Lawfare Archive: President-elect Trump's National Security Appointments
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2025
⏱️ 69 minutes
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Summary
From November 16, 2024: Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Scott Anderson, Alan Rozenshtein, and Quinta Jurecic and Executive Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection Mary McCord about Donald Trump's picks for his Cabinet and senior-level administration positions, including Matt Gaetz as attorney general and Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense, the possibility of Trump using the recess appointment power, and more.
Editor’s note: During a discussion of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s nomination to head the Department of Health and Human Services, we mentioned a 2019 outbreak of measles in Polynesia. The outbreak took place in Samoa, not American Samoa as we mistakenly stated.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Nearly every news alert in 2025 has raised questions, some old, some new, about the law and national security. |
| 0:07.5 | And now you get the chance to ask Lawfare directly. It's time for our annual Ask Us Anything Mailbag podcast, an opportunity for you to ask Lawfare this year's most burning questions. |
| 0:18.3 | You can submit your question by leaving a voicemail at 202-643-8474. |
| 0:26.5 | Or by sending a recording of yourself asking your question to Ask Us Anything Lawfare at gmail.com by December 16th. |
| 0:50.3 | I'm Isabella Royo, Internet Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare Archive for December 13th, 2025. |
| 0:56.2 | On December 4th, the White House released the National Security Strategy, which outlined a border security-centric vision of national security and summarized the administration's priorities |
| 1:00.3 | in five world regions. On December 10th, U.S. forces escalated tensions with Venezuela by seizing an |
| 1:05.9 | oil tanker off its coast, which Attorney General Pam Bondi described as having been sanctioned |
| 1:10.6 | for involvement |
| 1:11.0 | in an illicit oil shipping network, supporting foreign terrorist organizations. |
| 1:15.8 | The Venezuelan government condemned the seizure as piracy. |
| 1:18.9 | For today's archive, I chose an episode from November 16, 2004, in which Benjamin Woodis, |
| 1:24.1 | Scott R. Anderson, Quinta Jurecik, Alan Rosenstein, and Mary McCord |
| 1:28.3 | discussed then-President-D-elect Donald Trump's picks for his cabinet and senior-level national |
| 1:32.6 | security positions, including Pete Heggseth as Secretary of Defense and Tulsi Gabbard as Director |
| 1:37.5 | of National Intelligence. |
| 1:39.3 | The five discussed the prospective cabinet members' qualifications, the impact each might |
| 1:43.5 | have on U.S. foreign policy, |
| 1:45.2 | the possibility of Trump using the recess appointment power and more. |
| 1:58.2 | It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare with Lawfare senior editors, Scott R. Anderson, Alan Rosenstein, and Quinta Jurecic, and Mary McCord, Executive Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. |
| 2:17.5 | There is not a strategy. There is not a strategy. |
| 2:20.0 | There is not a, you know, brilliant plan here. |
... |
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