State: Marco Rubio. Security: Michael Waltz
President-elect Donald Trump is filling out his national security team with pro-Israel hawks who favor maximum pressure on Iran to stand down from its belligerence in the region.
Sen. Marco Rubio will be tapped to be secretary of state and Rep. Michael Waltz will be his national security adviser.
Both men have said Israel should not be prevented from staging a direct attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
That stance echoes Trump who, before the election, urged Israel, “Do what you have to do.”
Trump criticized President Joe Biden for restricting Israel to hitting military sites, but not nuclear ones.
In naming Waltz, Trump said on Nov. 12, “Mike has been a strong champion of my America First Foreign Policy agenda, and will be a tremendous champion of our pursuit of Peace through Strength!”
“President Trump’s choice of Senator Rubio for this critical role sends a message loudly and clearly: The days of weakness and appeasement are over,” the Republican Jewish Coalition said in a statement.
“We know that with Senator Rubio leading the State Dept., America will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies and confront our enemies.”
Rubio diverged from his otherwise hawkish voting record on Israel earlier this year when he opposed a combined emergency defense aid package for Israel and Ukraine, which passed. He said he voted no because the package did not include sufficiently tough immigration measures.
The House voted separately on each component of the Senate bill: Waltz and Rep. Elise Stefanik both voted for the Israel component and against the Ukraine component.
Both Waltz and Rubio, when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, backed a robust alliance with the beleaguered country.
More recently they have shifted to arguing for diminished American involvement in the war, which is more in line with Trump’s accommodationist posture toward Russia and aversion to US involvement in foreign wars.
Rubio has said for years that the US should not stand in the way of an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program.
In October, after Iran barraged Israel with missiles, and as Israel’s conflict with the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah was escalating, Rubio tweeted, “Israel should respond to Iran the way the US would respond if some country launched 180 missiles at us. And they should do in Lebanon what we would be demanding our leaders do if terrorists were launching anti-tank rockets at us from a neighboring country, forcing 60,000 Americans to evacuate their homes and farms for almost a year.”
Waltz has said Israel should not hesitate to hit Iran’s nuclear sites and oil fields. Biden discouraged this, fearing such attacks would trigger a full-scale regional war which would draw in the US.
AG: Matt Gaetz
Trump has chosen Matt Gaetz as his nominee for attorney general — a firebrand who has tussled with Jewish and other groups.
As attorney general, Gaetz would head the government department responsible for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes, including anti-Semitism.
Gaetz, 42, was elected to Congress in 2016, where he has represented a district in the Florida Panhandle. Since taking office, Gaetz has made headlines for sparring with Jews and Jewish organizations.
He has been investigated for sex trafficking.
In 2018, the Republican Jewish Coalition and the ADL both criticized Gaetz, then in his first term, for inviting a Holocaust denier as his guest at the State of the Union address.
The guest, Charles Johnson, had publicly doubted that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust and suggested falsely that “only” 250,000 had died of illness.
Gaetz told BuzzFeed that Johnson “is not a Holocaust denier and he’s not an anti-Semite. He’s a provoker, I should’ve vetted him better before inviting him to the State of the Union, I regret that I didn’t. That’s my fault. I take responsibility for it. But he is not a Holocaust denier.”
In 2021, Gaetz called the ADL “racist” after it demanded that Fox News fire host Tucker Carlson over his promotion of the white supremacist “Great Replacement” theory.
Gaetz wrote that Carlson was “CORRECT about Replacement Theory as he explains what is happening to America,” adding, “The ADL is a racist organization.”
During a House Judiciary Committee hearing in November, 2023, Gaetz grilled Pamela Nadell, the director of the Jewish studies program at American University, over whether it was possible to criticize Jewish megadonor and Holocaust survivor George Soros without being anti-Semitic.
Gaetz had accused Soros of funding a “migrant caravan” that Republicans made a centerpiece of the 2018 midterm election.
Three days after the foundation responded to Gaetz, denying his accusations, a man murdered 11 Jews in their Pittsburgh synagogue.
When he announced his nomination of Gaetz, Trump said: “Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System.
“Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL, tweeted of Gaetz’ nomination: “Rep. Matt Gaetz has a long history of trafficking in anti-Semitism . . . He should not be appointed to any high office, much less one overseeing the impartial execution of our nation’s laws.”
The Republican Jewish Coalition did not issue a statement about Gaetz.
Some Republicans oppose the nomination. Sen. Max Miller of Ohio, who is Jewish and a former Trump aide, told CNN that Gaetz is “literally worse than the gum on the bottom of my shoe” and said he did not think Gaetz particularly cared about whether he ultimately assumed the attorney general role.
“Everybody’s talking about him and that’s what he likes the most,” Miller said, according to Talbot.
Gaetz submitted his resignation shortly after getting the attorney general nod, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced on Nov. 13.
The nod and resignation reportedly came days before the House Ethics Committee was due to decide whether to release a report from its own probe into the allegations against Gaetz.
Middle East: Steve Witkoff
Trump named as his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, a realtor and golf buddy who was present at the recent foiled assassination of Trump.
“Steve is a Highly Respected Leader in Business and Philanthropy, who has made every project and community he has been involved with stronger and more prosperous,” Trump said Nov. 12 in a statement.
“Steve will be an unrelenting Voice for PEACE, and make us all proud.”
Witkoff, who is Jewish and who has been friends with Trump since the 1980s when he bought Trump a sandwich after they worked on a real estate transaction, has no Middle East diplomatic experience.
Middle East, Defense: Pete Hegseth
Pete Hegseth, 44, a Minnesota National Guard veteran, Fox News personality and now nominee for US secretary of defense, has a slew of tattoos.
They points to his military service and patriotism, including the US Constitution’s opening phrase, “We the People,” a “Join, or Die” snake from the American Revolution, an American flag with an AR-15 rifle and a patch of his regiment, the 187th Infantry.
Other tattoos are religious in nature. One is a large Jerusalem cross on his chest, a symbol used in the Crusades and represented the Kingdom of Jerusalem that the Crusaders established.
Hegseth has said his tattoo was used to keep him away from President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
“I was in the National Guard during the inauguration of Joe Biden, so I served under Bush, served under Obama, served under Trump, and now was going to guard the inauguration because I was in the DC guard,” he told Fox in June.
“Ultimately, members of my unit in leadership deemed that I was an extremist or a white nationalist because of a tattoo I have, which is a religious tattoo . . . it was used as a premise to revoke my orders to guard the inauguration.”
Hegseth also has “Deus Vult,” Latin for “G-d wills it,” tattooed on his bicep. The phrase was used as a rallying cry for the First Crusade in 1096. It is also the closing sentence of Hegseth’s 2020 book, titled American Crusade.
Hegseth also has a cross and sword tattooed on his arm, which he says represent a New Testament verse. He told the site Media Ink in a 2020 interview that he got the tattoo while in Bethlehem.
“Israel, Christianity and my faith are things I care deeply about,” Hegseth told Media Ink.
“It was something I had planned to do as part of [a Fox News] story,” Hegseth said. “We were doing a story about how the Christian population in Bethlehem has been dramatically reduced . . .
“It was, one, to get the tattoo but more to tell the story of what it’s like to be a Christian in Bethlehem today who has a business just feet from where Jesus was born but also the mosque that’s there in Manger Square.”
Israel: Mike Huckabee
US-Ambassador-to-Israel-designate Mike Huckabee is a supporter of West Bank Jewish settlements, as is Israel’s incoming ambassador in Washington, Yechiel Leiter.
Does this mean that Trump may greenlight Israeli annexation of the West Bank?
“This will be a voice in the debate in the State Dept. and then the national security team, a strong voice, a respected voice with real power and access for annexation,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street.
Huckabee has traveled to Israel repeatedly over the past 50 years.
In 2017 he said Israel had “title deed” to the West Bank, which he refers to as Judea and Samaria, the Biblical names for the area.
When asked last week, following his selection, whether there was a chance of Israeli annexation, Huckabee responded, “Of course.”
He told an Israeli reporter, Yanir Cozin, “I won’t make the policy. I will carry out the policy of the president, but he has already demonstrated in his first term that there’s never been an American president that has been more helpful in securing an understanding of the sovereignty of Israel.”
A peace plan Trump unveiled in 2020 appeared to open the door to annexation — only for Trump to later nix the move because he believed it could sabotage the Abraham Accords that he brokered between Israel and four Arab countries.
Now, Trump’s ambitions for an Israel-Saudi Arabia deal could similarly halt annexation plans, says Michael Koplow, the chief policy officer of the Israel Policy Forum.
Pastor John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel and perhaps the leading Christian Zionist voice in the country, called Huckabee an “inspiring choice.”
Sandra Parker, who chairs CUFI’s campaign finance arm, said Huckabee “believes in Israel’s right to self-determination and defense, not because it is politically convenient to do so but because these are immutable tenets of his core beliefs.”
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister who favors annexation, greeted Huckabee’s naming on social media with the American and Israeli flags with a heart emoji between them.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he had begun laying the groundwork for annexation.
The Zionist Organization of America applauded the pick.
“Governor Huckabee has also correctly explained: ‘There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation’,” ZOA’s president, Mort Klein, said.
Palestinians and other opponents of annexation say it would be illegal under international law; would eliminate the possibility for a two-state solution, and, if Palestinians living there were not granted equal rights, would create a de facto apartheid state.
Ben-Ami said the coupling of Israeli far-right annexationists with evangelicals who hinge their politics on biblical prophecy is risky.
“It’s a signal that the alliance between the settler movement and the evangelical Christian Zionist movement is what’s going to be driving American policy,” he said. “That is very scary for those of us who really care about Israel being Jewish and democratic.”
Health: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is Trump’s nominee to lead the Dept. of Health and Human Services.
Among the areas that would be under Kennedy’s purview:
• the Food and Drug Administration;
• Medicare and Medicaid; the National Institutes of Health;
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention;
• agencies dealing with substance abuse, mental health and toxic substances; and
• US Surgeon General.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Nov. 14 announcing the pick.
“Mr. Kennedy will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, said:
“I’m excited by the news that the President-Elect will appoint Robert Kennedy Jr.,” saying Kennedy had “helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019.”
Polis outlined several health-related policy positions he said he agreed with Kennedy on, including reforming federal nutrition standards, curbing pesticide usage and capping international drug prices.
“He will face strong special interest opposition on these, but I look forward to partnering with him to truly make American healthy again and I hope that we can finally make progress on these important issues.”
Kennedy’s nomination cemented the unlikely alliance between Trump and the scion of Democratic Party royalty, who suspended his third-party campaign to endorse the Republican this summer.
In addition to his anti-vaccine views, Kennedy has also floated removing fluoride from drinking water.
Last year Kennedy claimed that COVID had been “ethnically targeted” to avoid “Ashkenazic Jews and Chinese.”
During a 2022 anti-vaccine rally, he declared, “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did” — a remark he later apologized for. He also has a history of using the word “holocaust” to refer to vaccine policies.
Kennedy has denied all charges of anti-Semitism, including in an appearance before Congress.
