John Jefferson
The American Conservative can confirm that President-elect Donald Trump’s search for secretary of State has narrowed to four candidates: Richard “Ric” Grenell, his former ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence; Marco Rubio, the Florida senator and runner-up to be Trump’s vice president; Bill Hagerty, the Tennessee senator and his former ambassador to Japan; and Vivek Ramaswamy, the former presidential candidate–turned –fierce Trump surrogate.
While Ramaswamy is by far the most surprising entrant in the sweepstakes, his selection would be a callback to history.
Trump shocked the world by selecting ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to head up Foggy Bottom back in 2016. This time, however, the selection process is expected to be far more expedited, with a decision and announcement possible as soon as Monday. And far from being a former Jeb Bush donor, Ramaswamy has staked out ground since his 2023–24 presidential bid as a Trumpist par excellence, pushing the envelope as the party under Trump seeks to jettison figures with Bush wing baggage.
Those around Trump have been reporting in recent years that, perhaps in contrast to the case in his first term, the once and future president has grown focused on his legacy. A shock selection of Ramaswamy would be the clearest indication yet that Trump intends to become the ideological standard-bearer of the American right for decades to come. A tough-minded commitment to foreign policy realism and restraint, limited and controlled immigration, and an adult approach to trade is poised to supplant not only the discredited Bush project, but also sideline Ronald Reagan (now dead 20 years) as the most significant Republican inspiration of the still-young 21st century.
At a time when Republicans are winning surprise converts, Ramaswamy has cast himself as a generational warrior and uncompromising antiwar figure within the Trumpian fold. “Our message to millennials, speaking as one myself: Yes, it’s true,” the 39-year-old told the Republican National Convention in July. “Our government sold us a false bill of goods, with the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis loading up our national debt that falls on our generation’s shoulders.”
Ramaswamy’s 2021 book. Woke, Inc., initially shot him to fame. But the Ohio entrepreneur has unusually, but consistently linked his cultural views to foreign policy:
You are free to speak your mind at every step of the way. That is the American dream. That is what won us the American Revolution. That is what reunited us after the Civil War. That is what won us two world Wars and the Cold War. That is what still gives hope to the free world. And if we can revive that dream over group identity and victimhood and grievance, then nobody in the world, not a nation, not a corporation, not a virus, not China is going to defeat us.
Those around Ramaswamy know him as an arch-realist with an admiration for George Kennan, the late Cold War thinker and former State Department policy planning director. Kennan was a critic of hawkish Democrats like Harry Truman; Trump’s ideological opposite, George W. Bush, once compared himself to Truman.
In 2023, Ramaswamy proposed freezing the battlelines in Ukraine and conditioning American support for a deal to end the war on Vladimir Putin breaking ranks with China. Here too Ramaswamy is simpatico with Trump. “Look at what these stupid people have done, they’ve allowed Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and others to get together in a group, this is impossible to think,” Trump opined at a rally in Arizona in October.
But Ramaswamy is no doctrinaire China hawk. Trump, who reshaped world debate on the rise of China (it was time to get real), is now in many ways a moderate on the subject within his own ranks—and even compared to his Democratic predecessor. President Joe Biden has committed to defending Taiwan with American troops. President-elect Trump has made no such assurance. Such a policy would line up with Ramaswamy’s worldview. Ramaswamy has said that the U.S. should only commit to Taiwan as long as it takes to develop semiconductor self-sufficiency in America, and then “we will resume our position of strategic ambiguity.”
With his call for a reverse Sino-Russian split, and his Kissingerian cut on Taiwan, Ramaswamy has positioned himself close to Richard Nixon, who the Ohioan has called America’s “most underappreciated president.” Many see the late Californian as Trump’s spiritual godfather (and that’s not an insult). When confronted over his views, outre in the foreign policy establishment, Ramaswamy told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell in 2023, “Andrea, you conveniently left out the most important part of the deal, which is what the United States wins out of it.”
Ramaswamy belongs to the small but growing ranks of Republicans who quietly oppose military aid to Israel. He told Axios in October 2023 (days after the Hamas assault, when such sentiments were not exactly voguish): “In my ideal view of this, Israel should be able to make the decisions of how it defends itself and its national self-existence. … And we provide a diplomatic Iron Dome for Israel to be able to carry that out. And that’s it. No money.”
Though not yet articulated by Trump himself, such an approach would line up with the future president’s embrace of key allies balanced with a no-free-riders approach. While this view is not assured to become immediate administration policy, a Ramaswamy-led State Department would be the clearest indication yet that Trump is serious about ending the forever wars. “Netanyahu has managed clashes with Democratic presidents without paying a heavy price. In fact, he campaigns on his ability to stand up to them,” a member of Israel’s parliament told the Times of Israel in October. “A fight with Trump is something he hasn’t really had to deal with, and I think it’s something he’d want to avoid.”
Whoever gets the nod will have to contend with the Senate. Hagerty and Rubio may well be afforded deference by their colleagues, sailing through narrowly on a party line vote. But Senate vacancies are a tricky business, and Trump may not want to lose many—or any—of the current cast of characters in the upper chamber. Deck shuffles are always risky. For instance, Vice President–elect JD Vance is poised to be replaced in the Senate by Matt Dolan, whom Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is said to favor. While Vance’s elevation is a clear net gain for the cause of foreign policy restraint, the fact res that Vance—perhaps the most realist member of the Senate, especially on Russia and Ukraine—could be replaced by rabid Ukraine hawk. Does Trump want further instability thrown into the mix?
There are ideological and tactical cases against Hagerty and Rubio, as well.
Hagerty is considered by many to be the favorite in the race, but he is virtually unknown outside of Tennessee and Washington, and would be an unusual choice for a president trying to make a splash. Hagerty is also tight with the America First Policy Institute, which has drawn some complaints for being “Reaganism in drag.” Notably, AFPI’s president, Brooke Rollins, recently lost a bid to become Trump’s chief of staff. Trump could also keep Hagerty in the fold by naming him Secretary of Defense or National Security Advisor, and reserving his chief diplomatic post for someone with a higher profile and more of a punch on television.
And Trump passed on Rubio for vice president, favoring Vance. Rubio, who ran the most neoconservative campaign for president in 2016, has won plaudits for an ideological transformation in certain circles in recent years—most notably, among the Catholic right and the nascent economic populist right. But selecting Rubio for State would be handing him a portfolio on the issue where he is widely conceded to be the least Trumpian, foreign policy. As mentioned, Trump has passed on Rubio for jobs before, and Trump tends to trust his first judgements. (Perhaps evidenced most recently by Arkansas’s Sen. Tom Cotton, long circulated as a possible administration official, taking himself out of the mix).
Grenell makes a lot of sense, and is the second-splashiest pick. Grenell recently won the endorsement of a key aide to Rand Paul, implying the antiwar Republican senator (who has opposed or held up other of Trump’s nominees in the past) would play ball. But Grenell would meet the certain opposition of all Democrats, and possibly the Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins. It would leave him with no margin of error. Grenell could be plugged in as National Security Advisor, with that corner office so near the Oval, and be spared the anguish of Senate showdown.
A similar contingent—McConnell, Murkowski, and Collins—would probably oppose Ramaswamy. But it’s possible he could win a crossover vote: Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator has long been networked with advocates of foreign policy restraint (and been harshly critical of Netanyahu), and he has signaled interest in recent days of becoming a leading character in the coming Democratic civil war. Hawks like Lindsey Graham would shriek at the selection, at least behind closed doors. But Graham would risk losing influence with Trump for good if he starts opposing his considered choices for the great offices of state.
It would certainly be the bold move, and the strongest signal yet that Trump means business on correcting the personnel problems of the first term. As one advocate of Ramaswamy’s cause put it, “Out with the old, in with the new.”
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