In a bold escalation of the clash between MAGA movement members of the Republican Party and the traditional political guard, President-elect Donald Trump has drawn a wave of scrutiny over his nominees for top cabinet positions in his incoming administration. While the U.S. Senate must confirm many of these picks, Trump’s cabinet selections make his coming administration’s priorities apparent: absolute loyalty over qualifications. The striking lack of qualifications of his appointees evidence that for Trump, expertise is a liability. Paradoxically, Trump intends for our most critical governmental institutions to be overseen by their fiercest critics, many of whom are nowhere near qualified.
These appointments are the latest manifestation of a years-long anti-intellectual movement in the GOP — a movement characterized by a misidentification of conspiracy as critical reasoning and an insatiable skepticism of government institutions. The election of Trump will likely bring the degradation of government agencies such as the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services. These plans represent a perversion of the politically salient outsider identity that catapulted Trump to power and has transformed experience and expertise into a scarlet letter.
Trump's nomination for attorney general, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), reflects this trend of prioritizing contrarianism over competence. Following his nomination, Gaetz resigned from his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. His resignation came just days before the House Ethics Committee was set to release its findings concerning allegations of sexual misconduct and illegal drug use against Gaetz. In addition, Gaetz has been at the center of a criminal investigation involving sex trafficking by the Justice Department since 2021. Further, Trump seemingly selected Gaetz last-minute, with Politico reporting that the plan came together within a few hours.
“Everyone else looked at [attorney general] as if they were applying for a judicial appointment,” said one Trump advisor. “They talked about their vaunted legal theories and constitutional bullshit. Gaetz was the only one who said, ‘Yeah, I’ll go over there and start cuttin’ fuckin’ heads.’”
Clearly, Gaetz’s lack of regard for legal knowledge actually served as an advantage, despite other drawbacks of him as a nominee, such as his inexperience in the federal justice system. Without the guardrails of expertise and experience, Trump’s ideal cabinet demonstrates the incoming administration’s impatience with traditional thoughtful governance.
The upcoming Trump administration's incompetency is further evidenced by his selection of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, a notorious vaccine skeptic who has no formal public health training or experience, has pledged to institute a policy agenda that will “Make America Healthy Again.” Perhaps most problematically, Kennedy espouses the medical conspiracy that early childhood vaccinations are linked to an increase in rates of autism, despite plentiful research denouncing that theory.
“They get the shot, that night they have a fever of 103, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone,” Kennedy said after the premiere of an anti-vax film in 2015. Kennedy’s appointment signals Trump and his cohort’s complete disregard for the importance of the specialized expertise and scientific principles underlying the public health field.
This most recent wave of anti-intellectualism is rooted in decades of growing skepticism among republicans toward formal education. Former President Ronald Reagan’s administration famously called for the deconstruction of the Department of Education only years after former President Jimmy Carter established it — not unlike Trump’s similar declarations. Reagan’s descriptions of “common sense” conservative ideas framed left-leaning academic proposals as elitist and overly theoretical. Former President George H.W. Bush even shied away from discussing his years at Yale University (Conn.) and Harvard Business School (Mass.), preferring to practice “country-boy politics” that prioritized charm and relatability over education. This trend deepened with the rise of the Tea Party movement in the late 2000s, which injected a populist, anti-establishment message into the GOP party platform. Phrases such as “fake news” and “alternative facts” became mainstream terms used to dismiss critical reporting and foster a sense of mistrust in credible news sources.
The Tea Party’s anti-establishment sentiment evolved into Trumpian politics, which provides an even stronger platform for championing the values of average Americans against a supposedly out-of-touch intellectual elite. Now, alt-right influencers like Charlie Kirk directly target higher education in viral videos that characterize universities as indoctrination centers promoting liberal propaganda that is apparently antithetical to traditional American values. The strategy of denigrating academic institutions is a blatant attempt to disarm Americans in the face of manipulative political messaging and pave the way for policy initiatives that conflict with their interests. With Trump, this sentiment will infiltrate the White House.
While these Trump picks may seem comical to some, if the nominees are confirmed, Americans will grapple with serious ramifications over the coming years. When the next disaster strikes, whether it be a public health emergency or political scandal, our nation will be forced to look to Kennedy and Gaetz for leadership — figures whose appointments were not driven by expertise but by their loyalty to the Trumpian brand of intellectual defiance. In all likelihood, their loyalty will not be enough to implement effective public health policy or a steady, unbiased legal hand. The anti-intellectual movement is not merely a rejection of credentialed experts, but an ideological crusade against the fundamental principles of our government: accountability, competence and a knowledge-based pursuit of public wellbeing.
This movement may uniquely affect all university students to some extent by devaluing the formal education we pursue and the qualifications we aspire to attain. However, we can still push back through a continued commitment to evidence-based reasoning and the value of formal education. We must continue to engage in good faith with educational institutions like Emory University and trust that our generation can revive a system in which expertise and insight have been devalued. In the meantime, we must continue to support political candidates who base their positions in science, legality and precedent, as well as expert opinions. We need leaders who see their roles in government as interpreters and communicators of truth, not unilateral authors of it.
The above editorial represents the majority opinion of The Emory Wheel’s Editorial Board. The Editorial Board is composed of Editor Marc Goedemans, Carly Aikens, Hunter Buchheit, Allie Guo, Ethan Jacobs, Carson Kindred, Justin Leach, Eliana Liporace, Niki Rajani, Josh Rosenblut, Ilka Tona and Crystal Zhang.
