Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are the central and most popular members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet, but they have something else in common: all three are harsh former critics of their current boss.
Much has been made, especially on the left, about past statements from these Big Three in the Cabinet, with Vance calling Trump Hitler, Rubio’s scathing 2016 primary attacks on the president’s hand size, and pretty much everything former Democrat RFK Jr ever said before endorsing Trump in 2024.
U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (R) look on during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 7, 2025. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
For Democrats, this eye for Orange Man Good from all three, and others in the White House inner circle, obviously means that these men have abandoned their principles and are chasing their own power. But in reality, something much more amazing is happening.
Trump’s first term was often accompanied by internal debate and friction from a cabinet that at times seemed more interested in serving as a guardrail for Trump’s perceived impulsiveness than in safeguarding his agenda.
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For example, Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and National Security Advisor John Bolton were, in Trump’s administration and to this day, highly critical of his government approach, which damaged the effectiveness of the White House.
This time, in Trump 2.0, his cabinet, which has remained virtually unchanged for a year now, is not trying to contain him, but rather to make his vision for a better America a reality, regardless of any tensions they may have had with the boss in the past.
Cheryl Hines, wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, watches her husband testify during his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on January 29, 2025 in Washington, DC (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
This tells us a few things. First, it shows that Trump has a pretty thick skin at the end of the day. Beyond the kind of complete betrayal we’ve seen from figures like Pence and Esper, the president is showing his ability to let bygones be bygones.
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Second, it shows that Vance, Rubio and Bobby, not to mention former Democrat and current National Security Advisor Tulsi Gabbard, have discovered that working honestly and openly with Trump and getting to know him can change your opinion of him.
Trump’s team of former rivals has also been so effective because Trump’s one solid ideological position is America first, and under this heading Vance’s economic protectionism, Rubio’s foreign adventurism and RFK Jr’s Make America Healthy Again agenda all have a welcome home at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Much of this is due to Trump’s unique ability to put common sense over political orthodoxy. For example, Democrats were stunned this week when the White House announced it wanted to ban big companies from buying single-family homes, something they themselves have pushed for.
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It is clear from both my own private conversations with members of the Trump administration and their public comments that the current administration, in the strongest possible reversal of its first term, is a well-oiled and completely unified team.
The knock on the president, especially from conservative Never Trumpers, some of whom hounded his first White House, is that he has no principles. But the positive way to portray this is that he is flexible and open to new ideas.
The biggest question in American politics today is what the Republican Party will look like on January 21, 2029, when Trump’s political career moves from the headlines to the history books. The answers lie in his cabinet.
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Trump has been widely criticized over the past year for allegedly filling his White House with nothing but loyalists. First of all: what do you want in the cabinet, disloyal people? But secondly, these are not mushrooms, they are experienced former enemies whom Trump has given the space and authority to implement pro-American policies.
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Perhaps that is the common thread that unites Trump’s tight-knit team, the idea of ​​making America and Americans pro-America again, of restoring the bold idea that America is not a declining power but that it can do great things, both at home and around the world.
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While the bookmakers have their money on Vance as the 2028 candidate most likely to emerge from Trump’s Cabinet, whoever it is will almost certainly emerge not just as an individual, but as the man or woman who can continue to lead the all-star team the president has assembled.
There’s an old dictum in Washington that personnel is policy, and that’s a lesson Trump learned the hard way during his first term. But often the hard way is the best way to learn. And a year later, it is clear that President Trump has indeed learned well from his past mistakes.
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