(Trigger warning: This article includes descriptions of sexual assault.)
President-elect Donald Trump isn’t just appointing incompetent buffoons to his Cabinet, but deeply immoral individuals who are completely lacking in family values.
This may sound like a quaint sentiment, but morality matters just as much if not more than merit. Before we can even get to whether the people Trump has appointed to lead federal agencies have the ability to oversee billion-dollar budgets and workforces numbering in the hundreds of thousands, we have to also ask whether we can even trust these individuals around women, children, or even animals.
To be clear, this doesn’t describe every nominee for every agency. Some of Trump’s picks are the same kind of people a conventional Republican president could be expected to appoint, like three-term incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) for the State Department, and businessman-turned-two-term Governor Doug Burgum (R-North Dakota) to head the Department of the Interior. Burgum isn’t that different from former President Barack Obama’s second Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, who was also a longtime business executive before being tapped to be the steward of roughly 20 percent of America’s land.
Trump’s pick to oversee the Department of Labor, former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Oregon), is particularly surprising given her pro-worker bona fides. As the National Employment Law Project noted, Chavez-DeRemer is one of the cosponsors of the PRO (Protecting the Right to Organize) Act, which makes it easier for workers to organize unions in the workplace. Faiz Shakir, who was the campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) in 2020, called her a “pro-labor pick.” (Though it should be noted that according to a recent report in the American Prospect, Chavez-DeRemer only backed pro-worker legislation 10 percent of the time.)
But despite a small handful of relatively normal picks, there is still a wealth of evidence that Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees are morally bankrupt, in addition to being vastly unqualified and inexperienced. Senators owe it to the American public during next year’s confirmation hearings to let the record reflect the profound moral failings of the people the president-elect has chosen to lead the world’s most well-funded military, dozens of health agencies, our sweeping immigration infrastructure, and our federal law enforcement apparatus.
The drunkards, womanizers, predators, animal abusers, and absent parents of Trump’s Cabinet
Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, who has been tapped to lead the Department of Defense, is arguably the most extreme of Trump’s Cabinet nominees. A blistering report by the New Yorker’s Jane Meyer includes quotes from whistleblowers at a pro-veteran political organization Hegseth used to lead that describe his drunken, boorish behavior at public events and use of organizational funds for what “could politely be called trysts.”
According to whistleblower complaints, Hegseth once took coworkers to a Louisiana strip club in 2014 and was dragged offstage after trying to dance with strippers. During a May 2015 trip to Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Hegseth and an associate drunkenly shouted “kill all Muslims” while at the Sheraton Suites Hotel bar. In a separate incident, Hegseth “passed out” in the back of a party bus and later urinated in front of the hotel where his team was staying. The whistleblower called his behavior “despicable,” saying he “embarrassed the entire organization.”
The most egregious accusation against Hegseth is from 2017, in which a female attendee of a pro-Republican conference in Monterey, California accused him of drugging her and later sexually assaulting her in his hotel room. She recalled bits and pieces from that night, including one moment when Hegseth was on top of her with his dog tags in her face, and her “saying no a lot.” Hegseth maintained the encounter was “consensual” and ultimately paid his accuser an undisclosed sum of money as part of a 2020 settlement when she filed a lawsuit against him. Meyer noted that both Hegseth and his lawyer, Tim Parlatore (who has previously represented Trump) suggested that the accuser had a prior rape accusation that was dismissed, but police told Meyer that was false.
According to the New York Times, Hegseth’s own mother, Penelope even once confronted her son over his “abusive behavior” toward women in a lengthy email. Hegseth has had two children out of wedlock, including one with his now-wife, Jennifer Rauchet, when Hegseth was still married to his former wife, Samantha. Penelope Hegseth described her son’s treatment of women as “dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, and belittling.” She said that she was not taking sides in his 10-month divorce from Samantha, but would only say that she was “on the side of good, and that is not you.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s transition co-chair Linda McMahon — whom he has nominated to lead the Department of Education — allegedly enabled sexual abuse of young boys when she was in charge of World Wrestling Entertainment (formerly the World Wrestling Federation) with her then-husband, Vince McMahon. Several victims, who were between the ages of 13 and 15 at the time, have accused former WWE ringside announcer Melvin Phillips Jr. of sexually exploiting them.
Phillips, who died in 2012, would reportedly lure “ring boys” to be his victims under the guise of being able to personally meet star wrestlers backstage, and would sometimes have ring boys over in his hotel room on official business trips. The victims say the McMahons had knowledge of Phillips’ scheme but did nothing to intervene, while McMahon’s attorney called the allegations “scurrilous lies, exaggerations, and misrepresentations.”
Another alleged predator Trump appointed to his administration is far-right conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is the secretary-designate of the Department of Health and Human Services. RFK Jr. was accused of groping his family’s live-in babysitter, Eliza Cooney, in 1999. In an apology he texted to her, Kennedy maintained that he had “no memory” of the incident, and that anything he did that offended her was “inadvertent.” More recently, RFK Jr., who is 70 years old, had an affair with 31 year-old journalist Olivia Nuzzi during the course of her writing a profile about him for New York magazine. Nuzzi broke off her year-long engagement to Politico reporter Ryan Lizza and was eventually let go from her job.
As Daily Beast columnist Jill Twiss observed, many of Trump’s Cabinet picks also have a “problem with dogs.” RFK Jr. was once photographed eating an animal that a veterinarian identified as a dog due to its skeletal structure (he maintains it was a goat). Homeland Security Secretary-designate Kristi Noem bragged in her memoir about shooting her family dog, Cricket, to death because it wasn’t good at hunting birds (rather than simply training the dog or giving the pet to another family). She then immediately took a goat, tied it to a post, and shot it to death simply because she was mad. But perhaps the most shocking dog-related scandal among Trump’s Cabinet appointees belongs to Attorney General-designate Pam Bondi.
In 2005, Louisiana couple Steve and Doreen Couture boarded their St. Bernard dog, Tank, at a local animal shelter as they prepared to ride out Hurricane Katrina. In the aftermath of the hurricane, the shelter ended up sending Tank to a Pinellas County, Florida shelter, where Bondi adopted him and named him “Noah.” When the Coutures tracked down Tank’s whereabouts in 2006, they asked Bondi to return him, but she refused. They eventually had to sue Bondi – who at the time was the Hillsborough County, Florida prosecutor — for custody of Tank, and Bondi was forced to give him back to his family after a lengthy 16-month court battle.
While billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hasn’t been picked to lead any official agency (his so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” lacks any binding authority as it has not been authorized by Congress), he is occasionally referred to as Trump’s “co-president.” And like many in Trump’s Cabinet, Musk has also displayed morally questionable behavior.
As the Washington Post reported, the 53 year-old South African native who has railed against “illegals in America” was once himself an undocumented immigrant, as he stayed in the United States on a student visa despite dropping out of college shortly after he enrolled in 1995. The investment firm that bought his first company in 1997 included a clause stating that the money could be clawed back if he and his brother, Kimbal, didn’t obtain a visa within 45 days.
Aside from lying about his immigration status, Musk’s skills as a parent have also been called into question — including by his own daughter. 20 year-old Vivian Jenna Wilson, who is transgender, described her father as “cold” as well as “uncaring and narcissistic” in a July interview with NBC News. She recalled that her father frequently yelled at her to be more masculine as a child, and that after she transitioned, he told her she was “not a girl” and figuratively “dead” to him. Musk notably spent Thanksgiving not with any of his 11 children or their three mothers, but with Trump and his family at Mar-a-Lago.
The moral depravity of Trump’s picks all pale in comparison to him
However morally compromised Trump’s choices for his Cabinet may be, the president-elect easily eclipses them with his own sordid past.
In 2023, writer E. Jean Carroll recalled in civil court how Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s. US District Judge Lewis F. Kaplan clarified that his judgment in Carroll’s favor — which was technically for “sexual abuse” — was essentially the same thing as rape. Trump was ordered to pay Carroll $5 million for sexual abuse last year, then $83.3 million in 2024 for defaming Carroll by insisting she lied about the assault. It is a basic fact to state that the president-elect of the United States has been adjudicated in court as a rapist.
At the core of Trump’s 34 felony convictions for falsification of business records was a scheme to pay $130,000 in hush money to Stormy Daniels, the adult film star he had an affair with in 2006. Trump’s tryst with Daniels took place at a Lake Tahoe hotel while his wife, Melania, was at home with their infant son, Barron. Trump also allegedly cheated on Melania with former Playboy model Karen McDougal while Melania was pregnant with Barron.
The president-elect has cheated on multiple spouses: In addition to his affairs while married to Melania, Trump reportedly cheated on his first wife, Ivana (the mother of Don Jr. Eric, and Ivanka) with his eventual second wife, Marla Maples. People magazine reported that Trump began his affair with Maples after the two met at a celebrity tennis match. Ivana filed for divorce in 1990. Not long after the divorce was finalized, Maples gave birth to Trump’s fourth child, Tiffany.
Aside from being an unfaithful spouse, Donald Trump was also criticized for his close relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. In 2002, Trump called Epstein a “terrific guy” who was “a lot of fun to be with.” An unnamed associate told the Washington Post that the two were “each other’s wingmen.” He even had his children in Epstein’s vicinity, with one October 1993 photo showing Epstein and the eventual president-elect along with his children, Eric and Ivanka, who were nine and 12 years old, respectively. Epstein was reportedly the one who cut off the friendship, as his brother, Mark Epstein, recalled that Jeffrey said Trump was a “crook.”
Unlike Epstein, Trump was never accused or convicted of assaulting young girls. But as the owner of the Miss USA pageant, he has been accused of sexually predatory behavior that made several beauty contestants feel unsafe. CNN reported that in 2006, Miss North Carolina Samantha Holvey, who was 20 at the time, said Trump “personally inspected” each contestant. She described the private parties contestants were invited to attend as “old, rich, drunk guys ogling all over us.”
“[Trump] would step in front of each girl and look you over from head to toe like we were just meat, we were just sexual objects, that we were not people,” she said. “You know when a gross guy at the bar is checking you out? It’s that feeling.”
In 2005, Trump bragged to radio host Howard Stern that during Miss USA pageants, he would “go backstage and everyone’s getting dressed, and everything else.”
“And you know, no men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it,” Trump said. “You know, the dresses. ‘Is everyone OK?’ You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody OK?’ And you see these incredible looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that.”
While every president has a right to select their own Cabinet appointees, the Senate also has the Constitutional authority to decide whether each nominee is fit to serve. While there are obvious concerns about Pete Hegseth’s ability to manage a federal agency with a budget exceeding $800 billion given his apparent inability to manage a nonprofit with a much smaller budget, and major hangups with giving RFK Jr. authority over U.S. health agencies given his opposition to childhood vaccines, their own moral shortcomings should also not be overlooked.
To continue tracking Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees, click here.
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