Imagine if Ray Clay, the voice that ignited the Chicago arena, were to announce the newest Team Trump 2024 line-up. Close your eyes and let Sirius by The Alan Parsons Project echo in the background. It’s 2024, and the air is thick with MAGA fever. Each pick is making Washington pundits go redder. There’s the former news anchor who is now head of Pentagon. There’s a new department that sounds like a Yes Minister spoof with two billionaires in-charge. There’s Secretary of Homeland Security who shot her own dog and one guy who everyone confuses with an iconic rock band.
Chicago Bulls Introduction – 1997 NBA Finals Game 6
(Read to the tune of Chicago Bulls announcer Ray Clay announcing the 1997 Chicago Bulls team with Sirius by the Alan Parsons Project playing in the background)
And now… the starting lineup… for your… new Team Trump!
From Jacksonville, Florida, the White House Chief of Staff, the only person who can keep Donald Trump in check… Susie Wiles.
From West Carthage, New York, the man who tussles with AOC and now the ‘Border Czar’… Tom Homan.
From Albany, New York, the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations… Elise Stefanik.
From East Meadow, New York, the new Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency… Lee Zeldin.
From Boynton Beach, Florida, the man who loves India and keeps a wary eye on China, now the National Security Adviser… Mike Waltz.
From Hope, Arkansas, the man picked to bring peace to the Middle East as the new U.S. Ambassador to Israel… Mike Huckabee.
From Forest Lake, Minnesota, the man who runs with the fox and hunts with the hounds, the new Secretary of Defense… Pete Hegseth.
From Watertown, South Dakota, the Secretary of Homeland Security… Kristi Noem.
From Mount Prospect, Illinois, the man tasked with overseeing the nation’s secrets, the new CIA Director… John Ratcliffe.
From Miami, Florida, the seasoned Senator and first Latino Secretary of State… “Little’ Marco Rubio.
From Pensacola, Florida, the fiery advocate and now the new Attorney General pick… Matt Gaetz.
From Kailua, Hawaii, Army veteran and surfer, now the Director of National Intelligence… Tulsi Gabbard.
From New York, New York, the real estate tycoon with Middle East ambitions, now Special Envoy to the region… Steve Witkoff.
And finally, from Pretoria, South Africa, and Cincinnati, Ohio, the new co-leads of the Department of Government Efficiency… Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Fun Facts about each member of Team Trump 2024:
- Susie Wiles had a fallout with Trump in 2020, apparently because DeSantis asked Trump to do so after DeSantis and Wiles, who managed his 2018 gubernatorial campaign, suffered a rift.
- Tom Homan, during a hearing, once famously told Rep. (D) Pramila Jayapal that he was a taxpayer, and as an elected representative, she worked for him.
- Elise Stefanik replaced Rep. Liz Cheney (Harris’ BFF in the campaign phase) as chair of the House Republican conference. Cheney had been nominated by Stefanik.
- Many angry anti-Trumpers promised to quit listening to Led Zeppelin after confusing Lee Zeldin, Trump’s new Administrator of the
Environmental Protection Agency , with the iconic rock band. - Trump’s NSA pick, Mike Waltz, was the head of the India Caucus and once famously said that America needed a strategy to undermine the ideology of “Islamic extremism” because it’s “easy to bomb a tank, but very difficult to defeat an idea.”
- Mike Huckabee’s daughter, Sarah, was Trump’s White House press secretary, whose confrontational style with reporters earned her a lot of brownie points in the MAGA movement.
- Kristi Noem famously shot her dog Cricket because he couldn’t be tamed, with some arguing that’s why she didn’t become Trump’s VP pick.
- Pete Hegseth, as Pentagon chief was such a curveball that one defence contractor asked: “Who the f—- is this guy?”
- Marco Rubio rejected a ceasefire with Gaza and said Israel should destroy every element of Hamas because they were “vicious animals who did horrifying crimes.”
- Matt Gaetz, Trump’s pick for Attorney General, has a history of questionable behavior, including hiring a legislative aide who is a convicted war criminal who murdered an Afghan civilian and dumped his body in a latrine.
- Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence, quit as DNC vice-chair to support Bernie Sanders because she believed that the Hillary camp, with help from the DNC, was rigging the campaign against Sanders.
- Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-lead of DOGE, famously won the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship in 2011, and the Indian-origin entrepreneur had to clarify that the scholarship had nothing to do with the right wing’s bete noire, George Soros.
- Elon Musk, the other co-lead of DOGE, has become such a darling of Trump that he even has his own walk-in song at Mar-a-Lago. It’s Space Oddity by David Bowie.