Dem
47
GOP
53
The way things are supposed to work is that the president sends nominees for cabinet positions to the Senate, which then asks them (largely pointless) questions to which they give (wholly predictable) non-answers and then the Senate votes to confirm them. But with so many nominees likely to face difficult confirmation battles, Trump could go a different route: acting secretaries.
In his first term, Trump also used acting secretaries to bypass the Senate. They served a total of 2,736 days across 22 cabinet-level jobs. He could do that again. Step one would be to fire Biden's entire cabinet, whose members serve at the pleasure of the president. Once each position was vacant, Trump could appoint an acting secretary. Acting secretaries can serve for 210 days. If a permanent nominee is rejected by the Senate—and Trump could send the Senate such unpalatable nominees that they would be certainly rejected—then the clock resets and the acting secretary gets another 210 days. Rinse and repeat. Chad Wolf served as acting secretary of Homeland Security for 14 months in Trump v1.0 this way.
Democratic presidents have also played this game, but not nearly as intensely as Trump. Joe Biden tried to get Julie Su, the Deputy Secretary of Labor, confirmed when Marty Walsh took his puck home and resigned, but the votes weren't there, so Biden made her the acting secretary. Trump could use acting secretaries on an industrial scale.
There is also another version of this that Trump could pursue, namely ignoring the real cabinet and instead relying primarily on an informal cabal of advisers. This is usually known as a Kitchen Cabinet, and numerous presidents have utilized this arrangement, most notably Andrew Jackson. Those folks would not have official power, but they would have the president's ear, which is sometimes better, particularly with a president who has poor impulse control. Trump obviously relied on quasi-official advisers in his first time quite a bit—Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, etc.—but if he can't get the people he wants past the Senate, he might take the Kitchen Cabinet concept into overdrive. (V)