WASHINGTON — For many people responding to President Donald Trump, the job was a risk-reward proposition like no other.
He had a chance to win favor and shape national policy. And there was the possibility of misbehaving with the boss and being humiliated in public.
Cabinet secretaries have come and gone in the Trump administration head spinning circulation.
Former advisers quit memories in turn, he explained his frustrations with Trump, who used his massive public platform insult them.
If he returns to the White House, Trump will once again have to assemble a leadership team — made all the more daunting by his past record and ability to win Senate confirmation for the loyalists needed to carry out his orders.
In preparation, Trump’s advisers are preparing to lead the executive branch if he wins in November, a transition process customary for presidential candidates. Allies compile shortlists of potential job candidates and create special teams to guide any candidate toward Senate confirmation.
The transition work is going quietly out of the public eye and out of the election campaign. Unwilling to tempt fate by pretending the election is already won, Trump has kept some distance from his transition operation, said a person familiar with the plan who, like others in this article, spoke on condition of anonymity.
After defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016, Trump noted that he had assembled an effective transition team but lost anyway because “everyone was measuring the curtains in Washington,” a person familiar with Trump’s comments said at the time.
However, Trump’s transition that year was famously chaotic. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie led the effort, but was sidelined and saw much of his work thrown out after Trump’s stunning upset victory.
This time, several dozen people are working on Trump’s potential transition and expect to complete a thorough vetting of possible Cabinet picks before the election, a person familiar with the planning said.
They had to act quickly. Trump’s campaign last month named transition leaders on a shortened schedule to carry out its work, an expert on presidential transitions said.
“Relative to modern practice, the Trump team was slow to announce transition operations,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. “They’ve been the presumptive candidate for quite some time, and the normal timeline would be to start in the spring as opposed to the late spring or early fall.”
“With the team they’ve chosen, it’s not clear that they have the government experience that’s key to success,” Stier said. “When thinking about the expertise you need, deep expertise is at the top of the list. Names [of people running the Trump transition] they speak for themselves.”
Vice President Kamala Harris’ advisers are also bracing for a possible victory in November as both campaigns try to make the most of the new president’s first 100 days, when his political capital is at its peak.
Their duties differ in that Harris is already part of the current Democratic administration and has the ability to keep officials in place if he chooses.
Trump would create a Cabinet from scratch. His different challenge would be finding people who are loyal to him — always a priority for Trump, but who are respected enough in their fields to win Senate confirmation.
“He wouldn’t have a hard time staffing the Cabinet,” Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said in an interview. “The question will be whether they are people of stature or ability and whether they are suitable for the job required and can be approved.”
“I think it’s unlikely he’ll get a group of generals like last time,” Romney added, referring to James Mattis, HR McMaster and John Kelly, who were generals before taking top positions in the Trump administration. (Romney, a Trump critic, is retiring from the Senate and will not be in office next year to vote on nominees for the next president.)
‘Fishing for them in a small pond’
If potential candidates don’t like what they see in Trump’s presidency or fear his wrath, it may be difficult to find people to serve.
Trump called William Barr, one of his former attorneys general. “pig without pole” and another, Jeff Sessions, “weak and ineffective”. He tagged Defense Secretary Mark Esper. “light” and another, Mattis, “The world’s most underrated general.”
“There are a lot of good people out there, but Trump would be fishing in a smaller pond for them,” said Mark Short, Trump’s first White House director of legislative affairs and later chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence. .
“He was fun,” Short said of Trump. “He’s welcoming and kind to the staff. But he has a way of getting information from so many different sources. So you always had to adapt and stay on your toes.”
A Trump ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-C., said he was confident Trump would surround himself with capable officials.
“This idea that somehow he can’t have a good team is ridiculous,” Graham said in an interview. “He’s going to have a really good team.”
Among Trump’s candidates for secretary of state are Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, as well as former White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien, according to people familiar with the plan.
A crucial position in another Trump presidency will be the attorney general. Since he left office, state and federal prosecutors have brought multiple criminal charges against Trump stemming from efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He pleaded not guilty in all cases. Those indictments are unlikely to be resolved before the next president is sworn in. Whether Trump or Harris wins, the next attorney general will inevitably handle Trump’s case.
Trump’s top attorney general candidates include Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
“As I look at his first term as president — and hopefully his only term — I’m concerned about the type of person he’s elected and whether he has the backbone, because he’s going to say something outlandish. If he has the chance, I’m sure the Judiciary Committee Chairman, D-Ill.
Potential defense secretary picks include Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., and Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state and CIA director, according to people familiar with the transition plan.
Another position that will loom large in the Trump administration is secretary of homeland security. “Whoever serves will have fulfilled Trump’s mandate to crack down on illegal immigration and implement what his campaign said.”The largest deportation operation in American history.”
The front-runner for the top homeland security post 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. Former presidents he worked with promised to “secure the border,” Homan told the crowd, adding that “Trump actually did that.”
‘I love acting’
Trump’s transition team is led by Howard Lutnick, chairman and CEO of financial services provider Cantor Fitzgerald, and Linda McMahon, who ran the Small Business Administration during Trump’s presidency. Lutnick’s primary role is personnel, while McMahon focuses more on policy priorities, said two people familiar with their work.
A Trump ally said Lutnick and McMahon were instructed not to focus on Cabinet, advisory positions or high-level embassies.
“That’s the president’s job,” he said. Meaning assistant secretaries and core components of the bureaucracy, “Their responsibility is to make sure that the administration is fully staffed from day one.
Trump’s transition advisers include his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. Late last month, Trump added two more allies to the transition operation: former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and former Democratic representative of Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard.
A senior Trump official said another adviser early on was Doug Hoelscher, chairman of the America First Policy Institute’s transition project. AFPI is a tax-exempt research group led by a number of former Trump administration officials.
Hoelscher, who served as director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs during the Trump administration, has led AFPI’s efforts to smooth the way for the incoming administration with policy recommendations and plans to get on Trump’s agenda on day one.
There are a surprising number of variables in the Trump administration. Impeaching someone from the Senate may offer the surest path to Senate confirmation. If Republicans win control of the Senate, but only a slim majority, moderates like Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins could beat out a far-right candidate.
Another obstacle to removing nominees from the House or Senate is that it can eat away at a slim GOP majority.
Sessions are a warning of what could go wrong. Sessions, then a Republican senator from Alabama, left in early 2017 to become Trump’s attorney general.
Given the state’s deep Republican voting base, it seemed likely that Republicans would unseat Sessions. But this did not happen.
The state’s Republican governor appointed Luther Strange to the open seat. Later that year, Strange lost to former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore in the Republican primary runoff.
Moore has faced allegations of sexual abuse. He lost to Democrat Doug Jones in a special election. For the first time in 25 years That Alabama elected a Democrat to the Senate.
“The question is: Can you drain Congress of their best people when you have to have an aggressive agenda in the first 100 days?” Someone familiar with Trump’s thinking said.
Trump’s transition team is assembling small teams of people who will help shepherd the nominees through to Senate confirmation. As president, he was often relied upon Temporary department officials not approved by the Senate for these roles.
Speaking to journalists in 2019, Trump said: “I like ‘acting’. This gives me more flexibility. Do you understand that? I like ‘acting’.’
Brookings Institution report In 2020, he argued that “Rather than identify qualified individuals who can withstand Senate scrutiny, President Trump has sidelined the role of the chamber and placed loyalists in these critical positions.”
What worries good government advocates is that it could bypass the Senate confirmation process in the new term and put more people into action. His last term showed that without a Congress willing to defend its constitutional prerogatives, it was difficult to stop him from appointing executive officers, Stier said.
“The system is being tested in ways that no one on Capitol Hill could have imagined or even imagined before,” he said. “I think these are good questions given the past actions of former President Trump and [I] They will say that the picture is unclear as to how the courts, or the Senate for that matter, might respond.