WASHINGTON — For many who do the bidding of President Donald Trump, the job is a unique risk-reward proposition.
A chance to win his favor and shape national policy. And there’s the potential for conflict with the boss and public humiliation.
The coming and going of cabinet secretaries in the Trump administration is characterized by dizzying turnover.
Former consultants are leaving Memoirs detailing their dissatisfaction with Trump, who has in turn used his massive public platform insult them.
If he returns to the White House, Trump will need to once again assemble a leadership team — a challenge made more difficult by his track record and his ability to win Senate approval from loyalists needed to carry out his orders.
In preparation, Trump’s advisers are preparing to take over the executive branch should he win in November, a customary transition process for presidential nominees. Allies are compiling lists of potential candidates and establishing dedicated teams to guide any nominees toward Senate confirmation.
The transition is taking place quietly, out of public view and away from the campaign trail. A person familiar with the plan said Trump did not want to tempt fate by acting as if the election was already won and therefore kept some distance from his transition efforts. say.
After defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016, Trump said she had put together an effective transition team but lost anyway “because everyone was in Washington,” said a person familiar with Trump’s comments at the time. Measure Curtains”.
Trump’s own transition that year, however, was notoriously chaotic. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie led the effort, but much of his work was pushed aside and thrown away after Trump’s shocking surprise victory.
This time around, dozens of people are studying a possible transition for Trump and expect to complete a thorough review of potential Cabinet picks before the election, people familiar with the matter said.
They must act quickly. Trump’s campaign named his transition leaders just last month, shortening the timeline for completing his work, a presidential transition expert said.
“The Trump team has been slow to announce transition actions compared to modern practice,” said Max Steele, president and CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. “They were presumed for quite some time. For nominees, the normal schedule is to start work in the spring, not late summer or early fall.”
“With the teams they choose, it’s not clear that they have the government experience to be successful,” Steele added. “When you think about the expertise you need, deep expertise is paramount. The name of the person who transitioned) speaks for itself.”
Advisers to Vice President Kamala Harris are also preparing for a possible victory in November, as both campaigns look to make the most of their first 100 days in office, when the new president’s political capital is at its peak.
Their missions are different because Harris is already part of the current Democratic administration and can choose to retain officials if she chooses.
Trump will form his cabinet from scratch. His unique challenge is finding people who are loyal to him — always a priority for Trump — but who are also respected enough in their fields to win Senate confirmation.
“He has no difficulty staffing the Cabinet,” Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said in an interview. “The question is whether they have the status or ability to do the job required and whether they can be confirmed.”
“I think it’s unlikely that he’ll get a group of generals like he did last time,” Romney added, referring to James Mattis, H.R. McMaster and John Kelly, who serve as senior officials in the Trump administration. Prior to his position, he was a general. (Romney, a Trump critic, is retiring from the Senate and will not take office next year to vote on the next president’s nominees.)
“Fishing in smaller ponds”
If potential candidates dislike Trump’s presidency or fear his wrath, finding the right person could be difficult.
Trump calls one of his former attorney generals, William Barr, A “gutless pig” The other one is Jeff Sessions, “Weak and incompetent”. He tagged one, Defense Secretary Mark Esper: “A lightweight” And there was another guy, Matisse, “The most overrated general in the world.”
“There are a lot of good people out there, but Trump is going to be fishing in a smaller pond,” said Mark Short, the first legislative affairs director in the Trump White House and later chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence. .
“He’s funny,” Short said of Trump. “He’s very gregarious and friendly to the staff. But he has a way of getting information from a lot of different sources. So you always have to adapt and be on your toes.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a Trump ally, said he was confident Trump would surround himself with capable officials.
“The idea that he can’t have a good team is ridiculous,” Graham said in an interview. “He’s going to have a really good team.”
According to people familiar with the matter, candidates Trump is considering for secretary of state include Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio (Marco Rubio), Tennessee Republican Senator Bill Hagerty (Bill Hagerty), and the former White House national security chief Consultant Robert O’Brien.
A key position in another Trump presidency will be attorney general. After he left office, state and federal prosecutors filed multiple criminal charges against Trump over his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He has pleaded not guilty in all cases. The indictments are unlikely to be resolved before the next president is sworn in.
Top candidates for Trump’s attorney general include Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
“When I look back at his first term as president – and I hope it’s his only term as president – I worry about the type of people he chooses and whether they have any backbone, because he’s going to come up with some outlandish ideas. I’m sure , if he gets the chance,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which will vote on whether to confirm the attorney general nomination.
According to people familiar with the matter, potential candidates for defense secretary include Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton (Tom Cotton), Florida Republican Representative Mike Waltz (Mike Waltz), as well as Trump’s secretary of state and CIA Bureau Chief Mike Pompeo.
Another important position in the Trump administration is the secretary of homeland security. Whoever takes office will carry out Trump’s directive to stop illegal immigration and enforce what his campaign calls “The largest deportations in U.S. history“.
The leading contender for the top homeland security job is Thomas Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Trump administration.
In July, Homan spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Homan told the crowd that previous presidents under his service had promised to “secure the border,” adding that “Trump actually did that.”
“I love performing”
Leading Trump’s transition team are Howard Lutnick, chairman and chief executive of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, and Linda McMahon, who ran the Small Business Administration during Trump’s presidency. Two people familiar with the matter said Lutnick’s primary responsibility will be personnel, while McMahon will focus more on policy priorities.
A Trump ally said the guidance given to Lutnick and McMahon was not focused on the Cabinet, advisory positions or senior ambassadorships.
“This is the president’s job,” the person said. “Their responsibility is to make sure the government is fully equipped from day one,” meaning assistant secretaries and key components of the bureaucracy.
Trump’s transition advisers include his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. Late last month, Trump added two more allies to his transition effort: former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii.
A senior Trump official said another adviser from the beginning was Doug Hoelscher, who is also the president of transition programs at the America First Institute. AFPI is a tax exemption research group led by several former Trump administration officials.
Holschel, who served as director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs during the Trump administration, led AFPI to pave the way for the incoming administration, developing policy recommendations and plans to introduce Trump’s agenda on Day One.
There are a surprising number of variables in staffing the Trump administration. Removing someone from the Senate may be the surest path to Senate confirmation. However, if Republicans win control of the Senate but only with a slim majority, moderates such as Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine could defeat far-right candidates.
Another obstacle to withdrawing a nominee from the House or Senate is that doing so could eat into the Republican Party’s slim majority.
Sessions is a cautionary tale about what can go wrong. Sessions, then a Republican senator from Alabama, left in early 2017 to become Trump’s attorney general.
Republicans appear likely to keep the seat vacated by Sessions, given the state’s deep Republican voting base. But that didn’t happen.
The state’s Republican governor appointed Luther Strange to fill the vacant seat. Later that year, Strange lost the Republican primary runoff to Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.
However, Moore faces accusations of sexual misconduct. He subsequently lost a special election to Democrat Doug Jones, first time in 25 years Alabama elected a Democratic senator.
“The question is: When you set an aggressive agenda in the first 100 days, can you exhaust the best minds in Congress?” said one person familiar with Trump’s thinking.
Trump’s transition team is assembling a small team to help guide the nominee toward Senate confirmation. As president, he often relied on The Senate has not yet confirmed acting department officials to serve in these positions.
Trump told reporters in 2019, “I kind of like ‘acting’. It gives me more flexibility. Do you understand? I love ‘acting’.
Brookings Institution Report 2020 asserted, “Instead of selecting qualified individuals who can withstand Senate scrutiny, President Trump has sidelined the Senate’s role and placed loyalists in these key positions.”
Good-government advocates are concerned that he could bypass the Senate confirmation process and make more acting appointments in his new term. Steele said his last term showed it would be difficult to stop him from appointing acting officials if Congress was not prepared to uphold its constitutional prerogatives.
“The system is being challenged in ways that no one on Capitol Hill thought was possible or even unthinkable before,” he said. “I do think these are things worth raising given former President Trump’s past actions. Good question, and (I) would say it’s uncertain how the courts or the Senate might respond.”
