Team Trump Reveals Most Important Quality in New White House Employees
Any future administration under Donald Trump will place a premium on one attribute in executive branch staffers over all others: total allegiance to the MAGA leader.
In an interview with the Financial Times published Monday, Trump transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick explained that incoming staffers would be given their positions based on their devotion to Trump’s vision for America—and to Trump himself.
While explaining how Trump’s last administration buckled under the weight of staff turnover due to disagreements in “vision,” Lutnick said that the new plan is to eradicate any internal hostility to the Republican’s plans.
“They’re all going to be on the same side, and they’re all going to understand the policies, and we’re going to give people the role based on their capacity—and their fidelity and loyalty to the policy, as well as to the man,” the Wall Street billionaire told the publication.
Lutnick joined Trump’s transition team in August, alongside former Small Business Administration head Linda McMahon.
In the same interview, Lutnick attempted to outright dismiss the influence of Project 2025 on Trump’s plans for government.
“Project 2025 is an absolute zero for the Trump-Vance transition,” Luntick told the Financial Times. “You can use another term—radioactive.”
But that total repudiation of the wildly unpopular, 920-page Christian Nationalist manifesto hasn’t been so clear from Trump’s platform. Trump’s proposal to dismantle the Department of Education wholesale is nearly identical to Project 2025, while other Project 2025 policy points aren’t terribly far removed from what Trump has claimed is his legitimate platform, Agenda 47.
Project 2025 has proposed revisiting federal approval of the abortion pill, banning pornography nationwide, placing the Justice Department under the control of the president, slashing federal funds for climate change research in an effort to sideline mitigation efforts, and increasing funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall.