'Trump’s cabinet the worst'

Any time a new administration comes into office, there are complaints about the new president's cabinet picks. But it seems the 45th President of the US, Donald Trump has actually assembled the worst Cabinet in American history, Washington Post argues.

Presenting the juxtaposition between the former Secretary of Energy, Ernest Moniz and Rick Perry, the current one, WP goes on to give the highlights of the Trump cabinet and cabinet-level appointees.

Rick Perry, Secretary of Energy

Ernest Moniz, is a respected nuclear physicist who also came to the job with significant experience managing scientific institutions, and he'll be succeeded by someone who advocated eliminating the department, although in his defense Perry couldn't quite remember that it was the one he wanted to get rid of (that famous "Oops" moment). Well, atleast he has a good sense of humour!

Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services

Republican Price, a doctor who has taken a particular interest in legislating on health care, has a habit of trading in health care stocks that are affected by the legislation he writes; he also recently got a "sweetheart deal" on stock in a foreign biotech firm.

Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education 

DeVos, a billionaire Republican donor, has spent much of her adult life attempting to destroy public education in America. Despite that work, at her confirmation hearing she displayed a shocking ignorance of basic issues in education policy, though she did opine that schools should be able to have guns in them to ward off grizzly bear attacks.

Andrew Puzder, Secretary of Labor

If Trump had searched America to find the individual most hostile to the rights of workers, he could not have done much better than Puzder, the CEO of a fast-food company. The man who will be responsible for safeguarding workers' rights is an ardent opponent of minimum wage increases and laws mandating things like break time and overtime pay; his company has been repeatedly cited for wage theft.

Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development 

The former presidential candidate, who has precisely zero experience in housing policy, was apparently appointed to lead this department because he's one of the few African-Americans Donald Trump has met.

Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management and Budget 

Mulvaney was just revealed to have employed a nanny without paying payroll taxes for her, to the tune of over $15,000.

Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce 

The billionaire investor just realised that one of the dozen or so household staff he employs was undocumented.

Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior 

Republican Zinke is a former Navy Seal whose career was hampered by the fact that he was caught repeatedly billing the government for personal trips home which he falsely claimed were for the purpose of scouting training locations.

Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency 

Like Puzder and DeVos, Pruitt seems to have been chosen for his fervent opposition to the mission of the agency he'll be leading. As Attorney General of Oklahoma, he sued the EPA multiple times over its efforts to enforce environmental laws. In his confirmation hearings, he refused to commit to recuse himself from the cases among those that are still open, in the apparent belief that there isn't anything wrong with essentially being both plaintiff and defendant in a lawsuit. When asked about lead poisoning, a vital and longstanding environmental issue that gained new urgency with the poisoning of the water in Flint, MI, he said that he had "not looked at the scientific research on that."

Michael Flynn, National Security Adviser 

Flynn, an ardent Islamophobe and purveyor of lunatic conspiracy theories, was fired from his last job in government because of mismanagement.

Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State 

Tillerson has no government or diplomatic experience, though he has been to many countries that have oil.

Nikki Haley, United Nations Ambassador 

Haley's foreign policy experience consists of going on a couple of trade missions as governor of South Carolina.

That's not to mention the sub-cabinet appointments who are already in trouble, like the Army secretary who punched out a concession worker at a horse auction or the national security spokesperson revealed as a plagiarist, nor the fact that Trump's senior adviser used to run a white nationalist web site and the President-elect intends to employ his family members, all while insisting again and again that ethics laws don't apply to him.

While prior presidents have had some miserable appointments — James Watt and Anne Gorsuch in the Reagan administration, Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown and Alberto Gonzales in George W Bush's — never before has one president assembled such a remarkable collection of individuals who are either unqualified for their jobs, devoted to subverting their agencies, or both, not to mention the ethical questions that will continue to swirl around this administration, says Paul Waldman in his writing in the Washington Post.

Source: Washington Post