'Put on notice’: Columnist says Trump appointees must clear a very specific bar
As former President Donald Trump assembles the team for his next administration, he is making a very conscientious choice to pick people who will not stand in the way of a future coup, or whatever else he wants to plot, Karen Tumulty wrote for The Washington Post.
So far, many of his appointees have been members of Congress, while others are some of the more fierce loyalists from his previous administration. But there is a through-line in all of it, Tumulty wrote.
"His early picks ... suggest he has a specific standard of fealty — one that ensures that those around him will not check his worst and most dangerous impulses," she wrote, saying that it can be thought of as the "January Seventh Test." "Clearing that bar are those who, after Trump incited his supporters to overturn his 2020 election defeat by storming the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, minimized his responsibility for the bloody siege. If they managed to stomach what Trump did that day, it should be assumed they would not stand in the way of any further trampling of democratic norms that the returning president might order."
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Examples include Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) for secretary of state, who initially decried the January 6 attack but in later years tried to tone-police any senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), when they called it an insurrection; Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) for Ambassador to the U.N., who called those arrested in the attack "hostages;" and Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), who called Democrats "insane" for comparing the attack to 9/11 or Pearl Harbor.
All of this stands in at least some degree of contrast to some of the top officials in Trump's previous administration whom he turfed out for contradicting him, like former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who pushed back on his desire to shoot George Floyd protesters, or former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, whom Trump suggested should be executed for treason.
"Give Trump this much, though: People who agree to serve in this administration have been put on notice of exactly what it is that they are signing up for," Tumulty wrote.