Donald Trump’s new team is like Avengers Assemble… it’s going to be a wild ride

SOME people have noted that the team around President Trump looks like a real-life version of the X-Men.

Or the Rebel Alliance from Star Wars. A curious group of very different people with very different powers.

All lined up against the automatons of the overbearing left-wing state.

I prefer to think of them as The Avengers.

They include people like Pete Hegseth — a military veteran, TV star and bestselling author.

For years Hegseth has railed about the military he knows so well having become wasteful and woke.

The sort of military that decided women’s recruitment for frontline duty was a priority.

Or was led by generals who believed they should learn about “white rage” and other fanciful notions invented by left-wing race-hucksters.

As the person nominated to be Secretary of Defence, Hegseth can now actually work to strip woke out of the US military and focus instead on things like excellence.

Much of the defence establishment will hate this.

Which is just one reason why he is such a good pick.

Same thing with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, appointed to jointly head the “Department of Government Efficiency”.

Trump has appointed them to look into how to stop the massive overspend in the US federal budget.

Musk thinks he can trim up to two trillion dollars off the roughly six trillion a year that the federal government spends.

Making the federal government finally spend about the same amount as it takes in.

Good idea, but wow is it going to annoy a lot of people with their snouts in the trough. Again, good.

But there have been some appointments to the team that have definitely raised eyebrows.

When Trump announced he would put forward Congressman Matt Gaetz to run the Department of Justice, some eyebrows went higher than an Essex facelift.

Gaetz has spent recent years undergoing an ethics investigation in the House amid claims that (among other things) he had sex with a 17-year-old girl. Which is underage in many states.

Gaetz denies the claim but he is certainly a man with a vendetta.

The idea he would be in charge of the Department of Justice was a step too far even for many loyal Trump supporters.

Now Gaetz has withdrawn.

But there is another nominee who Trump may yet lose.

Raised eyebrows

One of the pivotal moments of the campaign and a moment when the Rebel Alliance really fell into place, was when Robert F Kennedy Jr suspended his campaign.

The nephew of JFK and son of RFK was a lifelong Democrat. Like most of his family.

But his run for the Democrat nomination was stymied by the usual tie-up at the top of the party.

He tried to run as an independent, but it was hopeless, with his share of the vote never getting near double figures.

Still, in what was assumed to be a close-run election, it was an important moment at the end of August when he suspended his campaign and said that he was backing Trump for president.

It helped push some wavering voters into the Trump camp and RFK Jr deserved a reward for his decision, and for the campaigning on the trail with Trump.

But Health Secretary — which is the position Trump has nominated him for?

RFK Jr is a fascinating and charismatic man.

He is also self-taught on a range of issues, with a healthy curiosity and scepticism about a range of issues.

Vaccines have become a special point of interest for him since the Covid era.

And he is right in some of his scepticism about what we were all told in those days.

And how some of the Big Pharma benefited from the endless vaccines.

RFK Jr, like Gaetz, may have no chance of getting through the nomination process.

Douglas Murray

But just because he was right on some of that does not mean he is right on everything.

And RFK Jr has some anti-vax views and other health views, which are not just cranky but dangerous.

Sure, there is a question of over-vaccination and over-reaching by the health lobby in the US.

But many of us don’t particularly want the return of polio and other preventative diseases.

The idea that someone would be in charge of health who has expressed views which could easily allow the spread of almost defunct diseases is something which should be of great concern.

Again, it is probably an appointment too far.

Of course RFK Jr, like Gaetz, may have no chance of getting through the nomination process.

And it is possible that even putting him forward for such a role is Trump’s way of rewarding someone for loyalty only for them to fail to get the position in question. Leaving others to get the blame.

It is a reminder of truth about Trump’s early picks.

Many of them are outstanding.

Marco Rubio as Secretary of State being one such example.

But others are liabilities.

But hey, it’s Trump.

And no one said it wouldn’t be a rollercoaster.

Here’s hoping the right picks make the ride a wild but safe one.

A ride which returns America and the world safely home.

Give us Covid cause

THE UK Covid-19 Inquiry grinds on.

This week it was lucky enough to hear from former Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

And while this inquiry may come to many lengthy and learned conclusions, there is still one vital question that has gone unanswered.

That is, of course, how the coronavirus got out of Wuhan, China, in the first place.

Those of us who suspected that it came from a lab experimenting with such viruses were told for a time that we were “conspiracy theorists”.

Then it became an acceptable opinion.

But shouldn’t we know whether the leak was accidental or deliberate?

And shouldn’t we all be assured that such a thing can never happen again?

Why are the Chinese Communist Party allowed to get away with it?

Deliberately or accidentally, they released a virus on the world that locked us in our houses and killed millions of people.

Isn’t that worthy of a little bit of British attention as well?

Israel arrest farce

THE farcical, so-called International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for the first time against the leader of a democracy.

Its British chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant should be arrested for war crimes.

He also issued an arrest warrant for two of the heads of Hamas. But the terrorists in question were killed in the last few months. It seems news travels slow to the ICC.

As it happens, Khan has reason to have sped up and pushed out these disgraceful warrants.

A couple of years ago his brother Ahmad – a former Conservative MP – went to prison for sexually assaulting a minor.

Now it turns out Khan himself faces accusations of sexual misconduct from a colleague at the ICC.

Neither America nor Israel are signatories to this clownshow of a court.

But neither should Britain be.

One reason has just been demonstrated.

There is no world in which British soldiers or politicians should be hauled before an international court for doing whatever they need to do to protect the British public.

Same with America.

Same with Israel.

If Netanyahu can face arrest when landing in Labour’s Britain then who will be next?

Tony Blair?

Careful what you wish for, Keir.

I HOLD a very strict line when donating to children’s charities.

I don’t give to charities that are linked to paedophiles.

Children In Need is a charity that has done a lot of good in its time.

But the scandal that has led to the resignation of its chair-woman is appalling.

In her letter of resignation, Rosie Millard criticised the “institutional failure” that saw the charity pass on almost half a million pounds in funding to a youth charity in Scotland whose former head was convicted of child sex assaults.

James Rennie was head of LGBT Youth Scotland, a charity that is meant to support young gay and transgender people, from 2003 to 2008.

Children In Need’s grants began just months after he had been given a life sentence for sexually assaulting a three-month-old baby.

Children In Need suspended its grants to the charity in May 2024 after Rosie drew attention to the case.

This scandal reveals lots of failures.

But one of them is that charities like Children In Need often receive so much money that they hose it out without anywhere near enough due diligence.