President-elect Donald Trump is not known for adherence to a disciplined and rigorous personnel selection process, but behind the scenes, his advisers and allies have been preparing lists of candidates for the most important jobs in his administration.
Three days after he decisively won a second term, Trump held his first formal transition meetings Friday to turn his attention to the choices he faces.
He is most keenly interested, aides and advisers say, in a handful of roles: attorney general, CIA director, White House counsel and secretaries of Defense, State and Homeland Security. At one point during the 2024 campaign, he demanded the resignation of FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom he had appointed in 2017.
He has put little focus so far on who will lead other Cabinet departments, although he has told aides he wants to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “do whatever he wants” with the health agencies, and perhaps be secretary of Health and Human Services if he can be confirmed by the Senate.
Trump is relying in part on the work done by Howard Lutnick, the billionaire CEO of the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald, who has spent months overseeing a team that has drawn up lists and done vetting for any red flags.
But Trump, who is a mix of competing impulses, is also doing what he always does: calling around to friends and associates, asking them whom they think he should pick.
People familiar with his thinking say he wants to install leaders throughout the government who will be willing to purge what he considers “deep state” officials who in his view sabotaged his first term. But despite his criticism of “globalists,” Trump, they say, tends to favor rich Wall Street types for Treasury secretary. He wants a trade adviser who believes in tariffs. He wants a Homeland Security secretary who will secure the border and act on his desire for mass deportations, and he wants top security aides — such as a national security adviser and secretaries of State and Defense — who won’t push back on his “America First” worldview and his desire to shrink the nation’s military footprint abroad.
Mixed into all of this is Trump’s obsession with trying to cast the “right look” for each role, as well as his desire for approval and positive news coverage of his choices.
There is the potential for clashes of personality and ideology as Trump embarks on his selections, as there are multiple camps around him.
There are right-wing populists such as Vice President-elect JD Vance. There are populists who are further to the left on some policies, such as Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress, both of whom are close to Omeed Malik, a financier and Trump ally who has met with transition officials this week. There are the hard-right commentators and online influencers whom Trump sees as his “fighters.”
There are members of the traditional conservative movement attached to Project 2025 who were marginalized by the Trump campaign but will ultimately have some seats at the table. There are corporate leaders who have spent the past few months making flattering phone calls to Trump.
And in a category all his own is the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who has gained tremendous access to and influence with Trump and whose businesses are subject to government regulation and work extensively with the Pentagon and other agencies.
Musk this week was around Mar-a-Lago — Trump’s club and residence in Florida — as transition meetings began.
Trump’s advisers have been trying to avoid the collision of factions that marked his postelection transition in 2016.
In a brief statement, a transition spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, said Trump would begin making decisions soon.
With the caveat that candidates can rise and fall in Trump’s favor, here are some of the people in contention for the most important jobs:
Attorney General
There is no job about which Trump cares more than attorney general. Trump has never viewed the Justice Department as an agency that should operate with a substantial degree of independence from direct presidential control, a sharp break from the post-Watergate norms of American politics. He wants an attorney general who will be his legal pit bull — a trusted loyalist who will defend him and follow his instructions.
In his first term, Trump was subject to a long-running Justice Department inquiry into his campaign’s ties to Russia.
For his second term, Trump has much less to worry about. The Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity for official acts, handed down earlier this year in connection with one of his federal indictments, gives Trump sweeping protection.
But Trump has also promised to prosecute some opponents. If he intends to follow through on that, he will need a pliable attorney general, one willing to stretch or break the tradition of keeping politics out of the justice system to an even greater degree than Trump demanded of attorneys general in his first term.
Some of the names being discussed include Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, a former Trump critic who has turned into one of his most outspoken loyalists; Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, who as attorney general of that state went after the big tech companies for what he claimed was collusion with the Biden administration to censor of conservatives; John Ratcliffe, a former Texas member of Congress who served as director of national intelligence in Trump’s first term; and Mark Paoletta, a longtime Republican lawyer and a veteran of Trump’s first administration.
CIA Director
During his first term, Trump valued the work of his initial CIA director, Mike Pompeo. But he believed the career officials in the agency were trying to thwart him, a feeling that intensified after Pompeo left to become secretary of state and was replaced by Gina Haspel, a longtime CIA officer.
Trump finished his term deeply suspicious of Haspel. At the very end of his first term, Trump secretly planned to install a die-hard loyalist, Kash Patel, as deputy CIA director, before backing off.
For his second term, Trump will want to turn to somebody he trusts and who will be willing to overhaul the CIA, people familiar with his thinking said.
Ratcliffe, whose name is being mentioned for several different roles, is considered a top contender. Patel remains personally close to Trump but is distrusted by many in Trump’s inner circle and might have difficulty winning Senate confirmation. Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Texas, a decorated military veteran, has become close to Trump’s team and is another possibility for the job.
Defense Secretary
The selection of a defense secretary could bring an ideological battle between the old-guard Republicans who favor a more interventionist foreign policy and supporters of the MAGA movement who are more skeptical of U.S. involvement around the world. It could also highlight concerns over Trump’s stated desire to use the military for domestic purposes.
One candidate, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, has withdrawn from consideration.
Another possibility, Pompeo, is already drawing criticism from many on the right who consider him too eager to use U.S. military force overseas. David Sacks, a major Trump donor and friend of Musk’s, has been among the many online critics, posting on the social platform X several times that Pompeo supports broad funding for Ukraine and an expansion of NATO — a grave sin on the MAGA right.
Other names in the mix include Waltz; Robert O’Brien, who served as Trump’s last national security adviser; and Lee Zeldin, a former member of Congress from New York.
Secretary of State
Trump’s choice to be America’s top diplomat will inherit a busy agenda, including dangerous volatility in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine, the future of NATO, rising economic tensions and a more assertive China.
His secretary of state will also be called on to articulate how Trump defines U.S. power and the country’s place in the world. Rex Tillerson, who filled the role at the start of Trump’s first administration, reportedly came to view him as “a moron.”
Potential candidates this time around include Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, and Richard Grenell, who served briefly as the acting director of national intelligence in Trump’s last term and more recently has been involved in business deals abroad with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in law.
Homeland Security Secretary
Trump’s top policy adviser and speechwriter, Stephen Miller, has developed detailed plans for an aggressive immigration agenda that includes, as Trump has called it, “the largest deportation program in American history.”
That agenda will put the homeland security secretary in the middle of one of the most contentious issues facing the nation.
To execute a mass deportation program, Miller told The New York Times last year, the administration would need to mobilize the military and law enforcement to help round up and detain migrants living in the country illegally. Massive camps would need to be built as “staging areas,” to hold the migrants while they await deportation, Miller said.
Trump has said he likes the idea of appointing Thomas Homan, his former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to run homeland security, but Miller is expected to play an outsize role in choosing people for all the key positions that relate to immigration.
Treasury Secretary
In his first term, Trump appointed as his Treasury secretary the former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin. His view of the job appears to have changed little: He wants a rich guy, ideally a Wall Street titan in charge of the money.
Some of the names under discussion include Lutnick and Scott Bessent, a hedge fund manager whom Trump has praised from the stage at some of his campaign appearances. Bessent met with Trump on Friday, according to two people briefed on the matter.
White House Counsel
The two men who held the role of White House counsel in Trump’s first administration, Donald McGahn and Pat Cipollone, repeatedly had to reel in some of the president’s demands — and bear the brunt of his fury.
Among the names that have circulated for the job are Stanley Woodward, who has represented several of Trump’s aides in the criminal investigations into the incoming president. Another is David Warrington, who was essentially the 2024 campaign’s general counsel.
Another who has been discussed for that role is Bill McGinley, who was the Cabinet secretary in the Trump White House.
Two other lawyers who have worked on Trump’s legal cases — Todd Blanche and Emil Bove — are expected to have significant posts in the administration.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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