How Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and others made it to Trump's Cabinet

A look at the careers of Trump's nominees to lead government agencies.

February 3, 2025, 11:24 AM

How do President Donald Trump's picks to run federal agencies this term compare to previous presidents' choices? As the confirmation process continues, we wanted to look at the career paths taken by past secretaries of state, secretaries of defense, secretaries of health and human services, attorneys general, directors of national intelligence and FBI directors to see how the experiences of the highest-profile members of the Trump administration stack up to those of their predecessors.

To categorize their resumes, we grouped jobs into one of several categories, such as elected office (which includes everything from city councilor to U.S. senator), jobs on political campaigns, the private sector (which can include military or other contractors), the nonprofit sector (which can include everything from veterans' groups to charities) and academia.

As you can see in the charts below, some of Trump's nominees have career paths that would be familiar in any presidential term. For example, Trump's pick for secretary of state, former Sen. Marco Rubio, stands out for having a career entirely in elected office: Rubio, who was the first of Trump's nominees to take office when the Senate unanimously confirmed him on Inauguration Day, served as a state representative before getting elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010.

Many secretaries of state from past administrations had more experience in law, the private sector or other branches of government, like the military. Notably, Trump's first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who served from 2017 to 2018, had spent almost his entire career in the private sector. The choice of Rubio seems somewhat at odds with Trump's promises to bring outside energy to Washington, D.C., as Rubio is very much a creature of national politics and even ran against him for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

PHOTO: A sankey chart showing the career paths of the last five secretaries of state.
Amina Brown for 538

Others of Trump's nominees, though, have followed more unusual paths to government service. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, whose controversial nomination barely made it through the Senate on Jan. 24 after Vice President JD Vance had to cast the tie-breaking vote, started his career in the military, as many of his predecessors did. He served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay but left the military after being flagged as a security threat in 2021. But while past secretaries of defense increased their rank in the military and went on to spend time in government, academia or the private sector, Hegseth ran veterans' advocacy groups until he was forced to step down amid accusations of misconduct; his last job before leading the Pentagon was as a TV host.

PHOTO: A sankey chart showing the career paths of the last five secretaries of defense.
Amina Brown for 538

Of the positions we looked at, secretaries of health and human services had the most winding career paths. While it's rare for the individuals in this role to have explicit health care experience, the last four secretaries all came into the role with time spent working in government, either as a staffer or an elected official. By contrast, Trump nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s only government-adjacent work was during his very brief stint as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan at the beginning of his career.

However, it may not be his lack of government experience that endangers Kennedy's nomination. Kennedy, whose confirmation hearings began Wednesday, could instead be sunk by his controversial opposition to vaccines and other long-standing public health interventions, like water fluoridation, and unfounded claims about COVID-19. His cousin, Caroline Kennedy, daughter of former President John F. Kennedy, has opposed his confirmation.

PHOTO: A sankey chart showing the career paths of the last five secretaries of health and human services.
Amina Brown for 538

After Trump's first nominee for attorney general, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration amid a House investigation into claims he'd paid for sex with a minor, Trump nominated former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead the Department of Justice. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve Bondi's nomination for U.S. attorney general Wednesday, but the full Senate has yet to take up her confirmation. Bondi's hearing included questioning about her loyalties to Trump and how she would handle conflicts between the responsibilities of her role and orders from the president. But her resume is fairly standard compared with her predecessors, including experience as a prosecutor and in private law, though the fact that she's been a state attorney general sets her apart from the previous four people to serve in the role.

PHOTO: A sankey chart showing the career paths of the last five attorneys general.
Amina Brown for 538

Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's nominee for director of national intelligence, has also had a fairly similar career path to past appointees. What makes her such a potentially problematic pick isn't her resume so much as her sympathies toward Russia and ties to former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Gabbard's nomination has yet to clear the Senate Intelligence Committee. Republicans could still send her to the full Senate for a vote without a recommendation from the committee.

PHOTO: A sankey chart showing the career paths of the last five directors of national intelligence.
Amina Brown for 538

Likewise, Trump's nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, has emerged as one of Trump's most controversial appointments thanks to his past public statements, like promises to "annihilate" the "deep state" and prosecute Trump's political enemies. A vocal Trump ally and author of a children's book about the president, Patel's nomination has drawn opposition from former Republican officials, who say he doesn't have the record or temperament to lead the bureau. Indeed, he is a former prosecutor just like his three immediate would-be predecessors, but his work as a government staffer, in the private sector and for a nonprofit that allegedly raised money for FBI whistleblowers, would be unique among recent FBI directors. He has said he would overhaul the agency.

His testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee began Thursday. He came under fire from Democrats who questioned whether he would be independent from Trump and asked whether he would investigate people on his "enemies list," which he refused to say but denied having such a list.

PHOTO: A sankey chart showing the career paths of the last five directors of the FBI.
Amina Brown for 538

Trump has promised to "drain the swamp" throughout his national political career, but his slate of nominees for key roles in the administration includes a mix of experienced politicians and government staffers along with outsiders. It also sets a slightly different tone from his first term, which included high-level appointees who didn't have government experience, like Tillerson and former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who had a long history of political and education activism.

But Trump's choices are still making waves in Washington — just for different reasons. For the senators grappling with whether to confirm them, their hesitation is less with their resumes and more with their controversies.

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