But confirmation of the nominees may prove easier said than done, as some have caused political heartburn for the GOP.

Trump’s choice of former Matt Gaetz as attorney general has already ended in a flameout after the former Florida congressman withdrew his nomination. Several GOP senators were resistant to voting for the firebrand lawmaker and called for the release of a House Ethics Committee report into a sex-trafficking investigation of Gaetz.

“While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition,” Gaetz said.

Soon after, Trump nominated former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as his next pick for attorney general, to the relief of many Republicans.

Grant Reeher, professor of political science at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, called Bondi a “much more reasonable” selection than Gaetz.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for health and human services secretary, also could get entangled during Senate confirmation hearings.

The Kennedy offspring has no experience as a medical doctor or holding public office. He has touted conspiracy theories and expressed hesitation over the COVID-19 vaccine, all of which has already led to Democratic-aligned groups mobilizing to block confirmation. His abortion-rights views have disgruntled anti-abortion conservatives.

“Mr. Kennedy is also a very surprising pick,” said Heath Brown, an associate professor at John Jay College and author of Roadblocked: Joe Biden’s Rocky Transition to the Presidency. “One of the ways that he’s surprising is he’s never overseen a large organization, and HHS is a massive organization with a huge budget and hundreds of different departments and units. The actual job of managing that large an operation is an enormous task.”

Trump’s choice of former Democratic Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence has left many in the intelligence community worried due to her previous sympathies for Russian President Vladimir Putin, a key American adversary.

Fox News host Pete Hegseth was tapped as defense secretary despite his inexperience leading an agency as large as the Defense Department. He’s also dealing with the fallout from sexual assault allegations after a police report was released.

His lawyer admitted that Hegseth paid off a woman through a nondisclosure agreement but claimed the encounter between the two was consensual, according to the Washington Post.

“I think for secretary of defense, you need to find the Marco Rubio equivalent and put them in — that pick is fine,” Reeher said referencing Trump’s nominee for secretary of state.

Trump selected another television veteran, Dr. Mehmet Oz, to serve as the next Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator. Oz, unlike Kennedy, does have medical experience. He received a medical degree and master’s of business administration from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986. He also practiced cardiology.

But Oz was best known as a television personality before he lost the Senate race to in 2022 to Democrat John Fetterman.

Wayne King, president of Old North Strategies, suggested that Senate Republicans are expected to balance their constitutional duty while respecting Trump’s dominance of the party.

“The Senate has the right to advise and consent on nominations that are made, and they certainly do have that right by the Constitution,” King said. “And I fully expect they’re going to carry out that, but Republicans would not be in the majority United States Senate without Donald Trump.”

Trump’s choice of unconventional nominees may be due to the expectations voters have for him to revamp Washington.

“The American people are not wanting traditional,” King said. “If they wanted that, they would have voted for somebody else in a Republican primary for president. They wanted a wholesale change in government in Washington, D.C. They want to drain the swamp, and the only way to drain the swamp is to have people that are change agents to change the swamp.”