By Carl P. Leubsdorf / The Dallas Morning News
President Trump’s first 100 days have confirmed the initial concerns about some of his most high-profile appointees. Another failed to meet more hopeful expectations.
Worst appointments: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Most disappointing: Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Shortest termer: Elon Musk.
Unexpected standout: Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, who simultaneously demonstrated his influence with Trump and his ability to resist Musk.
Here is why:
Hegseth: Signs abound that the onetime Fox News commentator has failed to take control of his own office, let alone the sprawling Pentagon, a primary concern in his confirmation hearings, given his lack of managerial experience.
He also showed a casual disregard of Pentagon security requirements.
Hegseth began his 100 days by ousting several top military officers, including the second Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first female chief of naval operations. He ended it by dismissing several of his own staff members; accused of leaking a proposed Musk briefing on China.
Meanwhile, Hegseth raised serious concerns about his own attitude toward security by sharing confidential military information about U.S. strikes against the Iran-backed Houthis on a Signal message group chat that included a leading journalist.
Then, The New York Times disclosed that he shared classified information on a second Signal group chat with his wife, brother, and his personal lawyer.
These incidents coincided with a spate of reports alleging confusion and chaos at the Pentagon.
“It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon,” wrote John Ullyot, a first term Trump appointee who initially defended Hegseth’s selection and was briefly the Pentagon’s chief spokesman.
“The dysfunction is now a major distraction for the President,” he added in his article in Politico magazine.
Hegseth, on “Fox and Friends,” accused critics of “trying to get at President Trump and his agenda.” Trump said, “He is doing a great job.” But his days may be numbered.
Kennedy: As many feared, Kennedy’s skepticism about immunizations clouded his first big test: the measles epidemic in Texas.
As cases proliferated, he refused calls to urge a stepped-up vaccination campaign.
“The decision to vaccinate is a personal one,” Kennedy said in a March 8 editorial for Fox News posted on the HHS website, though he added it added it can improve “community immunity” against disease.
Touting alternative treatments, he said treatment with vitamin A can “dramatically” reduce deaths from the disease and told Fox News that Texas doctors were “getting very, very good results” with steroids and cod liver oil.
A month later, visiting Texas for the funeral of an unvaccinated girl who died of measles, Kennedy acknowledged, “The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,” referring to the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.
But again, he stopped short of saying he “recommended” it, as health officials urged.
Kennedy also ordered a new study of the unproven theory that the vaccine causes autism after he publicly disputed a Centers for Disease Control report concluding an increase in autism cases resulted primarily from improved detection. He also cut CDC’s capacity to issue health warnings.
When the Food and Drug Administration delayed granting a license for an updated Novavax covid-19 vaccine, he said, without evidence, that such vaccines “have never worked.”
Bondi: While competent, she confirmed widespread fears she would implement Trump’s goal of making the Justice Department a political arm of the White House.
She set the tone at a political rally-like Justice Department event featuring the president, hailing Trump and declaring, “We all work for the greatest president in the history of our country. We will never stop fighting for him and for our country.”
Trump, citing “the lies and abuses that have occurred within these walls,” vowed that, “We will expose, very much expose their egregious crimes and severe misconduct.”
Bondi has revamped the department, firing or transferring attorneys who helped prosecute Trump and transforming the traditional role of the Civil Rights Division to focus on Trump’s political priorities.
Her real test will come in deciding whether to pursue legal action against Trump retribution targets, including top Democrats and former Trump administration officials Christopher Krebs and Miles Taylor.
Rubio: Given the former Florida senator’s history, members of both parties hoped he would challenge Trump efforts to abandon Ukraine and slash foreign aid.
Instead, he has become another zealous Trump facilitator. He willingly folded the independent Agency for International Development into the State Department and accepted sharp cuts in its humanitarian aid programs.
Bessent: The one-time Wall Street hedge fund manager and investor showed a willingness to stand up to Trump by helping to persuade him to slow his imposition of import tariffs amid chaos in world trading markets.
After a White House shouting match with Musk, he reportedly rejected the effort by the billionaire’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” to place a former Hunter Biden whistle-blower in charge of the Internal Revenue Service and installed a more experienced deputy.
Most powerful: White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the driving force behind illegal immigrant deportation efforts, and budget chief Russell Vought, the chief advocate of withholding congressionally approved funds.
First out: Musk, though the chaos he unleashed remains.
Still unclear: Low-key White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’s role in managing the chaos.
Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Readers may write to him via email at carl.p.leubsdorf@gmail.com. ©2025 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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