Surprise: Trump’s Latest Appointment Has Conflicts of Interest

Donald Trump’s pick for the number two position in the Department of Defense, Steve Feinberg, is a billionaire with business ties to the defense industry.

The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, reports that the president-elect has chosen Feinberg for the post of deputy secretary of defense, which requires confirmation from the Senate. Feinberg is co-CEO of Cerberus Capital Management, which has invested in hypersonic missiles and once owned private military contractor DynCorp.

In Trump’s first term, Feinberg was the head of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which gives advice to the president on intelligence estimates and assessments, as well as counterintelligence. The deputy secretary of defense post comes with much more responsibility, with day-to-day management of the massive department’s three million civilian employees and service members among its duties.

Like Trump’s choice for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, Feinberg does not have experience running a large organization or working in the Pentagon. Plus, Feinberg’s investments and business activities would create multiple conflicts of interest if his appointment to the DOD survives the Senate.

Unlike Hegseth, Feinberg doesn’t have a long list of sexual misconduct, as well as scandals running veterans organizations (that we know of). His appointment could convince senators that there’s someone competent actually running things as the deputy to a Christian nationalist who envisions the military taking sides in a civil war scenario.

Feinberg is not the only Trump appointee with conflicts of interest: The president-elect’s pick to run Medicare and Medicaid, Mehmet Oz, has multiple ties to the pharmaceutical industry. But Feinberg’s defense industry ties could affect his view of the role of the U.S. military, as the Trump administration is already stocked with pro-war and pro-intervention advisers. A man who stands to profit when the U.S. military is deployed doesn’t bode well for peace.

Florida Representative Jared Moskowitz is the first Democrat to join the caucus for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

“I will join the congressional DOGE caucus, because I believe that streamlining government processes and reducing ineffective government spending should not be a partisan issue,” Moskowitz wrote in a statement. He also noted that the Department of Homeland Security was “too big” and that the Secret Service and Federal Emergency Management Agency should become independent. Many Republicans—including the authors of Project 2025—are in favor of privatizing key agencies like FEMA.

Moskowitz has often gone out of his way to side with Republicans on key issues. He has argued that the debt is too large, backing devastating cuts to the federal government. More recently, he has supported Israel’s war on Gaza and is also one of the largest recipients of AIPAC funding in the House; Moskowitz was one of a handful of Democrats to recently give Donald Trump extraordinary powers to strip the tax-exempt status of nonprofits. These are all decisions that make Moskowitz’s enthusiasm for DOGE much less surprising. And, as Slate’s Alex Sammon noted on Twitter, Moskowitz also served as Ron DeSantis’s Covid czar before joining the House of Representatives.

Loyal DOGE appointees Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have their sights set on cutting massive swaths of the federal government, including but not limited to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, international grants, and funding for “progressive groups.”

Donald Trump’s handlers are mum on whether or not the president-elect plans to pardon himself at the onset of his second term.

Speaking with CNN Tuesday, top Trump adviser Jason Miller dodged the point-blank question, skirting any clear answer as to whether or not Trump plans to relieve himself of his federal charges once he’s in office.

“Is he considering—would he consider pardoning himself? Would President-elect Trump consider pardoning himself?” prompted CNN’s Kasie Hunt.

“That would never be something that I would weigh in on,” Miller said. “That would be something for the legal team to discuss. And again, President Trump did nothing wrong.”

“Has it been discussed behind the scenes?” Hunt interjected.

“That’s not something that I would have been a part of. And again, that’s not something for myself to go and comment on because President Trump didn’t do anything wrong,” Miller reiterated, before highlighting some of Trump’s recent selections to lead the nation’s criminal justice systems, including his former attorney Pam Bondi—whom he’s tapped to replace Matt Gaetz as his attorney general nominee—and Kash Patel, whom Trump has selected to front the FBI.

Miller also downplayed the sexual assault allegations against Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, ex–Fox host Pete Hegseth, whose own mother accused of “using women for his own power.”

But that’s not the only criminal record that’s floating around Trumpworld’s conscience. In the same interview, Miller made note that Trump intends to take a fine-tooth comb to the cases of the January 6 rioters.

“I want to be careful here and make sure I’m being very direct with you. President Trump has said a number of times on the campaign trail that he’s going to look at each of these cases individually, full stop,” Miller said. “That’s what he said. There’s never been a declaration of some—something bigger, broader. And again, that’s for something for the Department of Justice to go deal with when President Trump takes office again, not for someone who’s a spokesperson from the campaign or transition team.”

“Because, again, the whole point here is, we have to get politics out of the justice system. Justice should apply to everybody equally,” he added.

Donald Trump’s election has Republicans chomping at the bit at some of their favorite targets: government programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

In an interview with Fox Business Tuesday morning, Representative Richard McCormick complained that “75 percent of the budget is nondiscretionary” and outlined GOP plans to tackle it.

“We’re gonna have to have some hard decisions. We’re gotta bring the Democrats in and talk about Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare,” McCormick said. “There’s hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved and we know how to do it. We just have to have the stomach to actually take those challenges on.”

McCormick’s words are not surprising. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump floated the idea of cutting Social Security and Medicare, saying in March that there is “a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting, and in terms of also—the theft and the bad management of entitlements.”

Cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security was also floated earlier this year by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who promised to cut the programs in favor of boosting the country’s military spending. And the infamous conservative manifesto Project 2025, which Trump and the GOP tried to distance themselves from until Trump’s election victory, also includes drastic cuts to the popular programs.

While McCormick pledges to talk to the Democrats about such cuts, the GOP is unlikely to get much traction with the opposing party, especially since Republicans will have a razor-thin majority in the House where a single vote or two could tank their legislative agenda.

Even if the GOP manages to win over a couple of Democrats, any plans to cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid will get pushback from powerful organizations such as the AARP. Older voters who rely on the programs also make up the base of the Republican Party, and politicians from both parties should be wary of provoking them.

If you turn on Fox News, you won’t see or hear much about Pete Hegseth, the longtime Fox anchor turned Trump nominee to lead the Department of Defense.

While Hegseth has been publicly excoriated this month for allegations of rape, sexual harassment, and misconduct and repeated drunkenness on the job, his former employer is trying its best to look the other way.

CNN analyst Brian Stelter reported that the conservative media hegemon that employed Hegseth for more than 10 years has yet to discuss the multiple allegations that its former employee is embroiled in, according to SnapStream and TVEyes database searches.

“What’s a media outlet supposed to do when its longtime host is picked to run the Pentagon, and then a series of eyebrow-raising news stories trigger doubts about his appointment?” Stelter inquired on X. “If you’re Fox News, evidently, you just pretend the stories don’t exist.”

Stelter went on to note that there were multiple moments on Fox News programming in which Hegseth’s allegations were raised but then quickly objected to or moved on from.

“On Monday’s edition of Special Report, Chad Pergram said Hegseth’s confirmation ‘could be a problem’ because ‘he faces problems about his personal conduct.’ What problems? Pergram didn’t say. Neither has anyone else on Fox,” Stelter said.

This lack of coverage is a blatant attempt at damage control from one of the most biased media conglomerates we have. Hegseth’s team has described the allegations as “outlandish.” Their impact on his nomination remains to be seen.

Many of Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees are so underqualified for their positions that authoritarianism scholars have called them “anti-qualified.” But what they lack in relevant experience is substituted by something that Trump values far more: fealty.

With dozens of nominees lined up to lead different agencies, extreme loyalty stands as the one common denominator between whose careers live and die under the MAGA leader’s second term.

Among them stand five billionaires, including Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom Trump has tapped to lead something he calls the Department of Government Efficiency. Trump’s choice for treasury secretary, hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, was also one of his major campaign donors.

Thirteen individuals who have a future in the next Trump White House made cameos at Trump’s criminal trials earlier this year, including Sebastian Gorka for counterterrorism chief, Kash Patel for FBI director, Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff, Dan Scavino as senior adviser, and Vice President-elect JD Vance.

Another dozen have been hosts on Fox News or were regular contributors to Trump’s favorite network. They include ex–Fox anchor (and accused rapist) Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel, Keith Kellogg to serve as Ukraine-Russia envoy, Representative Michael Waltz as national security adviser, and Sean Duffy for transportation secretary.

And, of course, several nominees are directly tied to Project 2025, which Trump briefly tried to distance himself from during his campaign after the details of the Christian nationalist agenda proved incredibly unpopular with the American public. They include Russell T. Vought for White House budget director, Karoline Leavitt as White House press secretary, Michigan GOP chairman Pete Hoekstra to serve as U.S. ambassador to Canada, former ICE official Tom Homan to serve as border czar, and Brendan Carr—who has warned TV networks that they would face consequences for political bias—to lead the Federal Communications Commission.

Trump’s transition team had previously promised that loyalty would be the singular criterion. In October, transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick said that no quality would be more important for incoming staffers than total allegiance to the chief Republican.

While explaining how Trump’s last administration buckled under the weight of staff turnover due to disagreements in “vision,” Lutnick said that the new agenda is to eradicate any internal hostility to the Republican’s plans.

“They’re all going to be on the same side, and they’re all going to understand the policies, and we’re going to give people the role based on their capacity—and their fidelity and loyalty to the policy, as well as to the man,” the Wall Street billionaire said at the time.

The government efficiency czars Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy seem to be mulling over a monumental change: eliminating daylight savings time.

If anyone was worried that Musk and Ramaswamy would move unilaterally as unelected bureaucrats making sweeping decisions on behalf of the electorate, you can calm your fears: Apparently they’re seeding ideas from polls on X.

“Looks like the people want to abolish the annoying time changes!” Musk posted on X last week, in response to a poll by X user James Stephenson that found nearly 82 percent of fewer than 38,000 X users would “abolish” the system of changing the clocks forward in the spring and backward in the fall.

Isn’t that what democracy is all about? Acquiescing to the requests of “X users” who are most likely bots? Having a guy who runs a social media service make decisions for the country based on the popular opinion artificially generated by his own website? That kind of thing just makes you feel so patriotic.

“It’s inefficient & easy to change,” Ramaswamy replied in a separate post.

It’s not clear that the two have seriously considered ending the practice of changing the clocks, but Musk reiterated his intention to “end the semi-annual time changes” in a follow-up post on X.

The U.S. already tried to permanently change to daylight savings time in 1974—a briefly popular decision to manage fuel consumption that ended in disaster as reports rolled in of children being killed by cars as they waited to be picked up by school buses in the dark.

While nearly 80 percent of Americans support changing the current system, according to a 2022 CBS/YouGov poll, they were less decisive about which way to move the clock. Forty-six percent wanted to shift an hour of daylight to the evening, while 33 percent preferred sticking to standard time.

It’s unclear whether Musk would advocate moving to daylight savings time or standard time, but either way would require massive infrastructure projects, which the penny-pinching DOGE-ists aren’t likely to fund. Unless, maybe, an X poll told them to.

Pete Hegseth’s church is just as bigoted and extremist as he is.

The latest scandal facing President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for the Defense Department—who has already been accused of sexual assault, predatory workplace behavior, and showing up to work drunk—revolves around the church that the warmongering, Christian nationalist belongs to.

Salon reports that Hegseth made a dramatic, spiritual about-face after his 2017 rape allegation, as faith conveniently became “real” to him during that time. He moved to Tennessee and saddled up with Christ Church and the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches and sent his children to its affiliated schools, the Association of Classical Christian Schools, or ACCS. This group is led by pastor Doug Wilson, an unordained minister who preaches right-wing extremism from the pulpit.

Wilson believes men have a sexual right to women, and has written that unsubmissive women are at fault for sexual violence committed against them. “The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party … a man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.” Wilson also believes that God created women “to make the sandwiches” and thinks that giving women the right to vote led to “a long, sustained war on the family.”

“Wilson holds the most extreme views of women’s submission found in any form of Christianity,” Julie Ingersoll, a religious studies professor at the University of North Florida, told Salon. “Women are taught that submission to their husbands (and other male authorities) is submission to God. Independence of any kind is cast as sin.”

Hegseth isn’t just an Easter-Christmas member of Wilson’s church: He’s a staunch public advocate. He posted in support of its schools, commended Wilson for not masking during the pandemic, and went on the ACCS affiliated CrossPolitic podcast shortly after his nomination for Defense Secretary. It makes sense that a man with multiple allegations of mistreating women would feel right at home in Doug Wilson’s Christ Church. And if confirmed, Hegseth will be sure not to leave a single degree of separation between his fanatical church and our state.

Justin Sun, a Chinese national accused of fraud, sent Donald Trump $18 million last week.

The newsletter Popular Information reports that Sun, most recently famous for spending $6.2 million on a banana and then eating it, paid $30 million for cryptocurrency tokens from World Liberty Financial, which is backed by Trump. In a pinned post on his X profile, Sun bragged about the purchase, saying his own blockchain start-up, TRON, was “committed to making America great again and leading innovation.”

Until Sun’s purchase, Trump’s crypto start-up appeared headed for failure with only $22 million in tokens sold, far short of its goal of $300 million in sales. The purchase not only keeps the WLF going, but also guarantees a windfall for Trump. A filing from the venture in October states that “$30 million of initial net protocol revenues” will be “held in a reserve … to cover operating expenses, indemnities, and obligations.”

After that reserve is met, a company owned by Trump is then entitled to 75 percent of WLF’s revenues from the sale of all other tokens. As of Sunday, WLF has sold $24 million in tokens, giving Trump a solid $18 million payoff. Sun’s purchase has also gotten him an advisory position in Trump’s venture, making him business partners with the president-elect.

And influence with Trump may be the only benefit to Sun’s transaction. Right now, Sun’s tokens don’t have any monetary value unless they “are unlocked through protocol governance procedures in a fashion that does not contravene applicable law.” Plus, Sun is also under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud.

In March 2023, the SEC charged Sun, as well as three of his companies, for marketing unregistered securities and “fraudulently manipulating the secondary market” for a cryptocurrency token “through extensive wash trading.” Wash trading is “the simultaneous or near-simultaneous purchase and sale of a security to make it appear actively traded without an actual change in beneficial ownership,” according to Popular Information.

Sun was also charged with “orchestrating a scheme to pay celebrities to tout” cryptocurrency “without disclosing their compensation.” Under federal law, people who endorse securities have to disclose their compensation as well as how much money they received. Sun apparently got Jake Paul, Soulja Boy, and Lindsey Lohan to endorse his crypto tokens.

The charges against Sun took place under the current SEC chair, Gary Gensler, who will be gone after Trump is sworn in next year. Trump’s new SEC chair, whoever that may be, could easily make those charges disappear. Trump stands to rake in much more money from cryptocurrency, and the industry spent a whopping $180 million on political campaigns during the 2024 election cycle. The president-elect is almost certain to help the crypto industry, his new benefactor Sun, and himself make more money in his second term as president.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has advocated to remove all fluoride from public water within the first month of Donald Trump’s presidency, once sold bottled water flush with the very stuff he imagines is toxic.

Kennedy, whom Trump nominated to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, claims that fluoride is “an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.”

In fact, fluoridation helps prevent teeth from rotting out of our heads and children from getting deadly infections in their mouths. It’s been lauded as one of the 10 great public health achievements of the twentieth century by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—which Kennedy will soon oversee! (Can probably expect that statement to disappear from its website soon.)

For as much as Kennedy seems to fear the effects of fluoridated water, he seemed to have no qualms about bottling and selling it for years, according to a story published Monday by The New Yorker.

In 1999, Kennedy co-founded Keeper Springs bottled water to help fund his Waterkeeper Alliance—a strangely hypocritical venture, as his plastic-packaged product was meant to aid the preservation of public clean water.

In any case, Keeper Springs bottled water contained up to 1.3 milligrams of fluoride per liter, according to a 2009 chemical analysis. That’s a significantly higher concentration of the mineral than what’s found in most tap water—for example, New York City’s tap water contains only 0.2 milligrams of fluoride per liter. Keeper Springs stopped production in 2013.

Chris Bartle, a Keeper Springs co-founder, told The New Yorker that Kennedy wasn’t always the fluoride skeptic he is now, and that he’d “never heard it mentioned.” Bartle said that the fact that there was so much fluoride in their bottled water was “hilarious.”