Dreams of an Orderly Trump Transition Are Slipping Away

Everyone's vying for jobs, some publicly, some privately

Last time that Donald Trump won the presidency, the transition such as it was went sideways very quickly with Jared Kushner pushing out Chris Christie and a clamoring group of people who scrambled for jobs in the incoming administration. This time around, things were supposed to be more deliberative and orderly — except that everyone in Washington claimed to be the one true organization managing who goes where in the cabinet, and it was always evident that Trump was once again going to be the boss instead of just taking a slate of candidates for the key jobs. So here we are again with a public/private lobbying spree for the key jobs with many people playing a media-focused game, calling for support from those who have Trump’s ear and those who want to seem to have Trump’s ear, as if that’s ever a permanent position to occupy.

The lobbying efforts are most vociferous and public in the arena of national security and foreign policy — where everyone who isn’t the person who wants the job is depicted as a warmongering neocon, regardless of their ideology or record. That didn’t prevent Elise Stefanik from getting the United Nations’ Ambassador offer, but it did keep Nikki Haley and (more surprisingly) Mike Pompeo out of the administration.

Jay Solomon runs through what led to the rejections:

Key protagonists in this early struggle include, on one side, Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr.; talk show host Tucker Carlson; billionaire industrialist Elon Musk; and a politically incongruous mix of viral podcasters and politicians. On the other side are several people from Trump’s first term, leading Republican lawmakers, and military veterans.

This conflict over the transition claimed its first victims on Saturday when Trump announced on social media that two stalwarts from his first administration—former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and ex-ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley—won’t be serving in his second term. “There were at least 25 people who called the president and said: ‘It’s got to be Mike Pompeo,’ ” a senior Republican official told The Free Press. “And none of it mattered.” 

The defenestration of Pompeo and Haley, followed by some political muscle-flexing on X by Trump Jr. and Carlson, unnerved a number of Republican leaders and Trump administration veterans involved in the transition. Talking on background to The Free Press Sunday, they said they fear Trump’s inner circle is pushing for a national security team that will be reluctant to use U.S. military power to back American allies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. 

Such a strategic shift inward could almost immediately undermine Ukraine’s military operations against Russia and Israel’s war against Iran and its proxies, they warned. “I think there’s a new inner circle around Trump that is pushing him toward allowing Putin, Xi Jinping, and Iran to kind of do whatever they want to do, into a new isolationist approach, which we really haven’t seen before,” said a Republican national security strategist who held a senior post in the first Trump administration.

Trump campaigned against embroiling the U.S. in “forever wars” and has voiced skepticism about Ukraine’s ability to push Russian forces off their lands. Carlson and other public personalities who backed Trump, such as the venture capitalist and podcaster David Sacks, have argued that U.S. and NATO military deployments essentially forced Russian president Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. Israeli media has reported that Trump wants Israel to wrap up its war in the Gaza Strip by the time of his inauguration.

There’s also a growing concern that Trump may rely mainly on political loyalists rather than seasoned national security staffers. It’s a temptation he largely resisted during his first term, though he moved in that direction toward its end. “Don Jr. and Grenell and Tucker have his ear in a way that’s very dangerous,” the first Republican leader told The Free Press on Sunday, referring to Ric Grenell, a close campaign adviser and former ambassador to Germany. 

Others involved in the transition, though, cautioned against overreacting to the moves against Pompeo and Haley, and said Trump would build a balanced and experienced team. “I’d give it time,” said a third senior veteran from Trump’s first foreign policy team. “The president is pragmatic, and he’s very clear about what he wants to do this time.”

Many in the Republican establishment had seen Pompeo as the lead candidate to head the Pentagon, where he could continue to promote tough policies against China, Russia, and Iran. Haley, who initially ran against Trump in the Republican primaries, shares many of Pompeo’s views. 

Trump’s decision followed lobbying from advisers, both formal and informal, who saw Pompeo and Haley as both politically disloyal and overly willing to use military force, top Republican leaders and members of Trump’s transition team told The Free Press. Among those who lobbied against Pompeo and Haley were Trump Jr., Carlson, Grenell, and former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who publicly campaigned for Trump.

The younger Trump did little on Sunday to hide his lobbying against Pompeo. He wrote on X that he was “100!!! I’m on it” in response to a post by libertarian comedian Dave Smith, which read: “The ‘stop Pompeo’ movement is great but it’s not enough. Right now we need maximum pressure to keep all neocons and war hawks out of the Trump administration.”

I’d expect this administration to be more balanced than the people involved in these organized campaigns necessarily want it to be. It isn’t a big deal to not have Nikki Haley or several of the other first termers back, so much as achieving a better balance between Trump’s approach to national security — which is falsely described as isolationist — and traditional Republican pro-military types. The challenges are innumerable: The Israel-Iran conflict, the war in Ukraine, a saber-rattling North Korea, an encroaching China, and of course the top priority of taking on the failing cartel-run Mexican state across our southern border for the sake of stopping migrants, drugs, trafficking, and threats to our security. This isn’t a job for just one person or perspective — especially not one inexperienced and naive in the ways of diplomacy and deterrence.

One particularly uncertain aspect at this stage is the role Elon Musk will play in dictating some of these key roles. In The Spectator, Ian Williams writes that Musk’s role could alter the China focus in the second Trump term to being more accommodationist. Starting at around the 50th minute, Elbridge Colby sounds more consistent with that view than he has in prior interviews and writings — perhaps a preview of a shift that could be decidedly unexpected regarding our relations with the PRC.