers laws on a wide range of issues from food safety and health, to air and water quality, and also pays out benefits to millions of older, infirm and poor Americans.
Kamarck said Trump's team, some of whom may face tough confirmation hearings, may not be able to achieve the huge transformation he seeks because of a lack of government experience.
Trimming government is harder than it looks, she added.
"The federal government employs 60,000 people who send out Social Security checks every month," she said. "What happens when Grandma's check gets lost and there's nobody to answer the phone?"
NOT JUST BLUSTER
During the presidential election campaign, the Republican Trump vowed to settle scores with Democratic opponents and perceived enemies in the government and media. He accused the Justice Department and the FBI of “weaponizing” federal law enforcement against him.
He now has his own weapon in Patel, 44, a former federal prosecutor and congressional aide who served as a top national security staffer in Trump’s first term. Patel has compiled what critics have said is a target list of so-called “deep state” officials he claimed were hostile to Trump’s agenda, a list that includes President Joe Biden and former Trump officials such as Trump's ex-national security adviser John Bolton.
In an interview in 2023 with Trump ally Steve Bannon, Patel said, “We will go out and find the conspirators — not just in government, but in the media ... we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”
Patel has said that as FBI director, he would shut down the bureau’s Washington headquarters on “Day One” and return the agency to its law enforcement roots by fighting crime and not gathering domestic intelligence.
"Kash Patel is going to restore integrity to the FBI and return it to its mission of keeping Americans safe,” said Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesperson for the Trump transition team.
Several political experts said Patel and some of Trump's other picks suggest his rhetoric about retribution and a radical overhaul of government was not mere campaign bluster.
“I think there were a lot of people who voted for him for economic or pocketbook reasons who didn’t believe the more extreme rhetoric,” said historian Lindsay (NYSE:LNN) Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library.
If confirmed, Patel would partner with Pam Bondi, Trump's pick for attorney general, to run federal law enforcement. Both have embraced Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and both have been critical of what they call a "deep state," career civil servants they suspect of secretly working to bypass elected officials to advance their own agenda.
Trump has called upon two other disruptors, billionaire Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, to head a commission charged with trimming the bureaucracy.
They would work with the incoming head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, an architect of Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for the next Trump administration developed by the Heritage Foundation.
The project's authors, Vought included, have advocated for the reclassification of parts of the federal workforce that would give Trump the authority to fire tens of thousands of government employees.
Trump's decision to stack his administration with like-minded loyalists is another break from presidential norms, Chervinsky said.
Past presidents, she said, assembled teams with a range of viewpoints to reassure people who did not vote for them.
“A lot of these choices do the opposite of that,” Chervinsky said. “They are intentionally antagonistic.”