Plurality of Americans view Trump's high-profile cabinet picks as 'good choices'
A new poll reveals that more Americans approve of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks than disapprove of them as the former president is set to reassume his old post in less than two months.
The CBS News survey of 2,232 American adults conducted from Nov. 19-22 asked Americans for their thoughts on Trump’s handling of the presidential transition and sampled their opinions on a few of his cabinet picks.
Fifty-nine percent of respondents indicated that they approved of Trump’s handling of the presidential transition compared to 41% who disapproved. When asked if the United States Senate should hold confirmation hearings for Trump’s cabinet nominees before they assume their posts, the overwhelming majority (76%) answered in the affirmative. The remaining 24% expressed support for allowing the president-elect to appoint cabinet nominees without confirmation hearings.
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The fate of Trump’s cabinet picks ultimately lies in the hands of the Senate, where Republicans will have a 53-47 majority in the forthcoming 119th Congress. CBS News found that more Americans have favorable views of some of the more prominent nominees than have disfavorable opinions of them.
When asked for their feelings about Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who Trump has chosen to serve as secretary of state, 44% described him as a “good choice” for the position. Twenty-five percent characterized him as “not [a] good choice” for the cabinet, while the remaining 31% insisted that they “haven’t heard enough” to decide one way or another about the nominee. A former candidate for the Republican nomination for president, Rubio’s confirmation is expected to receive bipartisan support.
Nearly one-half of respondents (47%) described former Democratic-turned-independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a “good choice” to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services, the position Trump has nominated him for. Thirty-four percent disagreed, calling him “not [a] good choice.” The remaining 19% maintained that they “haven’t heard enough” to form an opinion on the nominee.
Although he has received a favorable reception from many on the political right due to his anti-interventionist views on foreign policy and opposition to the worship restrictions and lockdowns imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy’s nomination has received pushback from some Republicans due to his documented support for abortion. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who served during the first Trump administration, has urged the Senate to reject Kennedy for the post of HHS secretary.
While a plurality of those surveyed (39%) told pollsters they “haven’t heard enough” about Trump’s Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, a slightly higher share of respondents (33%) viewed him as a “good choice” than “not [a] good choice” (28%). Hegseth, a veteran of the Armed Forces who co-hosts “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Fox News, generated headlines for his opinion that “we should not have women in combat roles.”
“It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated,” he maintained. “We’ve all served with women, and they’re great. Our institutions don’t have to incentivize that in places where traditionally — not traditionally, over human history — men in those positions are more capable.”
An equal share of those surveyed (36%) characterized Tulsi Gabbard as a “good choice” to serve as the director of national intelligence and said they “haven’t heard enough” about her. The remaining 28% believed she was “not [a] good choice.”
A former Democrat who represented Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives for four terms, Gabbard has emerged as a staunch critic of interventionist foreign policy. After unsuccessfully seeking the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, Gabbard left the Democratic Party to become an independent and officially joined the Republican Party earlier this year.
The survey did not ask the American public for their opinions about Matt Gaetz, the former Republican congressman from Florida who Trump tapped to serve as attorney general shortly after winning the 2024 presidential election. Viewed as the cabinet nominee with potentially the highest hurdles for confirmation, Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration for the position on Thursday, two days after CBS News began administering the survey but one day before the news organization stopped conducting it.
This CBS News survey had a margin of error of +/-2.3 percentage points.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
