Team Trump: Who’s in and who’s out
The appointments, including key foreign policy, immigration and judicial position, represent Mr Trump’s vision and priorities for his return
Cameron Henderson. Benedict Smith
13 November 2024 1:58am GMT
Donald Trump is locked in talks with his closest advisors carefully vetting and picking his team to run the country in 2025.
Top government positions are being handed out to his most loyal followers and surrogates from the campaign trail, with meetings taking place in Mar-a-Lago to finalise selections.
The appointments - including key foreign policy, immigration and judicial position, represent Mr Trump’s vision and priorities for his return to the White House.
Chief of staff
Susie Wiles
Susie Wiles
was Donald Trump’s first appointment, a reward for managing his election campaign and return to the White House
It marks a rare moment in the spotlight for Ms Wiles, a veteran political operator who will now go down as the first woman in history to be appointed to the top Washington job.
Inside the freewheeling Trump campaign, she was seen as a steady hand who was able to impose some amount of order and discipline. Mr Trump, when he paid credit to her on election night, called her the “ice maiden”.
She is known to have good relations with Democrats, understands the workings of DC as a former lobbyist, and is a strategic thinker rather than a political hatchet-man.
Mr Trump had a famously fractious relationship with his chiefs in his first term, going through four in as many years. If Ms Wiles can be as effective inside the White House as she was outside it, then she will prove a savvy pick.
Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff
Stephen Miller is set to be Ms Wiles’s deputy. He is her opposite: a loud and polarising figure who enjoys the limelight and creates headlines with his rhetoric on immigration.
Whereas Ms Wiles is the effective backroom operator, Mr Miller brings a streak of ideological purity, having joined the Trump campaign as a senior policy adviser back in January 2016. He is now widely expected to be appointed deputy chief of staff.
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As the first Trump administration cycled between various “acting” homeland security secretaries, Mr Miller was seen as the real power in the department.
He was the architect of the controversial “Muslim ban”, and has been in charge of drawing up plans for the largest mass deportation in US history when Mr Trump returns to office.
The 39-year-old took to the stage at
Mr Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in October, where he declared: “America is for Americans and Americans only.”
His prominent role in the administration signals that immigration is at the heart of the incoming president’s policy priorities.
Government efficiency
Elon Musk
Billionaire Elon Musk will co-lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, Mr Trump confirmed on Tuesday night.
The Tesla boss will run it alongside
Vivek Ramaswamy, a Trump ally who ran against the president-elect for the Republican nomination.
Mr Musk had been widely tipped to play a key role in the new administration, having been one of the highes-profile figures on the campaign trail.
The acronym of the new department, DOGE, coincides with the name of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin that Mr Musk promotes.
Border ‘tsar’
Tom Homan
Tom Homan is another immigration hawk who was quickly appointed to the new Trump administration, being named as
the president’s “border tsar”.
A former border agent who became head of immigration enforcement in Mr Trump’s first term, he was the man behind the controversial policy that saw children separated from their parents when they crossed the border illegally.
Mr Trump later reversed the programme amid a backlash but the return of Mr Homan may signal that it is being considered as part of an immigration clampdown.
A bruiser who has drawn plaudits for Right-wingers, he is likely to be charged with pushing through
a hardline immigration agenda against the protests of Democrats.
If anything, he appears to be relishing the challenge – pledging to override Democratic governors and warning them to “get the hell out of the way” soon after his appointment.
UN ambassador
Elise Stefanik
Elise Stefanik will end up leaving Congress shortly after winning re-election after Mr Trump
announced her as his UN ambassador.
Once considered a moderate Republican voice, the 40-year-old Harvard graduate is a symbol of the party Mr Trump has remade in his own image, becoming one of his most ardent defenders after criticising him in 2016.
She is a staunch supporter of Israel and will represent the US at a body she has criticised as being actively hostile to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
Ms Stefanik also claims to have backed “every single” measure to aid Israel during her time in Congress, and just hours before her appointment became public accused the Biden administration of letting down “our great ally”.
She made headlines this year for questioning several Ivy League heads about anti-Semitism on campus,
several of whom later resigned.
Secretary of state
Marco Rubio
Mr Trump looks
set to pick Marco Rubio to the role of America’s top diplomat, despite nicknaming him “little Marco” as they clashed while competing for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
In the time since, however, the Florida senator has managed to ingratiate himself in the president-elect’s orbit, and earlier this year was seriously considered as a running mate
before losing out to JD Vance.
Mr Rubio would mark a more conventional pick as secretary of state, and his position in the Senate could smooth his confirmation. He is a foreign policy hawk, and particularly tough on Russia and China, as well as Venezuela.
In 2023, he authored legislation requiring a presidential exit from Nato to be supported by Congress – something that could potentially constrain the incoming president, who is
sceptical of the military alliance.
The Florida senator has earned a reputation as one of the Senate’s Iran hawks, and his appointment would signal the administration intends to take a tough stance on the regime.
In April, he opposed billions of dollars in military aid in Ukraine, and said that the war has reached a “stalemate” and needed to be “brought to a conclusion”.
National security advisor
Mike Waltz
Mike Waltz, a former Green Beret turned congressman, is tipped to become Mr Trump’s national security advisor when he returns to the White House in January.
Drawing on his special forces career, Mr Waltz has emerged as one of the key critics of the Biden administration, calling the withdrawal from Afghanistan a “horror movie” and complaining that it has gone far too soft on China.
Europe and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is taking up much-needed attention from the Pacific, where he believes China is a major threat.
“American munitions and defence production are aiding Ukraine instead of deterring Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific,” he wrote in The Economist this month.
As such, the US should “bring the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East to a swift conclusion, and finally focus strategic attention where it should be: countering the greater threat from the Chinese Communist Party”.
He may also resist the deal for Britain to
hand over the Chagos islands, where the US has a key military base. He sees the deal as a major capitulation to growing Chinese influence in the region.
Attorney general
Mike Davis
A Right-wing firebrand and regular guest on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Mike Davis’s appointment would turn heads for his pledge to go after Mr Trump’s enemies.
The lawyer and outspoken Trump loyalist has worked in all three branches of federal government – the Justice department, Congress and the Supreme Court – and has been privately touted as a potential attorney general by the president-elect, The Washington Post reported.
Under the previous Trump administration, Mr Davis, 46, helped the president-elect install two Supreme Court justices and greenlighted Mr Trump’s blitz of appointments to the lower courts in his role as a Senate aide.
Described by Mr Trump as “tough as hell”, Mr Davis has previously said he would like to send journalists to “the gulag” and put migrants in “cages”. Following Mr Trump’s election win, he wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he would like to drag Democrats’ “dead political bodies” through the streets and “burn” them.
Mike Lee
Mike Lee, 53, has been touted as one of Mr Trump’s top picks for the head of the justice department.
Like many of Mr Trump’s staunchest allies, the Utah senator has undergone something of a damascene conversion over the past decade. Having launched a last-ditch bid to block Mr Trump from winning the Republican nomination in 2016, he was heavily involved in efforts to keep the president-elect in power after the 2020 election.
Mr Lee has also been suggested by Mr Trump as a potential Supreme Court pick and is a vocal critic of the federal indictments against the president-elect. He has made working to limit the powers of the federal government central to his policy agenda.
Ken Paxton
Mr Trump has said he would consider Ken Paxton, 61, for the role of attorney general, describing him as a “very talented guy”.
The Texas attorney general is a Trump loyalist who waged an abortive legal challenge to the president-elect’s 2020 election defeat. He also spoke at the Trump rally that preceded the Capitol riot in January 2021.
Mr Trump has previously shown loyalty to Mr Paxton, coming to his defence last year after he was accused of accepting bribes. This and other legal challenges have loomed over the Texan for the past decade.
To repay this loyalty, Mr Paxton has gone out to bat for the president-elect, Jack Smith, the
prosecutor who has been pursuing Mr Trump, of “weaponising the justice system” in his indictments against Mr Trump.
Mr Paxton has waged legal battles on transgender issues and has taken a tough stance on immigration law. His appointment would put these issues front and centre of Mr Trump’s legal agenda.
Homeland security secretary
Kristi Noem
Kristi Noem, 52, is widely expected to be announced as Mr Trump’s homeland security secretary.
The South Dakota governor would be in charge of a broad brief, covering the border, cyber threats, emergency response and terrorism.
In her role, she is expected to work closely with Tom Homan and Stephen Miller to deliver
Mr Trump’s immigration agenda.
A Trump loyalist who rose to national attention during the pandemic for refusing to employ a statewide mask mandate, Ms Noem was once touted as a potential VP pick. However, the tide of GOP opinion turned against after she revealed, in a peculiar passage from her book, that she had once killed her pet dog because she didn’t think it was an effective hunter. The incident triggered widespread controversy and reportedly killed off her bid for vice-president.
Having dropped out of college aged 22 to run her family ranch, Ms Noem was elected as South Dakota’s first female governor in 2018.
During the presidential campaign, she danced alongside Mr Trump when his rally in Philadelphia descended into an impromptu disco. The footage went viral.
Energy secretary
Doug Burgum
Doug Burgum is seen as the most likely energy secretary pick after early reports that he was seen as the frontrunner to become Mr Trump’s “energy tsar”.
The former North Dakota governor, while running for the Republican nomination last year, made “dramatically” increasing energy production one of the key themes on his campaign website.
Mr Trump has constantly pushed his plans to unleash fossil fuel production on the campaign trail, and Mr Burgum is seen as a big backer of the oil and gas industry. That should be no surprise – more than half of the taxes collected by the state come from oil extraction and production taxes.
The president-elect has publicly praised his former primary rival, telling supporters at a rally this year that he “probably knows more about energy than anybody I know”.
Dan Brouillette
Dan Brouillette is seen as another potential energy secretary, having served in that role in Donald Trump’s first term between 2019 and 2021.
He would be more adept at navigating DC than Doug Burgum, having previously served as deputy energy secretary before reaching the top job, and before that working in the department for two years under George W. Bush.
Mr Brouillette spent a stint at the helm of lobbying group Edison Electric Institute, but stepped down in late October. It may signal that a return to government is on the cards.
Defence secretary
Pete Hegseth
In something of a showbiz Cabinet, Mr Trump
has picked a Fox News host to be his defence secretary.
Pete Hegseth, a former Army National Guard officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, currently hosts the weekend episodes of Fox & Friends, one of Mr Trump’s favourite TV shows.
He is reportedly a friend of the president-elect, who has often appeared on the programme.
Mr Hegseth, 44, lacks senior military or national security experience and takes on the role at a time of acute global divisions.
Treasury secretary
Robert Lighthizer
Robert Lighthizer, 77, served as Mr Trump’s trade representative for the entirety of his first term – a rare bit of continuity in the president elect’s orbit.
In that time, Mr Lighthizer slapped tariffs on China and strong-armed Canada and Mexico into renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.
He has played a leading role in economic preparations throughout the transition, specifically
on Mr Trump’s sweeping tariffs agenda.
On Tuesday night The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr Trump was considering making Mr Lighthizer is administration’s trade tsar.
Whether he serves Mr Trump as treasury secretary or returns to his previous role, as sources told the Financial Times, remains to be seen.
The former steel industry lawyer has spent his career railing against free trade and foreign competition, and his book, No Trade Is Free, is a searing rebuttal of the consensus that encouraged trade liberalisation.
His policy agenda closely mirrors that of Mr Trump, and his appointment would likely signal a full-blooded continuation of the tariff agenda pursued during the president-elect’s first term.
John Paulson
Reports suggested Mr Trump has privately touted John Paulson as his treasury secretary. And in a recent interview, Mr Paulson outlined how he would work with Elon Musk in Mr Trump’s administration.
The 68-year-old billionaire hedge fund manager is a long-term Trump supporter, having donated to all three of his presidential campaigns. In April, he hosted a fundraiser at his Palm Beach home that raised $50.5 million for the president-elect.
Mr Paulson has said he would prioritise tax cuts and slashing federal spending, with a particular focus on cutting green energy subsidies (a favourite Trump talking point.)
“All of these tax subsidies for solar, for wind, inefficient, uneconomic energy sources,” Mr Paulson told the Wall Street Journal. “Eliminate that. That brings down spending.”
The Wall Street titan made much of his estimated $4.9 billion fortune in the lead up to the 2008 financial crash by betting against the US subprime mortgage lending market.
But Mr Paulson has since ruled himself out of consideration owing to “complex financial obligations”.
He said: “My complex financial obligations would prevent me from holding an official position in President Trump’s administration at this time,” adding that he would continue to work with Mr Trump on implementing his policy agenda.
Howard Lutnick
Howard Lutnick, 63, is the co-chair of Mr Trump’s transition team tasked with staffing thousands of roles in the incoming administration.
The billionaire chief executive of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald has been a major fundraiser for Mr Trump, first publicly supporting him in 2020.
He has also been a vocal proponent, speaking at the president-elect’s controversial Madison Square Garden rally,
which Democrats compared to a Nazi gathering.
Should Mr Lutnick be asked to lead the Treasury, it would throw up potential conflict of interest. The department is currently investigating the cryptocurrency firm Tether, which he has promoted.
The digital currency has allegedly been used by Mexican drug cartels to facilitate payments, and as Treasury Secretary, Mr Lutnick would have oversight of any possible sanctions against the firm.
The offices of Cantor Fitzgerald were formerly based at the World Trade Centre, and on 9/11 Mr Lutnick lost hundreds of employees as well as his brother. He is known for his charity efforts to support families affected by the attacks.
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