Weekly Opinion Editorial
TRUMP PICKS
INCLUDE OUTSIDERS!
by Steve Fair
President-elect Trump has announced
several more appointment to his cabinet.
He has 662 major appointments to make(251 are in the State Department-primarily
Ambassadorships) and as of now only 12 have been filled. Here is a quick profile of Trump’s most
recent nominees- most of which require Senate confirmation:
Wilber Ross, 79, has been nominated for
Secretary of Commerce. Ross is a billionaire banker from New York.
He and Trump have a long history and were in the casino business
together. He has an MBA from Yale. Ross
has been married 3 times- his second wife was the former Lt. Governor of New York- and has two
daughters.
James Mattis, 66, is a retired Marine
Corps general, who served as the commander of the U.S. Central Command for 2 ½
years. Mattis has been nominated for
Secretary of Defense. During his time as
Commander of Central Command, Mattis and the Obama administration clashed
frequently because he was perceived to be too eager for military confrontation
with Iran
for their taste. He is considered to be
an intellectual and is an avid reader.
His personal library has over 7,000 volumes. Mattis is a life-long bachelor. Because he has not been separated from the
service for seven years, his nomination will require a waiver of the National
Security Act of 1947. If granted it
would be the second time it was done.
The first was for General George Marshall.
Betsy DeVos, 58, is a businesswoman and an
education advocate from Michigan. She has been very active in GOP grassroots
politics in the state. She served as
Chair and National Committeewoman for the Michigan GOP. She is married to Dick DeVos, the son of the
founder of Amway. They have 4 children. She graduated from Calvin College. DeVos’ brother founded Blackwater, the
well-known private security firm. She is
a proponent of school choice and has advocated the use of school vouchers.
Tom Price, 62, is Trump’s nominee for
Health and Human Services Secretary.
Price, a physician, is a 5 term Congressman from Georgia. He is
the Chair of the House Budget Committee. Prior to being elected to Congress, he
served in the Georgia
state senate. Price grew up in Michigan and went to college and medical school at the University of Michigan. He did his orthopedic internship at Emory in Atlanta, practiced for 20
years and then taught at Emory. He and
his wife, a Georgia State Representative, have one son. Price is the original sponsor of the Empowering Patients First Act, which is
the GOP alternative to the Affordable Care Act. The bill, among other things, creates and
expands tax credits for purchasing health insurance, allows for some interstate
health insurance markets, and reforms medical malpractice lawsuits
Ben Carson, 65, has been nominated for
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Carson, who also grew up in Michigan,
graduated from Yale and received his M.D. from the University of Michigan. In 2013, Carson was the keynote speaker at the
National Prayer Breakfast and was very critical of President Obama’s policies,
with the president sitting just 10 feet away. His commons sense solutions to
complex problems soon gained him a very loyal following among conservative
Republicans. Carson
was a frequent surrogate for Trump on the campaign trail. Carson and his wife
Candy have been married for 45 years and have three sons.
Elaine Chao, 63, is Trump’s pick to lead
the Department of Transportation. Chao
served as Secretary of Labor under George W. Bush and Assistant Secretary of
Transportation under George H.W. Bush.
She was the first Asian-American woman to be appointed to a presidential
cabinet. Chao, who is Taiwanese, was
born in China and came to
the U.S.
when she was 8 years old. Her dad runs a
large shipping company. Chao has been
married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for 16 years. She has an MBA from Harvard.
Steve Mnuchin, 54 has been designated
Secretary of Treasury. He was the
finance chair for the Trump campaign (charged with raising money to run the
operation). He is a former partner at
Goldman Sachs, as was his father, and a Yale graduate. He is a Hollywood
producer, financing such films as the X-Men franchise and Avatar. He has been married twice and has three
children. He currently lives with
actress Louise Linton in California.
So far it
appears Trump is being very deliberate in making his selections for the top
jobs. He appears to be surrounding
himself with talented people who haven’t spent their life in politics. How refreshing!
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