Several Cabinet appointees of Donald Trump disagree with him on key campaign promises and others are opposed to the missions to which they have been appointed.
1.) CIA director-designee Mike Pompeo: He absolutely will not authorize waterboarding of terrorism suspects and he considers the intelligence community's conclusion on Russian interference on the U.S. elections "sound" and is 'very clear-eyed" about the threat Moscow poses. On hacked emails: "I have never believed that WikiLeaks was a credible source of information."
2.) Defense secretary-designee James Mattis: He placed Russia first among principal threats facing the U.S. and called Vladimir Putin "an adversary in key areas." He is opposed to "trying to break the North Atlantic alliance." He has a "very, very high degree of confidence in our intelligence community." He called the Iran deal "imperfect" but "we have to live up to it" when America gives her word.
3.) Attorney general-designee Jeff Sessions: He does not favor a Muslim ban or a Muslim registry. On waterboarding he voted against making it illegal as a senator but promised to enforce the law. Grabbing a pussy: He said during the campaign that he didn't know [that it was illegal!] but now says: "Clearly it would be." In regard to undocumented immigrants voting, he didn't know what Trump meant or what facts he had.
4.) Department of Homeland Security secretary-designee John Kelly: [He said of building the Wall] "A physical barrier in and of itself... will not do the job. ... It has to be really a layered defense." He doesn't agree with a Muslim registry. He has "high confidence" in the intelligence community's assessment regarding Russian interference. He is against torture and also against "mass collection of data on people."
5.) Secretary of State secretary-designee Rex Tillerson: He disagrees with Trump that climate change is a hoax and he would not support pulling out of the Paris Accord. He expressed some support for a carbon tax. The commitment to NATO is "inviolate"; he is against a Muslim ban; he does not oppose TPP; and he believes it would be bad if Japan or South Korea acquired nukes. He also disagreed with Donald Trump calling Mexican immigrants rapists, criminals and drug traffickers.
Although Donald Trump contends that he doesn't have a problem with appointing people to high positions who disagree with his policy positions and the Trump camp has said that if there is a conflict on what to do, Trump's position will prevail, it creates incoherence and even chaos in government, if his appointees disagree with him on implementing his most deeply held policy positions, especially when they disagree very strongly.
Besides appointing people who disagree with him on a range of issues, Trump has appointed people who are strongly opposed to the mission of the very department they will head. When former Texas governor Rick Perry ran for president in 2012, he vowed to eliminate three departments of government. He named two but couldn't for the life of himself, remember the third. It was the Department of Energy, the very department he has been chosen to lead.
An argument made for him is that as governor of Texas he has good knowledge of fossil fuels; however, if the very adverse effects of climate change are to be lessened, the path to renewable energy must be widened.
The nominee to head the EPA, Scott Pruitt, Attorney General of Oklahoma since 2011, railed against Obama's efforts to reduce carbon emissions from U.S. power plants in an editorial in the conservative magazine, National Review. Pruitt said that scientists "continue to disagree" about the science of climate change. In a tweet on June 17, 2016, Pruitt warned Democrats that if climate change skeptics can be prosecuted for fraud, so can alarmists. By skeptics, Pruitt is referring to oil companies like ExxonMobil, which is under investigation for fraud in New York and Massachusetts, because it withheld findings about the reality of climate change by its own scientists. "Alarmists" are those who accept the science of climate change.
Scott Pruitt sued the EPA for its Clean Power Plan and urged other states to join the lawsuit. In 2014, the New York Times published emails showing Pruitt and other GOP AGs collaborating with corporations and lobbyists to file lawsuits and challenge federal regulations on everything from fracking to air pollution.
When Donald Trump nominated the billionaire, Betsy DeVos, to be the Secretary of Education, he remarked that it is a department that he may eliminate. DeVos could be the head of that wrecking crew, as she is an ardent foe of public education -- she and her children have not attended a public school. She is a strong proponent of school vouchers and charter schools. When the United States initiated the public school system, it was regarded as a great gift to the world. With her money and her advocacy, Betsy DeVos has worked to transform that gift into trash.
I will end with a comment on Dr. Ben Carson's appointment as HUD secretary. In a moment of candor, Carson said that he had no qualification to head a major government department. One of Trump's surrogates said that Carson was qualified, as he was born in a urban area, and because as a brain surgeon, he was smart enough to figure out how to do the job. Well, someone who was born in a rural area but has spent his entire career in the public housing field would very likely be a better bet to run HUD successfully.
Specialists in a particular field are often relatively clueless when taken out of their field of work.
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