Trump sprints through transition as he faces narrow window to act in office
By Steve Contorno and Aaron Pellish, CNN
(CNN) — Three weeks into Donald Trump’s second go-around as president-elect, little about this transition to the White House looks like his first.
By this point in 2016, Trump, unprepared for victory, had announced just four Cabinet nominations for his new administration. Operating out of Trump Tower in Manhattan, the former reality television star turned the process into a spectacle. Republican leaders, Washington veterans, business executives and longtime loyalists competed for his attention and clashed with his family and political operatives in what became a real-world Game of Thrones. The media circus surrounding the protracted audition set the tone for an administration defined in part by its gossip and palace intrigue.
Trump ultimately handed key posts to people he was barely acquainted with.
This time, Trump has maneuvered with uncharacteristic discretion from his palatial estate in Palm Beach, where he has had handed out roles at a dizzying clip, filling most of the top jobs before Thanksgiving with stalwarts of conflicting worldviews. When one nominee faltered – former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz to lead the Department of Justice – Trump quickly moved on by reassigning the post to another loyalist, the Sunshine State’s former attorney general, Pam Bondi.
And while Trump has taken time to attend an Ultimate Fighting match in New York, meet with congressional Republicans and President Joe Biden in Washington, DC, and pop into evening events at Mar-a-Lago, he has largely filled his days reviewing the resumes of potential department heads and plotting his first moves after he takes over on January 20.
Allies say this more determined Trump is emboldened by his electoral success and more confident in his understanding of executive power learned from his first four years in Washington. He is also acutely aware that his window to act in his second four-year term will run up against Congress’ glacial pace, even if he starts with the GOP controlling both chambers.
“Individual agendas and big personalities that get in the way won’t exist in this realm,” said Brian Ballard, a lobbyist close to Trump and many of the nominees. “Everyone understands we have a two-year window with a majority in the House and Senate. Who knows what happens after that. And if you are not running at breakneck speed, you shouldn’t be part of this administration.”
Ballard said the expectation is for Congress to have some of Trump’s key appointees confirmed by the time he is inaugurated or the day after.
Senate Republicans, off this week for the Thanksgiving holiday, spent their first two weeks digesting the firehose of staffing announcements coming from Palm Beach as they prepare for their new majority, at times already facing a test of will power to push through some contentious choices.
Gaetz pulled himself out of the running for attorney general amid concerns about multiple investigations into alleged sexual misconduct that he denies. But Trump has marched ahead with other nominees facing their own crises. A past accusation of sexual assault has dogged the selection of former Fox News host Pete Hegseth for Defense secretary. Linda McMahon, the co-founder of a professional wrestling empire and Trump’s pick for the Department of Education, was recently sued over allegations that she knowingly enabled sexual exploitation of children hired as “Ring Boys” in the 1980s. Hegseth and McMahon both denied the allegations.
Conflicting ideologies among Cabinet picks
Washington has had little time to grapple with the conflicting ideologies driving the people who will lead the incoming president’s new government.
For example, billionaire financiers Howard Lutnick and Scott Bessent have argued opposing positions on Trump’s tariffs policy, but both found jobs in the new administration – Lutnick leading the Department of Commerce and Bessent as Treasury secretary. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has publicly criticized former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard over her stance on Ukraine and often touts the intelligence agencies she has long vilified. But the two are now slated to join the same foreign policy team as secretary of state and director of national intelligence, respectively.
For any other Republican, turning to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a staunch defender of environmental projects and abortion access in the past – to lead the country’s health departments would lead to a revolt among conservatives. But Trump has made Kennedy the face of his push to “Make America Healthy Again” along with a team of media savvy doctors – Mehmet Oz (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator); Janette Nesheiwat (surgeon general); Marty Makary (Food and Drug Administration commissioner).
The through line, Trump’s advisers say, is that all these picks are intensely loyal to the president-elect and committed to delivering the massive shakeup to Washington he has promised since his first 2016 campaign. Most of Trump’s choices are people he has known for years and trusts not to turn his White House into a sieve for damaging stories about his demeanor or conspire to defy his decrees.
That is the standard by which Senate Republicans are being pressured to support them over traditional litmus tests of conservative orthodoxy.
“This isn’t a new administration coming in. And so when people are criticizing his picks, the president has done this job before,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican. “He knows exactly what he needs. He knows who he wants to put in those positions. That’s why he’s been able to move fast, because he knows he has four years to reach the mandate that the American people said they want the government going in a different direction. And these nominations he’s putting forth are actually going to deliver that for him.”
Sen. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, called the head-spinning speed of the Trump transition a “disruptive time” for Washington.
“But that is what elections do and all of us are in the process of adjusting,” he said.
In a statement to CNN, Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said voters “re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail — and his Cabinet picks reflect his priority to put America First.”
“President Trump will continue to appoint highly-qualified men and women who have the talent, experience, and necessary skill sets to Make America Great Again,” she said.
On Tuesday, Trump’s transition team signed an agreement with the White House after months of postponing the traditional transition process – a delay that Biden officials warned could undermine an orderly transfer of power and pose national security risks.
In a statement announcing the agreement, the Trump transition said it will use its own security and information systems, its own office spaces and maintain its own ethics plan. The transition team said its ethics plan will be posted online in compliance with federal law.
Trump had avoided agreeing to the usual transition agreements with the General Services Administration, the agency that oversees presidential transitions, which some watchdog groups say could allow the incoming administration to circumvent scrutiny over potential conflict of interest.
Several of Trump’s picks have vast personal fortunes and deep ties to the private sector. And Trump himself has not said if or how he plans to untangle himself from his expansive business empire in advance of taking office. Ahead of taking office in 2017, Trump pledged to relinquish control of his companies and put his business holdings in a trust, which was controlled by his two sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
Trump has already shattered other norms for his incoming Cabinet by deciding against FBI background checks for some of his nominees, including Gabbard, CNN previously reported. Trump’s transition team has so far relied instead on internal vetting. Allies, though, have dismissed the concerns from national security experts who told CNN the FBI can catch troubling conflicts as well as embarrassing information that foreign adversaries will attempt to exploit.
“I don’t think the American public cares who does the background checks,” Sen. Bill Hagerty said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “What the American public cares about is to see the mandate that they voted in delivered upon.”
Already, Trump is setting policy for that perceived mandate. On Monday night, he threatened some of America’s top trade partners – North American allies Mexico and Canada, as well as China – with tariffs meant to pressure them on his border priorities. Meanwhile, many world leaders and business executives have already spoken with the incoming president as they prepare for the forthcoming chaos and bombast of a second Trump presidency.
Nick Iarossi — a veteran Florida lobbyist who is expanding into Washington, DC, after helping to raise money for Trump’s campaign — told CNN that those inside the Beltway “better lace up their running shoes and get ready for a significant change of pace.”
“This isn’t going to be the typical slow-moving, Washington-establishment type administration,” Iarossi said.
CNN’s Betsy Klein and Lauren Fox contributed to this report.
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