What White House picks tell us about Trump 2.0
Trump chose Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who has been critical of China in the past, to be US ambassador to the United Nations.
- Published
A week after Donald Trump won a second-term in the White House, the contours of his new presidency have started taking shape.
The president-elect has announced nearly a dozen appointees, the first steps toward filling out his White House staff and key government departments. He also made comments to the media and on social media that highlight what his priorities will be upon taking office in January, with a special focus on immigration and foreign policy.
After a sometimes chaotic start to his first term, Trump is laying the groundwork for his next administration with a more clearly defined plan - and personnel ready to enact it.
Here’s a look at what we’ve learned so far.
A hard-line immigration team in place
Some of Trump’s newly revealed appointments suggest that the president-elect’s campaign promise to deport millions of undocumented migrants living in the US is no exaggeration.
Stephen Miller, who has been Trump’s close adviser and speechwriter since 2015, is Trump’s choice for White House deputy chief of staff for policy. He will likely shape any plans for mass deportations - and pare back both undocumented and legal immigration. During Trump's first term, Miller was involved in developing some of the administration's strictest immigration policies.
Thomas Homan, acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency in Trump’s first term, supported the president’s policy of separating undocumented families detained at the US-Mexico border. Now he’s back with an even broader portfolio, as Trump’s “immigration tsar”.
“I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen,” Homan said at a conservative conference in July.
Critics have warned that Trump’s mass deportation plan could cost upwards of $300bn. In an interview with NBC News last week, however, the president-elect said cost was not an issue.
“When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here,” he said. “There is no price tag.”
China hawks take flight
Many conservatives believe that China poses the single greatest threat to continued US global dominance, both economically and militarily. While Trump has been more circumspect, limiting most of his China critiques to the realm of trade, he is filling his foreign policy team with vocal China critics.
The president-elect picked Florida Congressman Mike Waltz, a retired Army colonel, as his national security adviser – a key foreign policy post within the White House. Waltz has said the US is in a “cold war” with China and was one of the first members of Congress to call for a US boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
In October, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick for US ambassador to the UN, accused China of “blatant and malicious election interference” amid reports that China-backed hackers attempted to gather information from the former president’s phones.
While Trump has yet to officially name his choice for secretary of state, Florida Senator Marco Rubio – another China hawk – appears to be the leading contender for the top diplomatic job. In 2020, Rubio was sanctioned by the Chinese government after he pushed measures to punish the nation for its crackdown on pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong.
US-China relations were often rocky during Trump's first term, amidst trade disputes and the Covid pandemic. The Biden administration, which kept many of Trump's China tariffs and imposed some new ones, only somewhat calmed the waters. Now it looks like the next Trump administration will pick up where the last one left off.
Musk's new role
While the list of Trump’s political appointees grows, there’s another group that stays small – and exceedingly influential.
Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, has been a full-time presence at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago transition headquarters. According to media reports, he is advising the president-elect on cabinet nominees and even joined a conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week.
On Tuesday night, Trump announced that he was assigning Musk to work with tech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in a "department of government efficiency" tasked with identifying new budget cuts.
Musk has regularly offered his political opinions on his social media platform X, including endorsing Florida Senator Rick Scott’s bid to be the next Senate majority leader.
Musk’s political action committee spent around $200m to help Trump’s presidential campaign, and he promises to continue to fund the group’s efforts to advance the president-elect’s agenda and help Republican candidates in upcoming congressional elections.
Meanwhile, it remains to be seen where Robert F Kennedy Jr, another key figure, lands. Trump has said that he plans to give the former Democrat and vaccine sceptic, who abandoned his independent bid and endorsed the Republican, a role in making America “healthy” again.
“He wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him go to it,” Trump said in his election victory speech.
Prioritising presidential power over Congress
As Trump takes office, Republicans have control of the Senate and could still take the House, albeit by a slim margin. However, the president-elect’s early actions suggest he is more concerned with exercising his presidential power than working with the legislative branch.
Last week, he posted on social media that the Senate’s Republican leadership should smooth the way for more presidential “recess appointments” – allowing him to fill top administration jobs without Senate approval when Congress is not in session. The move would strengthen presidential power by undercutting the chamber’s constitutional role to “advise and consent” on political appointees.
Meanwhile, the president-elect keeps chipping away at those narrow congressional majorities. Senators who move to administration roles can quickly be replaced by appointment from the governor of their home state. But any House vacancies – such as ones created by Stefanik and Waltz’s departures – require special elections that can take months to schedule.
Some of Trump’s advisers, including Musk, have warned that the president-elect could be endangering his legislative agenda if he plucks too many more Republicans from the chambers.
Even in the best of circumstances, congressional legislation takes time, effort and compromise. Executive action, such as new immigration enforcement, can be done with the stroke of a presidential pen.
Trump’s actions indicate he is, at least at the moment, more focused on the latter.
Rewarding loyalists
Trump has only just begun filling out the thousands of jobs that open up with a new presidential administration, not including the senior-level career bureaucrats he has said he will replace.
In 2016, as a political newcomer, he had to rely on more establishment Republicans for key roles. This time, he has a wealth of prospective candidates with proven track records of supporting him and after eight years, Trump loyalists are the Republican establishment.
On Tuesday, Trump named South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary, and Fox News host and conservative author Pete Hegseth as defence secretary.
The latter has been particularly controversial, given his lack of experience navigating the sprawling US military bureaucracy and penchant for inflammatory remarks. For Trump, however, status as an outsider and a willingness to lean into hot-button cultural issues are a strength, not a flaw.
And above all else, Hegseth and Noem have been fierce Trump defenders from the start.
Some of Trump’s other picks, like Rubio and Stefanik, were critics of Trump early in his first presidential bid, but they have now spent years demonstrating that their harsh words are a thing of the past.
Rubio, who ran for president against Trump in 2016, may still have White House ambitions, however. Trump often soured on appointees who seemed drawn to the limelight during his first term, and even the warmest of relationships could go bad.
Trump may be placing a premium on loyalty with his early staff announcements, but the pressures of governing ultimately will reveal whether his second four years in office end up different from his first.
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North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of US politics in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.