As the Trump Administration approaches the hundred days mark, we may barely have a country left, but at least we are getting a clearer view who is really responsibility for all the chaos and destruction.
There is a long tradition in Washington in which the distribution of power does not coincide with the organizational charts handed out at the beginning of an administration. Some with fancy titles fall victim to sharp elbows or whisper campaigns. Others self-destruct. And there are always the real power-brokers lurking in the shadows. All that is in normal administrations with presidents who are not notoriously awful, impulse-driven managers known to throw the occasional ketchup bottle against the White House walls.
Volatility is the norm in Donald Trump’s world. Appearances are pretty much always deceiving. And frankly, Trump is one of those leaders who doesn’t really want his right hand to know what his left hand is doing. Unless it’s pushing the Diet Coke button.
Franklin Roosevelt was like that too, to be fair. (Of course, he was a president who otherwise couldn’t be more different from Trump, and who happened to create many of the programs and alliances Trump is hellbent on destroying.) In fact, Roosevelt’s management style was so chaotic that after he died many of his aides worked hard to restructure the government to ensure no president would ever go through that again.
Then there’s Andrew Jackson, a president Trump admires perhaps because he too was a racist with a scandalous marital history and a willingness to ignore the law when it suited him. He relied on heavily on informal group advisors. In Jackson’s case, the group was dubbed his “kitchen cabinet” and since his time others have embraced his approach.
But are there too many cooks in Trump’s kitchen cabinet, or not enough? Based on conversations with many currently working in or with the administration, we can answer a few questions about who’s in, who’s out and who’s just out of their mind.
Marco Rubio vs. Steve Witkoff
For example, at this week’s meetings in Europe with France’s President Macron and others about Ukraine, the U.S. delegation was nominally led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But many of the headlines and much of the substance of the meetings was driven by the man who has emerged as the real chief U.S. diplomat, real estate developer and foreign policy neophyte Steve Witkoff.
Witkoff, a sometime Trump golf buddy who enjoys a closeness to the president that Rubio will never have, joined the administration as chief Middle East negotiator. But he quickly added Russia and Ukraine to his portfolio, and in recent weeks has held high profile meetings with Vladimir Putin (at which they hammered out a “peace plan” which just happens to be Putin’s wish list for ending the war). Witkoff is seen to be more in tune with Trump—which is to say more willing to dance to the Kremlin’s tune.
Rubio meanwhile has spent more time as acting assistant secretary for student visas. It doesn’t within State Department headquarters that he is seen as failing to defend the department against efforts to slash its budgets and programs.
Scott Bessent vs. Howard Lutnick and Peter Navarro
Similarly, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has the job first held by Alexander Hamilton, he has not been winning crucial economic battles within the administration. He was seen as cautioning against Trump’s tariffs while others, like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Peter Navarro, played to Trump’s decades-long misguided infatuation with protectionism and in the end won out, resulting in tariffs today that are bigger than the Depression-era Smoot Hawley fiasco. More recently, Bessent has been the one telling Trump not to threaten to fire Fed Chair Jay Powell for fear of destabilizing financial markets—the headlines this week have revealed just how persuasive he has been on that front.
As a consequence, Bessent is among those already rumored to be seeking a way out of Trumplandia.
And Jamieson Greer vs. Peter Navarro
It’s Navarro, not U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who is clearly the guy in charge of U.S. trade policy, although I am reluctant to use the term “policy” to describe the ill-conceived sh-tshow that Navarro’s guidance has garnered. Greer, of course, had the awesomely embarrassing experience of being on camera testifying to Congress when he was blindsided by the news that Trump was pulling one of his signature reversals on trade. He is seen as a stooge and with precious little influence; one former senior U.S. trade official with whom I spoke said, “I doubt Trump could pick him out of a lineup.”
Pete Hegseth vs. Elon Musk (and big tech)
Such statements mean something in an administration when so many of the senior folks might someday actually end up in a lineup—if the rule of law is ever restored to this country. Those might include National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who almost certainly violated laws by revealing classified information during the Signalgate scandal. That was one of the administration’s big early black eyes. Which is saying something.
As a consequence both Hegseth and Waltz have seen their stock go down.
While Hegseth is out entertaining the troops with his idea of the warrior spirit (and he knows something about spirits), some say the void atop the Pentagon is being filled by the tech bros around Trump. Certainly, they want in. That caused one of the few instances of public friction with Elon Musk, who sought a classified briefing on China war plans that Trump allegedly put a stop too.
But the damage was not so severe. Take the biggest new defense project announced by Trump, a technologically ambitious and completely unfeasible plan to create a “golden dome” anti-missile shield over the entire U.S., for example. Musk is seen as a front-runner to win the multi-billion dollar contract.
From the outset of the administration, Musk of course, has been seen as playing the role of co-president, given the free rein he has been given to radically remake the government. Such talk has, of course, angered the thin-skinned Trump; it’s hardly a coincidence that every story of Musk being the real power in the White House has been followed by one in which the timing of Musk’s ultimate departure from government is discussed. There is a statutory limit on how long Musk can stay in his current role, so his departure may happen. Or not. We all now know how lightly Team Trump takes little things like, you know, laws.
Kristi Noem vs. Stephen Miller
The people running roughshod over those laws, ostensibly led by Pam Bondi as Attorney General with the support of “ICE Barbie” Kristi Noem and her enforcer immigration czar Tom Homan, may be solid in their jobs, but no one believes they are the primary architect of Trump’s constitution-shredding immigration policies. That honor goes to Deputy White House Chief of Staff and real-life Minister of Pain Stephen Miller.
Meanwhile, sadly, apparently Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is apparently actually in charge of health policy after all. Where’s a slightly less insane usurper when you need one?
And Trump himself vs…. well, take a guess.
Finally, of course, we must return to the question of whether Trump himself, addled and aging despite a recent medical report that made him out to be a strong candidate to be Chris Hemsworth’s body double, is really the last word in his own White House.
While Musk has been seen as something like an equal, the real truth about who is in charge seems to lie farther away. Just how far? Well, Witkoff’s recent travels and public positions tell some of that story. So too does Rubio’s announcement this week that the State Department is shutting down the department that identified and sought to counter Russian disinformation, the DHS announcement that they were switching off the lights at the bureau that protected the U.S. against foreign election interference or the DoD announcement of plans to wind down the unit responsible for cyber conflict with Russia.
See a pattern here? If you do, then it should be crystal clear to you who is really in charge in Washington today.
