Trump’s emerging team of loyalists is primed for a fast start in his second term
CNN
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
(CNN) — Donald Trump is doing exactly what his sweeping election win entitled him to do by systematically building a governing team in his own hardline MAGA image.
What may end up as the modern age’s most right-wing West Wing will target Washington elites and undocumented migrants, seek to shred the regulatory state and tell the rest of the world that from now on, it’s America First.
The shape of Trump’s second administration is emerging from his Mar-a-Lago resort, where he’s being feted by club members amid a circus atmosphere enlivened by the presence of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
Each of the president-elect’s new picks for top jobs has been enough to send shudders down liberals’ spines. And that was part of the point.
Stephen Miller, last seen in public declaring that “America is for Americans and Americans only” at Trump’s seething Madison Square Garden rally, is expected to be named as White House deputy chief of staff for policy, CNN reported, a position in which he’d likely choreograph mass deportations.
Tom Homan, the pick for “border czar,” sports a gruff persona that’s a good fit for a president-elect who loves a tough guy. He played to type Monday by going on Fox News, where he has served for years as a pundit, and warning Democratic governors who try to block deportations “to get the hell out of the way.”
And CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reported early Tuesday that South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who has been a fervent supporter of Trump dating back to his first term, is his pick for secretary of Homeland Security. Noem is a heroine of the MAGA movement and star of conservative media. If confirmed for the role, she would form an uncompromising trio of officials responsible for border enforcement alongside Miller and Homan.
While Trump’s word will be law in the new administration, the president-elect’s national security picks so far suggest a more mainstream Republican approach to foreign policy than those for immigration.
Trump is likely to nominate Marco Rubio as secretary of state, Collins also reported. The Florida senator crudely mocked Trump on the 2016 campaign trail and was seen as the kind of neoconservative whom the president-elect’s fans love to hate. But Rubio has long since converted to Trumpism, and at the Republican National Convention this summer told the nation, “The only way to make America wealthy and safe and strong again is to make Donald J. Trump our president again.” Rubio’s likely selection was first reported by The New York Times.
Trump’s choice for UN ambassador is House GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik, whose career rocketed after she ditched mainstream conservatism to become one of Trump’s top defenders. “I stand ready to advance President Donald J. Trump’s restoration of America First peace through strength leadership on the world stage on Day One at the United Nations,” the New York congresswoman said in a statement.
On Monday evening, sources said Trump asked Florida Rep. Mike Waltz to be national security adviser in a move that will send shockwaves across the Atlantic given the former Green Beret’s warning this year that “it’s time for allies to invest in their own security” and that US taxpayers had footed “the bill for far too long.”
Rubio, Waltz and Stefanik are all hardcore China hawks and their selection offers a clear pointer of how Trump’s policy will develop toward America’s new superpower rival.
The president-elect also tapped former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin to head the Environmental Protection Agency, despite or because of his rock-bottom ratings from progressive green groups while in the House. The last two Democratic presidents have used the EPA’s regulatory powers to try to fight climate change. But Zeldin pledged to implement Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” energy policy and framed his responsibilities as “protecting access to clean air and water,” paraphrasing his new boss’ non sequitur that he uses when asked about global warming.
The one thing the new picks have in common
Given Trump’s unpredictability, no staff pick is ever certain until it’s official. And even then, many staff don’t last long.
But each selection or anticipated pick so far has one thing in common: Ultra-loyalty to Trump, especially during his indictment-strewn post-presidency. Each person is known for paying the kind of exaggerated homage in television interviews that the president-elect adores. A sense of betrayal often burned in Trump’s first term when members of government prioritized their oath to the Constitution over their fealty to him, as was the case with former FBI chief James Comey and many others.
The drip-drip of top government picks suggests a level of planning and organization absent from Trump’s first transition in 2016 and may reflect the influence of incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who ran an efficient general election campaign in parallel to the president-elect’s outlandish eruptions at his rallies and on social media. It’s far too soon to say, however, whether the current approach will be repeated in the White House. Often during Trump’s first term, he trampled over his agenda by openly feuding with members of his administration on whom he quickly soured.
The likes of Rubio, Waltz, Stefanik, Zeldin, Homan, Noem and especially Miller are anathema to Trump critics who fear that the president-elect will head off in extreme directions. But each of these picks personifies one aspect of the president-elect’s political beliefs and instincts. And their own positions reflect the desire for shakeups in Washington and in US global policy that motivated many of the tens of millions of voters in Trump’s election majority.
Most are also accomplished and – perhaps with the exception of Miller, who is regarded by critics as a hard-core extremist – within the parameters of people typically chosen for administrations. If they are all far to the right, they only parallel the movement of the GOP and its voters during the Trump era.
Rubio, a former presidential candidate, is well known around the world and serves on the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees. Stefanik is a Harvard graduate, former George W. Bush West Wing aide and one of the highest-ranking Republican women ever to serve in the House. Waltz, who served multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa, was awarded four Bronze stars and worked for Defense Secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates. Homan, as former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is steeped in border issues, even if his opponents regard his manner as somewhat callous. Zeldin is an Army veteran and an ex-congressman who waged a closer-than-expected bid for New York governor.
Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as a Trump White House communications director, summed up his selections so far as “people who inarguably have the credentials to be there and you have a sense of what they are going to do.” Griffin, now a CNN commentator who has often criticized Trump, told CNN’s Erin Burnett that the rapidity of her former boss’ government-in-waiting selections struck a contrast with the personnel scramble of his first administration.
How far will Trump go?
Trump’s picks of Miller and Homan suggest there’s no stepping back from his vows to launch a massive deportation of undocumented migrants, which was the foundation of the most extreme closing argument of any presidential candidate in recent memory.
Homan was asked in a recent interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” if there was an alternative to separating migrants tagged for deportation from their parents — a policy that caused uproar during the first Trump term. “Of course there is. Families can be deported together,” he said.
Miller was a powerful White House aide in Trump’s first term, authoring much of his most fiery scripted rhetoric as a speechwriter. His hardline ideology was on display at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February when he argued immigration policy was simple. “Seal the border. No illegals in, everyone that’s here goes out — that’s very straightforward.” Miller added that the next step was to grab undocumented migrants and move them to “large-scale staging grounds” where planes would be waiting.
Yet despite these draconian visions, there’s uncertainty about how far Trump will go in his deportation program and whether it matches his dystopian speeches. Homan, for example, said the idea that there would be “concentration camps” and mass sweeps through neighborhoods is ridiculous.
The president-elect has the luxury of not running for reelection in 2028, so in theory he’s got nothing to lose. But he has sometimes balked at taking steps that might result in extreme unpopularity. Stiff legal challenges that are being drawn up by civil liberties groups and immigrant advocates could, meanwhile, slow deportations. And expelling millions of undocumented migrants could be hugely expensive, could disrupt the labor market, anger big business and complicate supply chains – all of which could hurt the economy and weigh on the future president.
Many Democrats and Republicans could agree on Trump’s vow to start by deporting criminal undocumented migrants — the easiest part of his plan. But the next stages are where the politics could get dicey for Trump.
Chad Wolf, a former acting Homeland Security secretary in the first Trump term, appeared to indicate that were still gray areas in the full extent of the president-elect’s intentions but that a far wider enforcement operation would be possible. “It may be a tough political position, but there are criminals here today that aren’t being removed,” Wolf told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday, complaining that the Biden administration had fallen short in this area. “This idea that you are going to exempt whole classes of individuals from the law, I don’t think that should be the case,” Wolf said, allowing that there were other mechanisms for workers to come into the US economy legally or for some undocumented migrants to obtain legal status from outside the country if they are married to US citizens.
Trump’s critics and vulnerable undocumented migrants, however, will find little in the president-elect’s new staff picks to offer them comfort.
Trump’s new foreign policy begins to emerge
Similar uncertainty surrounds Trump’s second-term foreign policy.
Unlike Trump, Rubio has been no friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, though he has lately defended the president-elect’s position that the war in Ukraine must end.
Waltz was an opponent of the Biden administration’s attempts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. These positions are far to the right of many boilerplate policies of America’s Western allies and some Democratic Party leaders. But they are in line with the orthodoxy of the GOP and millions of its voters.
And Rubio and Waltz are more conventional on foreign policy than some of the most isolationist members of the broader Trump coalition. On the critical question of Ukraine, Waltz criticized the Biden administration’s policy of arming President Volodymyr Zelensky’s forces to repel Russia’s invasion as “too little, too late.” But he also backed Trump’s positions this year that it was time for Europe to bear the burden of supporting Ukraine because the US needed to concentrate on its own borders.
In every incoming presidential administration, staffing is important and provides ideological clues to how a White House will act. Given Trump’s record of extraordinary turnover of aides, however, nothing may be permanent.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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