Top Trump official says White House appointees will have to show ‘loyalty to the man’ and Project 2025 is ‘radioactive’
The billionaire investor who co-chairs Donald Trump’s transition team said people steering the government during a second term will have to show loyalty “to the man” and his policies.
The comment from Trump Transition official Howard Lutnick, in comments to the Financial Timesare just the latest demonstration of how Trump will try to staff an administration of purists, after claiming that some of his closest past advisers turned out to be “RINOS,” or unintelligent.
Lutnick, head of New York investment firm Cantor Fiztgerald, called some of Trump’s first terms inadequate with the program.
“Those people were not pure in his vision,” he said. “They’re all on the same side.”
“And they’re all going to understand the policy, and we’re going to give people roles based on their capabilities – and their allegiance and loyalty to the policy, but also to the man,” he said.
Trump has long valued loyalty, and for years has railed against those he believes have failed to demonstrate it, even keeping by his side advisers who have suffered personal and professional setbacks.
People who get jobs during a second Trump term will get the role in part by demonstrating “their allegiance and loyalty to the policy, but also to the man,” Trump transition co-chair billionaire Howard Lutnick said.
Trump is seeking re-election despite a staggering number of former top aides now opposing him.
Among them is former Vice President Mike Pence, who had been the public face of loyalty for four years but appears in Jack Smith’s latest dossier in which he privately urges Trump to “recognize that the process is over” despite Trump’s persistent claims of massive election fraud. Trump said before the Capitol riot that Pence lacked “courage,” calling him “delusional” in August.
Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said Trump “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law,” in stunning, on-the-record comments on CNN last year. Trump would call him a “lowlife with a very small brain and a very big mouth.”
Lutnick also rejected Project 2025, the document produced by a group of former Trump administration figures that the Trump campaign has repeatedly said does not represent Trump or his campaign.
“Project 2025 is a ground zero for the Trump-Vance transition,” Lutnick said.
Besides Lutnick, who $15 million raised for Trump at a Hamptons fundraiser, Trump’s transition is being co-chaired by struggling exec Linda McMahon, who led the Small Business Administration during the Trump administration.
She resigned in 2019 to lead a pro-Trump PAC. Several of Trump’s other Cabinet secretaries, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, resigned on January 6.
Trump famously elevated his 2016 transition chairman, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has become a Trump critic himself.
If Trump wants an additional screen for loyalty, his two adult sons, Donald Trump Jr., should serve. and Eric Trump, as honorary co-chairs. expected to screen for loyalty and ideology.
Trump spoke to host Hugh Hewitt about “loyalty” shortly before the Democratic convention, when his former press secretary Stephanie Grisham was among those who denounced him.
“I spent four years. “I know people better than anyone in the history of Washington,” he said. ‘I know the good, the bad, the stupid, the smart. I know the weak, I know the loyal.”
‘Loyalty is interesting, because you only really know how loyal you are at certain moments, until certain events happen. Loyalty is very interesting,” he mused. ‘That’s something you never really know, but you do learn about it. And that’s honestly a bit of a hit and miss. A bit hit and miss.’