Trump’s casting call as he builds out his administration: TV experience preferred

WASHINGTON (AP) — There’s a common trait that President-elect Donald Trump is clearly prizing as he selects those to serve in his new administration: experience on television.

Trump loves that “central casting” look, as he likes to call it.

Some, like his choices for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, were until recently TV hosts on Trump’s favorite network, Fox News. Mike Huckabee, his pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel, hosted the Fox show “Huckabee” from 2008 to 2015 after his time as Arkansas governor.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, a former syndicated talk show host and heart surgeon, was tapped Tuesday to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that oversees health insurance programs for millions of older, poor and disabled Americans. He would report to Trump’s choice for health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., himself a regular on the cable news circuit.

Trump, a former reality television star himself, has made no secret of his intention to stack his administration with loyalists after his decisive 2024 election win — including some whose lack of relevant experience has raised concerns among lawmakers. But he’s also working to set up a more forceful administration in this term, and in his eyes, many of those people happen to intersect with celebrity.

The trend was not lost on Democratic Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, who posted on social media after the Oz nomination: “We are becoming the world’s first nuclear-armed reality television show.”

For good measure, Himes added: “Just spitballing here, but what if the Attorney General and the Secretary of HHS fight each other in an octagonal cage?” That was a reference to Trump’s affinity for the UFC fighters who do battle in the octagon.

Choosing TV personalities isn’t that unusual for the once-and-future president: A number of his first-term choices — John Bolton, Larry Kudlow, Heather Nauert and Mercedes Schlapp, were all on TV — mostly also on Fox. Omarosa Manigault Newman, a confrontational first-season member of Trump’s NBC show “The Apprentice,” was briefly at the White House before she was fired.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican who ran Trump’s 2016 transition team until he was fired, said that eight years ago, Trump held “Apprentice-like interviews at Bedminster,” summoning potential hires to his club in New Jersey.

On a call on Tuesday organized by the Council on Foreign Relations, Christie said this year’s Cabinet choices are different than 2016’s but it’s still “Donald Trump casting a TV show.”

“He’s casting,” Christie said.

Trump has readily highlighted the media experience of his choices as he’s announced them. He said Duffy, a former lawmaker and onetime cast member of MTV’s “The Real World,” was “a STAR on Fox News.”

Hegseth, a military veteran, “has been a host at FOX News for eight years, where he used that platform to fight for our Military and Veterans,” Trump said. He also noted that Hegseth’s book “The War on Warriors” spent nine weeks on The New York Times “best-sellers list, including two weeks at NUMBER ONE.”

As for Oz, Trump said: “He won nine Daytime Emmy Awards hosting ‘The Dr. Oz Show,’ where he taught millions of Americans how to make healthier lifestyle choices.”

It’s also true that those seeking positions in Trump’s orbit often take to the airwaves to audition for an audience of one. Tom Homan, Trump’s choice for “border czar,” is a frequent Fox contributor. Ohio Sen. JD Vance was chosen as Trump’s running mate in part because of how well he comes across on air.

Trump’s choice to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, upped his profile when he took to Fox News to argue that a pre-election appearance on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” by Democratic nominee Kamala Harris was a violation of the “equal time” rule governing candidate appearances on television.

The White House-to-cable news pundit pipeline tends to cut across administrations of both parties, to some extent. President Joe Biden had three MSNBC contributors on his transition team and his former press secretary went to the network after she left the White House. Biden, though, looked to career diplomats, longtime government workers and military leaders for key posts like the Defense Department.

Trump’s affinity for Fox News is well-documented, though the romance cooled for a time after Fox made an early call of Arizona for Biden in 2020, a move that infuriated Trump and many of the network’s viewers. Trump suggested viewers should migrate to other conservative news outlets.

While the Arizona call ultimately proved correct, it set in motion internal second-guessing and led some Fox personalities to embrace conspiracy theories, which ultimately cost the network $787 million to settle a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems.

But Trump is still an avid watcher — the network provides Trump a window into conservative thinking, with commentary from Republican lawmakers and thinkers who are, often, speaking directly to the president-elect.