NEWSWEEK
As Donald Trump prepares for his return to the White House, speculation is growing over who might fill key roles in his Cabinet.
The president-elect previously told podcast host Joe Rogan that the “biggest mistake” of his 2017-21 presidency was picking people for top positions that he “shouldn’t have picked.” Trump was likely referring to his former chief of staff John Kelly, who has said his former boss had “fascist” tendencies, and former national security adviser John Bolton, who he described an “idiot,” among others.
Trump told Rogan some individuals who held senior positions in his first administration were “neocons or bad people or disloyal people.”
Trump will now likely be looking to avoid the high turnover rate that characterized his first Cabinet. And for that, he will be looking for one thing: loyalty.
Newsweek has rounded up who some contenders might be. The Trump campaign has been contacted for comment.
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is a potential candidate to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, “tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms.”
Musk, who is the world’s richest man, spent tens of millions of dollars to help Trump get elected and was one of his most vocal supporters throughout the campaign.
He has said he would like to make $2 trillion in cuts to the federal budget. The tech billionaire has admitted that an austerity drive would probably cause “temporary hardship” for ordinary Americans but said that the country must “start from scratch” to achieve “long-term prosperity.”
Musk is also expected to push Trump for greater deregulation in areas such as AI and cryptocurrency, which he has heavily invested in.
In 2022, Musk purchased Twitter for $43 billion in a hostile takeover, with the aim of making the social media company a “platform for free speech around the globe.” He went on to relax the platform’s hate speech policies and removed its policy prohibiting COVID-19 misinformation. He also restored previously banned accounts such as those of Jordan Peterson, Kathy Griffin, The Babylon Bee, and Donald Trump. Meanwhile, he laid off around half of Twitter’s workforce.
Trump previously told Fox News host, Maria Bartiromo, Musk would be “secretary of cost-cutting.”
A billionaire investor known for his role during the 2008 financial crisis, Paulson is a contender for treasury secretary, with plans to collaborate with Musk “to reduce federal spending.”
He has vowed to cut green projects that were passed by the Biden-Harris administration under the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.
“All of these tax subsidies for solar, for wind, inefficient, uneconomic energy sources,” he told the Wall Street Journal in an exclusive interview in October. “Eliminate that. That brings down spending.”
Paulson would be required to get congressional approval to make such cuts.
As treasury secretary, Paulson could also be involved in energy and trade policy. He told the Wall Street Journal he plans to bring in “strategic tariffs” to take on Chinese companies.
However, he previously told the Financial Times the U.S. needs to have a good relationship with China.
“We don’t want to decouple from China,” Paulson said. “China is the second-largest economy in the world. We need to have a good economic and political relationship with them.”
Last month, Paulson threatened to take his money out of the U.S. if Kamala Harris won the election, saying her economic plans would “crash the market.”
Former U.S. ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence, Grenell is being considered for secretary of state or national security adviser, reflecting his strong alignment with Trump’s foreign policy views.
This year Donald Trump Jr. called Grenell a “top contender” for the role of secretary of state. Trump has called him “my envoy.”
He was previously ambassador to Germany for the Trump administration and then special envoy for the Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations. He was also acting director of national intelligence.
In the past Grenell has supported establishing an autonomous zone in eastern Ukraine to end the war, an idea that Kyiv rejected.
In a March episode of Self Centered, a current events podcast, he said: “If you want to avoid war, you better have a son of a bitch as the secretary of state.” America needs a “tough” chief diplomat, he added, “who goes in to these tables and says: ‘Guys, if we don’t solve this here, if we don’t represent peace and figure out a tough way, I’ve got to take this file, go back to the United States and transfer it to the secretary of defense, who doesn’t negotiate. He’s going to bomb you.’”
“President Trump trusts him as a pair of safe hands in deconstructing the administrative state and confronting the deep state,” Steve Bannon, the former Trump strategist and host of the War Room podcast, told the New York Times.
An anti-vaccine advocate and former Democratic candidate, Kennedy is an unconventional choice for secretary of health and human services.
After suspending his campaign for president and endorsing Trump, the former president said Kennedy’s reward would be a “big role in the administration.”
And that role would likely see Kennedy take “control” of America’s public health agencies.
“I’m going to let him go wild on health,” Trump promised at a rally at Madison Square Garden. “I’m going to get him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.”
Kennedy has also laid out plans to remove fluoride from the nation’s drinking water in the first days of the administration.
Trump said he and Kennedy have not discussed the fluoride plan but that the proposed ban “sounds OK to me.”
Kennedy has previously been accused of amplifying conspiracy theories—most notably about the COVID vaccine. He reportedly claimed that the virus that causes COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted,” which he has since denied.
CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, Lutnick is involved in Trump’s transition team and is a possible pick for a senior economic role, given his financial expertise and close ties to Trump.
Lutnick personally contributed over $10 million to Trump’s campaign and helped raise an additional $75 million. He shares a close relationship with Trump and even made an appearance on The Apprentice.
Lutnick has been entrusted with finding thousands of potential candidates for roles in the Trump administration, including for crucial positions heading the defense and treasury departments.
He likened his selection spree for Trump to his experience hiring thousands of employees following the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 that killed 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees, including his younger brother Gary.
“I’ve done this before,” Lutnick told the Financial Times. “You go to world-class people that you rate highly, and you ask them to help you.”
But like the president-elect, one attribute is likely to be most important to Lutnick: loyalty.
In October, he told the Financial Times that appointees to a new Trump administration would need to show “fidelity.”
“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,” he said.
