2024年11月26日
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s final flurry of cabinet picks and other appointments rounded out what his aides described as a unified, loyal, MAGA-driven administration. But scratch the surface and there are at least three distinct factions and a range of ideologies, barely suppressed to get through the rigors of the confirmation process.
候任总统特朗普的最后一拨内阁人选和其他任命圆满完成了他的助手们称之为团结、忠诚、以“让美国恢复伟大荣光”为目标的政府组建。但在这个表面之下,他的班子里至少有三个不同派系,以及为通过严格的确认程序勉强忍住不露的各种意识形态。
There is a revenge team, led by prospective nominees with instructions to rip apart the Justice Department, the intelligence agencies and the Defense Department, hunting down the so-called deep state and anyone who participated in the prosecutions of Mr. Trump.
一个是复仇团队,有望领导该团队的人选将奉命彻底摧毁司法部、情报部门和国防部,追查所谓“深层政府”以及所有参与了起诉特朗普的官员。
There is a calm-the-markets team, which Mr. Trump hopes will be led by Scott Bessent, the Wall Street billionaire who Mr. Trump chose for Treasury secretary. Mr. Bessent can recite the MAGA lines about deregulation and lower taxes but would likely try to make sure Mr. Trump’s most extreme solutions, like inflation-inducing tariffs on foreign goods, do not end the post-election stock market surge.
一个是保持市场平稳团队,特朗普想让华尔街亿万富翁斯科特·贝森特来领导该团队,他已提名贝森特为财政部长人选。虽然贝森特能背诵放松监管、降低税收等“让美国恢复伟大荣光”的方针政策,但他可能会设法保证不让特朗普最极端的解决方案(比如对外国商品征收导致通货膨胀的关税)影响市场,结束股市在大选后的飙升。
And then there is a government shrinkage team, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whose goals are wildly ambitious, to put it mildly. They want to carve what Mr. Musk says will be “at least” $2 trillion from the annual federal budget, a figure that exceeds the annual cost of salaries for every federal employee. (For the record, the total federal budget in the 2024 fiscal year was $6.75 trillion.)
还有一个是缩减政府团队,由埃隆·马斯克和维韦克·拉马斯瓦米领导,他们有非常雄心勃勃的目标(说得好听一点)。他们想把联邦政府下一个财年的预算(用马斯克的话说)“至少”砍掉2万亿美元,这个数字高于所有联邦雇员全年工资的总和。(仅供参考:2024财年的联邦预算总额是6.75万亿美元。)
How these missions will mesh and where they will collide is one of the biggest unknowns of the incoming administration.
如何使这些任务融合,它们将在哪些地方发生冲突,是新一届政府最大的未知数之一。
Diversity of ideology and opinion is usually seen as a strength, not a defect, of presidential cabinets. But if there is a surprise about Mr. Trump’s choices in recent days, it is the range of experiences and worldviews that in some cases lie just beneath a veneer of recently declared Make America Great Again loyalty — and loyalty to Mr. Trump himself. It is hard to imagine a few of his picks sitting comfortably at a Trump rally.
意识形态和观点的多样性通常被视为总统组阁的优势,而非缺点。但如果说特朗普最近几天的选择有令人意想不到之处的话,那就是,这些人有各种各样的经历和世界观,有些人的世界观只是掩盖在最近才对“让美国恢复伟大荣光”以及对特朗普本人示忠的外表之下。很难想象特朗普的一些人选会在他的集会上感到自在。
“There is more ideological diversity here than I expected,” Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, noted on Saturday. “And if you look at this group in the context of history, there is some potential here for arguments and debates. If those debates are allowed to unfold in a civilized and open manner, history shows that such conflict has sometimes led to policies that worked.”
“这里面的意识形态多样性比我预期的要多,”研究总统历史的学者迈克尔·贝施洛斯上周六指出。“如果你从历史的角度来看这个群体,会看到发生争论和辩论的可能性。如果允许这些辩论以文明和公开的形式展开,历史表明,这种冲突有时会产生行之有效的政策。”
Even as the Republican Party has adopted the MAGA philosophy, it may have been unreasonable to expect that members of a Trump administration would all be cut from the same cloth.
就算共和党已采纳了“让美国恢复伟大荣光”的价值观,期待特朗普政府的成员一模一样恐怕也不合理。
“Consistency of ideology or anything else is the last thing we should expect in Trump’s nominees,” Chris Whipple, the author of “The Gatekeepers,” a book about White House chiefs of staff, said on Saturday. “That’s because there is no process in place to make these choices — it’s all according to the whim of the boss.”
“特朗普班子的人选在意识形态或其他方面的一致性是我们最不应该期望的东西,”有关白宫幕僚长的书《看门人》(The Gatekeepers)的作者克里斯·惠普尔上周六说。“这是因为,没有做这些选择的工作程序,一切都依照总统的突发奇想。”
Mr. Bessent made a late conversion to MAGA ideology. He seems to embrace Mr. Trump’s enthusiasm for tariffs, though in recent weeks he has noted that imposing them gradually — a nuance Mr. Trump has not discussed — is critical to avoiding economic shocks.
贝森特很晚才信奉“让美国恢复伟大荣光”的意识形态。他似乎认同特朗普对关税的热情,但他已在最近几周指出,逐步征收关税对于避免经济冲击至关重要,这是个特朗普尚未讨论的细微差别。
His identity as a gay, married father certainly clashes with the beliefs held by some of Mr. Trump’s evangelical and far-right-wing supporters. He told Yale’s alumni magazine in 2015 that “in a certain geographic region at a certain economic level, being gay is not an issue.” He added: “If you had told me in 1984, when we graduated, and people were dying of AIDS, that 30 years later I’d be legally married and we would have two children via surrogacy, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
他作为已婚同性恋父亲的身份肯定与特朗普的一些福音派和极右支持者的信念有冲突。他曾在2015年对耶鲁大学的校友杂志说,“在某个地理区域和某个经济阶层,身为同性恋不是问题。”他还说:“如果你在1984年,也就是我们毕业那年,仍有人死于艾滋病的时候,对我说,30年后我会合法地结婚,我们会通过代孕养育两个孩子,我不会信你的话。”
特朗普的财政部长人选斯科特·贝森特似乎认同特朗普对关税的热情,尽管他在近几周指出应该逐步征收关税。
But more jarring to some of the MAGA faithful may be the fact that Mr. Bessent raised money for the presidential run of a Democrat, Al Gore, in 2000. Or that a dozen years ago he was chief investment officer for Soros Fund Management, the $30 billion instrument of George Soros, the subject of scores of right-wing conspiracy theories. When listing Mr. Bessent’s many qualifications for the job, Mr. Trump left off the fact that he is considered among Mr. Soros’s most successful protégés.
但对一些“让美国恢复伟大荣光”的忠实支持者来说,更令人震惊的也许是,贝森特曾在2000年为民主党总统候选人阿尔·戈尔的竞选活动筹集资金。或者十几年前,他曾是索罗斯基金管理公司的首席投资官,管理着乔治·索罗斯掌握的300亿美元资产,那是众多右派阴谋论关心的话题。特朗普在列举贝森特作为财政部长的诸多资历时,没有提他是索罗斯最成功的门生之一。
The newly named pick for labor secretary, Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer, also seems likely to straddle two camps. Ms. Chavez-DeRemer, an Oregon Republican who lost her seat in the House this month, often spoke of her father’s membership in the Teamsters and won the support of about 20 labor unions during her unsuccessful re-election bid.
特朗普提名的劳工部长人选是联邦众议员洛里·查韦斯-德雷默,她似乎也可能是跨越两个阵营的人。查韦斯-德雷默是俄勒冈州的共和党人,她在本月的大选中失去了联邦众议院的席位。她在不成功的连任竞选中经常提她父亲是卡车司机工会会员,并得到了大约20个工会的支持。
As the G.O.P. moved quickly to solidify around Mr. Trump and promised to kill off government regulation, Ms. Chavez-DeRemer moved the other way. She was one of three Republicans who sponsored a 2023 bill that would have shielded workers seeking to organize union representation from retribution or firing, while giving new powers to the federal government to punish employers who violate workers’ rights.
在共和党迅速团结在特朗普周围,并承诺取消政府监管的时候,查韦斯-德雷默却反其道而行之。她是2023年一项法案的三名共和党倡议者之一,该法案旨在保护试图成立工会的工人免遭报复或被解雇,同时赋予联邦政府新权力来惩罚侵犯工人权利的雇主。
It was not the only area where she saw more room for government intervention. “One of the things that transcends party is public safety,” Ms. Chavez-DeRemer said in an interview with The New York Times during her re-election bid. “People want to wake up in the morning, know that it’s safe to go to take their kids to school and drive on safe roads,” she added. “Those transcend party. Those are the kind of things I focus on.”
这也不是她认为政府有更大干预空间的唯一领域。“超越党派的事情之一是公共安全,”查韦斯-德雷默在竞选连任期间接受《纽约时报》采访时说。“大家都想在早上醒来时知道,能安全地送孩子去上学,能在安全的路上开车,”她补充道。“这些是超越党派的事情,也是我关心的事情。”
The news on Friday that she was named to head the Labor Department was hailed by the Teamsters and their president, Sean O’Brien. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. expressed wariness of Mr. Trump’s “anti-worker agenda” in a statement posted on social media, but conceded that “Lori Chavez-DeRemer has built a pro-labor record in Congress.”
上周五,她被提名为劳工部长的消息受到了卡车司机工会及其主席肖恩·奥布莱恩的欢迎。虽然美国劳工联合会-产业工会联合会已在社交媒体上对特朗普的“反工人议程”发表了表示担忧的声明,但承认“洛里·查韦斯-德雷默已在国会建立了支持劳工的记录”。
One who does fit neatly into the mold of a Trump aide is Brooke Rollins, whom Mr. Trump named on Saturday as his choice for agriculture secretary. She served as domestic policy adviser in the first Trump administration, then became head of the America First Policy Institute, a sort of Trump government in waiting staffed with other former members of his administration.
布鲁克·罗林斯是一个完全符合特朗普助手模子的人,特朗普上周六提名她为农业部长人选。她曾在特朗普第一届政府中担任国内政策顾问,后来成为美国优先政策研究所所长,该研究所有点像特朗普的影子政府,工作人员中许多是曾在特朗普政府任职的人。
Ms. Rollins’s organization has called for getting rid of civil-service protection for many federal employees, speeding gas and oil drilling on federal lands, and doing away with red-flag laws meant to keep guns from people who are deemed by a judge to be a danger to themselves or to others.
罗林斯的研究所呼吁废除许多联邦雇员享有的公务员保护制度,加快在联邦政府拥有的土地上钻探天然气和石油,废除示警红旗法(旨在禁止被法官视为对自己或他人构成危险的人持枪)。
Then there is the national security team. Michael Waltz, the designee for national security adviser, was a strong advocate of sending more aid to Ukraine and doing whatever was necessary to push back the Russian invasion, until he voted against the $95 billion in additional aid to Ukraine in the spring.
最后还有一个国家安全团队。特朗普指定的国家安全顾问人选是迈克尔·沃尔兹,他曾强烈主张向乌克兰提供更多援助,并采取一切必要措施击退俄罗斯的入侵,直到他在今年春季对向乌克兰提供950亿美元额外援助的法案投了反对票。
His new deputy, Alex Wong, worked for Mitt Romney in 2012, part of a wing of the Republican Party that has never reconciled itself to Mr. Trump. But Mr. Wong worked at senior levels of the State Department on North Korea, helping to set up Mr. Trump’s two meetings with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader. That diplomatic high-wire act was rooted in Mr. Trump’s belief that a combination of personal diplomacy and economic lures would drive Mr. Kim to give up his arsenal of nuclear weapons.
他的新副手黃之瀚(Alex Wong)曾在2012年为米特·罗姆尼 工作,罗姆尼属于共和党中从未与特朗普妥协的一派。但曾在国务院担任朝鲜事务高级官员的黄之瀚帮助安排了特朗普与朝鲜领导人金正恩的两次会晤。这种外交事务上走钢丝的做法来源于特朗普的一个信念,即他能用个人外交和经济诱惑的组合来迫使金正恩放弃自己的核武器库。
特朗普曾希望遏制朝鲜的核武库,在他的第一个任期内曾两次与朝鲜领导人金正恩见面。
The effort failed: The talks collapsed, and the North Korean leader today has a larger arsenal than he did before the meetings. Mr. Kim has insisted that he is done talking to Washington. In the intervening years, Mr. Wong has served as the chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressionally appointed, bipartisan group studying the national security implications of America’s economic engagement with Beijing.
这项努力以失败告终:有关的谈判破裂了,这名朝鲜领导人今年的武器库比他两人会晤前的更大。金正恩坚称,他不会再与华盛顿谈判。黄之瀚在卸任国务院官员后一直在由国会任命的两党工作组——美中经济与安全审查委员会担任主席,该委员会研究美中经济接触对美国国家安全的影响。
Such topics never had an airing during the campaign. Discussion of the complex economic, technological and military relationships with China was distilled by Mr. Trump to a declaration that tariffs would solve all problems. But his national security advisers clearly have a more nuanced view.
这些主题在竞选期间从未公开讨论过。特朗普把美中之间复杂的经济、技术、军事关系的讨论简化为一个说法,即关税能解决所有问题。但他的国家安全顾问们显然有着更为微妙的看法。
That leaves Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man and newest denizen of Mar-a-Lago, and Mr. Ramaswamy. They are supposed to head the “Department of Government Efficiency,” writing in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that “the entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic.”
剩下的是马斯克和拉马斯瓦米,马斯克是世界首富,也是马阿拉歌庄园的最新常客。他们理应领导“政府效率部”,他们上周四在《华尔街日报》上写道,“根深蒂固、不断扩大的官僚机构对我们共和国的生存构成威胁。”
The department, or “DOGE” as Mr. Musk calls it in a nod to the cryptocurrency dogecoin, is not actually a department at all, but a group of volunteers. But the two men insist their future department will have a direct pipeline to the White House Office of Management and Budget that will look to cut regulations, cut head counts and cut budgets.
马斯克用“政府效率部”的英文首字母称其为“DOGE”,这是向加密货币狗狗币致敬,但该部实际上根本就不存在,而是一群志愿者。但这两名男士坚持认为,他们这个未来的部将有通向白宫管理及预算办公室的直接渠道,他们将考虑削减法规、削减人员、削减预算的方法。
They promised to focus first on “$500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended,” including grants to international organizations or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
他们承诺首先把注意力集中在“未经国会批准、或以国会从未计划的方式每年花掉的5000多亿美元联邦支出”,包括拨给国际组织或公共广播公司的款项。
(For perspective, the $535 million in federal funds to the public broadcasting group, which Mr. Trump’s supporters believe pays for liberally biased programming, would be a 0.026 percent down payment on Mr. Musk’s promised $2 trillion in cuts. Even eliminating the entire defense budget of the United States would not get him halfway to the goal.)
(具体来看,特朗普的支持者们认为,联邦每年拨给公共广播公司的5.35亿美元是政府支持自由主义倾向节目的做法,但砍掉这笔钱只是马斯克承诺的2万亿美元削减方案0.026%的首付款。就算把美国的全部国防预算都砍掉,也完不成他目标的一半。)
It remains to be seen how they will work with the Office of Management and Budget’s proposed head, Russell Vought. He was a major figure in Project 2025, which laid out a plan to rework the American government to enhance presidential power by tearing down and rebuilding executive branch institutions.
他们将如何与提名为白宫管理及预算办公室负责人的拉塞尔·沃特一起工作还有待观察。沃特是“2025计划”的一名主要人物,该计划给出了重新组织美国政府的方法,通过拆毁和重建行政部门来增强总统的权力。