Trump rewards loyalists with White House positions

Trump’s new team

Donald Trump began assembling his governing team this week, signalling he is contemplating a radical approach to immigration and a hawkish – rather than isolationist – approach to foreign policy.

Following his election win, Trump has reportedly started preparing a series of executive orders he will sign on his first day of office in January. He is expected to introduce measures to enable widespread deportations of migrants and to appoint a board that could fast-track the removal of top military generals.

Susie Wiles, who oversaw Trump’s election campaign and will be his chief of staff, told a group of conservative donors the orders are aimed at reinstating policies revoked by President Joe Biden. The comments prompted speculation that Trump may again exit the Paris climate accord, withdraw from the World Health Organization and reimpose a ban on entry from several Muslim-majority countries.

Trump this week appointed several loyalists to senior positions, including Tom Homan, a veteran immigration official, who will be the “border czar”. At the Republican convention in July, Homan, a former police officer who was acting head of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said his message to illegal immigrants was: “You better start packing now.”

Trump also appointed Stephen Miller, a hardliner who has called for mass deportations and said more than a million migrants could be removed annually, as his deputy chief of staff for policy. Controversially, Matt Gaetz, a Trump loyalist who is under investigation over a sex-trafficking scandal, will be attorney-general – an appointment that, if confirmed, could lead to the gutting or even abolition of law enforcement agencies such as the FBI.

Trump appointed Marco Rubio, a Florida senator and staunch critic of China, as secretary of state. Unlike some Trump backers, Rubio is not an isolationist or opponent of foreign intervention but supports taking a tougher line towards countries such as Iran and Venezuela.

Trump’s pick as defence secretary is Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his book The War on Warriors, Hegseth criticised elites as “feckless”, saying their “ability to live in peace and prosperity has always depended on guys like [John McClane, the hero of Die Hard] being honourable, powerful and deadly”.

Two House members and notorious China hawks, Mike Waltz and Elise Stefanik, will be, respectively, national security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations. Waltz, like Trump, has criticised US allies for failing to spend enough on defence.

Notably, Trump announced his team would not include Nikki Haley, who ran against him in the primaries but then backed his campaign, and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo – a move that was interpreted as clearing the path for Trump’s running mate, J. D. Vance, to become his unrivalled heir.

Stephen Collinson, a CNN political correspondent, said Trump’s appointments – aside from Miller – were not hardcore extremists but were “ultra-loyalists”.

“If they are all far to the right, they only parallel the movement of the [Republicans] and its voters during the Trump era,” he said.

Deportation and climate plans

During the election campaign, Trump announced a series of extreme policies, but it is not yet clear whether they will prove to be genuine promises or bluster.

Trump repeatedly promised to deport 11 million undocumented migrants – a move that would not only be violent and heart-rending as children are torn from schools and neighbours dragged from homes but could also cripple the economy and cause an inflation spike by expelling much of the country’s low-paid workforce. The plan would also be exorbitantly expensive.

Stephen Miller, the new policy adviser, has told Fox News the deportations will begin “on inauguration day, as soon as [Trump] takes the oath of office”.

Trump has previously abandoned other immigration campaign promises, however, such as building a wall along the Mexican border. He may focus on deporting any migrant who has committed a crime and reinstating tough measures undone by Biden, such as sending asylum seekers back to Mexico while their cases are pending.

Homan, the new immigration boss, is a hardliner but told America’s 60 Minutes last month that Trump would not build concentration camps or order “a mass sweep of neighbourhoods”.

Trump, a climate sceptic, plans to expand oil and gas drilling and scrap environmental regulations, and to reverse Biden’s efforts to promote renewable energy. But some analysts believe he will not be able to stop the flow of renewables investments and that Republicans who represent areas that benefit from clean energy projects may try to defend them. About 85 per cent of Biden’s US$1 trillion green energy funding is due to be spent in Republican-held districts.

Trump announced this week that his head of the Environmental Protection Agency will be Lee Zeldin, a former member of congress and army veteran who supports Trump’s plan to “drill, baby, drill”.

“We will restore US energy dominance … while protecting access to clean air and water,” he wrote on X.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kutSX8iyMhA&ab_channel=TheSaturdayPaper

Ukraine and Gaza

Trump has promised to quickly end the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza but has offered no detail on how he will do this.

He has criticised the amount of American military and financial aid to Ukraine and has said Kyiv may need to accept a deal that involves ceding territory to Russia. Such a move would strain ties between the US and Europe and raise concerns about the future of NATO, an alliance Trump has often derided.

In a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, Trump reportedly advised him not to escalate the war. The Kremlin on Monday denied the call had occurred.

Trump also spoke last week with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and reportedly said he would continue to back Kyiv. At one point, Trump handed the phone to Elon Musk, who was with Trump during the call and promised to continue to provide satellite internet connection to Ukraine through his company Starlink. But Musk has given mixed signals on Ukraine, including proposing a peace deal that largely mirrored Moscow’s positions.

In the Middle East, Trump, a staunch backer of Israel, has promised to deliver peace. He has called for the war in Gaza to end quickly but has proposed no solutions.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, was among the first world leaders to congratulate Trump and has had three conversations with the president-elect since his win. Netanyahu said this week he and Trump “see eye to eye on the Iranian threat”.

In a call last week with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, Trump reportedly said he “will work to stop the war” between Israel and Hamas. Abbas said he wanted to cooperate on a “comprehensive” peace deal.

During his first term, Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran and increased economic sanctions. His administration also assassinated Qasem Soleimani, a general who oversaw Iran’s support for proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas. The US Department of Justice revealed last week it had charged a man involved in an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump. Iran’s foreign affairs minister, Abbas Araghchi, denied the plot, saying it was a “third-rate comedy”.

Musk in the White House

After spending at least US$132 million on Trump’s campaign and appearing regularly at rallies, Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, has begun reaping the rewards and revelling in his proximity to the incoming president.

Shares in Tesla initially surged by more than 14 per cent after the election due to expectations that Musk’s companies will benefit.

Since the election, Musk has been a daily presence at Mar-a-Lago – playing golf with Trump and dining with Melania Trump – and has reportedly been offering advice on staff selections. He has been present for multiple calls with world leaders, including Zelensky and Türkiye’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and endorsed Republican senator Rick Scott as Senate majority leader.

On Tuesday, Trump announced that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate, will lead a new commission on cutting government spending and regulation.

Musk reportedly came up with the idea and believes the commission could cut the federal budget by US$2 trillion – a claim economists say is absurd. Analysts have warned that Musk, whose companies have benefited from enormous government contracts, could use the position to oversee contracts with his business entities.

In a post on his social media platform, X, Musk urged his followers to offer advice on what to cut.

“We will also have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars,” he wrote. “This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining.” 

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Mike Seccombe

Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States, despite being twice impeached and guilty of myriad crimes, will have major consequences for climate change, inflation and geopolitics.