The president-elect Donald Trump wants the world to know that his second term in office will be entirely uncompromising.
With every passing hour, his determination not to get derailed by Washington’s careerists is communicated like a foghorn from Trump’s transition headquarters at Mar-A-Lago in Florida.
With each appointment that he announces, he confirms that Trump 2.0 will be the most far right government ever sworn into office in the US.
He is reportedly expected to tap US Senator Marco Rubio to be his Secretary of State, arguably the most hawkish option on Trump’s shortlist for the nation’s top diplomatic post.
The news that Stephen Miller, the architect of key pillars of the president-elect’s domestic policies, will become Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House was the latest Trump pronouncement to provoke gasps of consternation in Washington.
Miller’s performance – for that is what it was – at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in October represented a violent scream by the Make America Great Again (Maga) movement about illegal immigrants that Trump himself as described as “vermin”.
Citing “the decades of abuse that has been heaped on the good people of this nation” by undocumented migrants, Miller offered up the full-throated insistence that “America is for Americans, and Americans only”.
On 20 January, he will become the most far-right figure ever to take a senior White House position in America’s 248-year history, and he will be joined by other zealots already nominated by the president-elect.
Tom Homan, the new “border tsar”, is being granted sweeping powers by Trump to begin the deportation of as many as 20 million people living illegally in the US.
Trump admired Homan’s leadership in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the US government during the president-elect’s first administration. Now Homan is to be given free rein immediately to start removing people forcibly from America.
He auditioned for the role in July at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee. “I’ve got a message for the millions of illegal aliens that Joe Biden has released into our country,” he growled at delegates.
“You’d better start packing now, ’cause you’re going home.”
On Monday, shortly after his appointment was announced, Homan appeared on Fox News to begin the process of threatening Democrats who are planning to offer illegal immigrants safety within the towns, cities and states that they still control.
“I’ve seen some of these Democratic governors say they’re gonna stand in the way,” said Homan.
“If you’re not gonna help us, get the hell out of the way… If we can’t get assistance from New York City, we may have to double the number of agents we send to New York City, because we are gonna do the job.”
While Homan prepares to be Trump’s enthusiastic deporter-in-chief, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York will soon be carrying the president-elect’s uncompromising foreign policy messages to the UN in New York.
Another Trump acolyte, she once told reporters that she considers herself to be “Super-Maga”. She has accused the UN of “entrenched antisemitic bias” and favours “a complete reassessment of US funding” for the world body.
Stefanik came to national attention this year, when she hauled the leaders of several Ivy League universities over the coals for failing to agree that chanting slogans in favour of genocide would breach university regulations.
Her efforts eventually led to the resignations of the leaders of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Her take-no-prisoners style won both Trump’s attention, and his approval.
Another figure securing Trump’s imprimatur is Congressman Mike Waltz of Florida, reportedly offered the position of National Security Adviser in the new government.
Waltz is a frequent guest on Fox News, the right-leaning channel watched relentlessly by the president-elect. In Congress, he once held up a bag of bolts that cost the US Air Force $90,000 (£70,000) to procure, and announced he had found exactly the same bolts on sale in a hardware shop for $200 (£156).
Waltz is a former Green Beret, who told Fox News on Monday that “there’s a lot of folks who are incredibly talented and qualified, and are ready to serve an America First agenda”.
That loyal, but finite talent pool is uniquely where Trump is now fishing for senior staff.
From Mar-a-Lago, the word has gone out: no one else need apply.
