Do you know what happens to people who criticize the Spritzler Report out of habit? Nothing. I have no idea why these people disappeared. Maybe they went on vacation. Why are you asking me?
Loyalty Is Common Thread as Trump Fills Foreign Policy, Immigration Jobs
Trump settles on GOP lawmakers for key posts in a bid to avoid infighting that frustrated him in his first term
By Alexander Ward, WSJ
Updated Nov. 12, 2024 8:15 pm ET
WASHINGTON—President-elect Donald Trump is stocking his cabinet and White House staff with loyalists with deep congressional experience who back his agenda on immigration and foreign policy—mostly shunning establishment Republicans whom he blames for thwarting his first-term goals.
Trump said Tuesday he plans to nominate the Fox News host and Army veteran Pete Hegseth to serve as secretary of defense. Earlier, he named John Ratcliffe to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. Ratcliffe, a Republican, is a hawkish former House member from Texas who served as director of national intelligence in the first Trump administration.
Additionally, the president-elect picked Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk and the biotech company founder Vivek Ramaswamy, who competed against Trump for this year’s Republican presidential nomination, to lead an effort to cut spending, eliminate regulations and restructure federal agencies.
Also on Tuesday, Trump named Rep. Mike Waltz (R., Fla.), a former Army Green Beret who shares the former president’s views on illegal immigration and skepticism of U.S. support for Ukraine, to be his national security adviser, according to people familiar with the discussion. The job, which Trump has elevated to cabinet rank, doesn’t require Senate confirmation.
John Ratcliffe served as director of national intelligence in the first Trump administration. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg News
Trump hasn’t signaled whom he will pick as Treasury secretary. Among the candidates for that post is the hedge-fund manager Scott Bessent, who publicly backed Trump during the campaign. John Paulson, another Trump supporter and a billionaire investor, removed himself from contention Tuesday.
Some of Trump’s closest advisers are seeking to block candidates deemed insufficiently loyal for other top administration posts, fearing they could derail or slow-roll his priorities.
It won’t be easy to achieve the unanimity that Trump and some advisers want. To ensure Senate confirmation he might be forced to turn to some candidates who are at odds with him in important respects. Disagreements between agencies and members of his team were rife in his first term and are likely to reappear, current and former officials said.
Trump has also said he would nominate Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.), the first lawmaker to endorse his re-election bid, as ambassador to the United Nations and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to be ambassador to Israel. He has named the immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff for policy. Tom Homan, a champion of family separation, will be the new “border czar.” Former Republican lawmaker Lee Zeldin was nominated to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Trump said Monday.
Trump said Tuesday that he has chosen South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to lead the Department of Homeland Security. Noem, a longtime Trump ally previously considered to be his running mate, will play a crucial role implementing his border policies, alongside Homan and Miller.
His choice as White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is known for delivering candid advice but isn’t confrontational and doesn’t seek the spotlight—traits that have gotten other Trump insiders into trouble. The discipline she brought to the campaign, said people close to the incoming president, earned her credit with Trump, who wanted to send a message about the disciplined operation he plans to lead this time.
“What Trump will look for in senior nominees in a second term is fealty. He wants ‘yes men’ and ‘yes women,’” said John Bolton, who was national-security adviser during Trump’s first term but is now one his most outspoken critics.
Trump has rejected Mike Pompeo, who served as the CIA chief and secretary of state in the first term but has been a strong supporter of U.S. assistance to Ukraine, and Nikki Haley, Trump’s top presidential rival and former envoy to the U.N. who broke with him over support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“I very much enjoyed and appreciated working with them previously, and would like to thank them for their service to our Country,” Trump said Saturday in a social-media post, referring to Pompeo and Haley. Responding the following day, Donald Trump Jr. said in a social-media post he was working on keeping other job seekers who didn’t share his father’s agenda out of the administration.
Former top aides such as Robert O’Brien, Trump’s fourth and last national-security adviser, are open to serving again but aren’t sure they will be asked to join the administration.
“The president has a great group of people to select his cabinet from. I’m enthusiastic about the prospects for the country,” O’Brien said. “If I remain in the private sector, which is likely, I will be cheering on the president and his team for huge successes.”
Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s choice for White House chief of staff, is known for delivering candid advice without seeking the spotlight. Photo: carlos barria/Reuters
With more like-minded advisers, the hope is Trump can pursue his “America First” agenda with fewer restraints, people who served on the Trump campaign said. But a team that shuns dissenting views also brings risks, according to former officials and analysts.
“Trump looks set on bringing in a team that prizes loyalty, which could instill some message discipline but also risks group think,” said Richard Fontaine of the Center for a New American Security, a centrist Washington think tank.
Trump doesn’t make decisions in an orderly process, often announcing them without consulting advisers or through social media. Staffers during the first term often tried to walk back some of those decisions. Loyalists are more likely to carry them out without providing alternative ideas or debating the pitfalls, analysts said.
The president-elect has long said he would end American involvement in overseas wars, erect new trade barriers and force allies in Europe and Asia to share more in defense costs. During his first term, his advisers often pushed back against his more-ambitious policies, occasionally persuading him to back off and other times slow-rolling his orders.
Several generals he placed in top jobs at the Pentagon and White House because he saw them as able to get results often proved to be obstacles to some of his most far-reaching national security plans.
Trump wanted U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, but it wasn’t until February 2020 that the administration struck a deal with the Taliban to withdraw several thousand remaining troops——but only after President Biden took office.
Donald Trump was elected president, defeating a resurgent Democratic nominee in Vice President Kamala Harris. WSJ’s Molly Ball and Vivian Salama examine the moments that mattered most during his campaign. Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press
After Trump lost the 2020 election but before leaving office, he signed a directive pushed by loyalists and not seen by senior Pentagon leaders to remove all troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Germany and across Africa. Trump eventually canceled the order but only after a conversation with O’Brien, then his national security adviser, who said it hadn’t gone through proper channels.
The journalist Bob Woodward reported in his book “Fear” that Gary Cohn, the chief economic adviser in the White House, stole a 2017 letter off the Resolute Desk that, if signed by Trump, could have ended a key free-trade deal with South Korea, a staunch ally. Trump denied that any aides took letters or other documents off his desk, even though Woodward reproduced the letter in his book.
As he constructs his second-term cabinet, Trump has turned to rivals who once derided his antiestablishment message but whose views have moved closer to his own. When Rubio ran for president in 2016, he taunted Trump at campaign stops and during debates, questioning his wealth, his temperament and even the size of his hands. Trump countered the attacks by referring to Rubio as “Little Marco” and calling him “a lightweight.”
But in a video statement posted on social media earlier this month, Rubio echoed Trump’s criticism of the Ukraine war, saying the Biden administration’s military aid to Kyiv was “funding a stalemate” that “needs to be brought to a conclusion.”
Unlike Trump, who has called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “genius” and “savvy” for the Ukraine invasion, Rubio said seeking to end the war “doesn’t mean we celebrate what Vladimir Putin did or are excited about it. But there needs to be some common sense.”
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