Donald Trump’s blacklist: How former allies and first-term Cabinet heads ended up on MAGA’s bad side

President-elect Donald Trump has significantly reshuffled his Cabinet for his second term, making it very different from what it looked at the end of his first term.

Very few of Trump’s former Cabinet members have returned after the controversial first term that ended abruptly with President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

From former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Nikki Haley, some of Trump’s closest advisers have been transferred to his blacklist.

And the MAGA backlash could be fierce against even those closest to Trump — if they have seemingly betrayed the president-elect.

Those on Trump’s “blacklist” are not included in his new inner circle, which includes dozens of billionaires estimated to have a combined fortune of nearly $500 billion.

Here are some former officials who devolved with Trump over the years and were not welcomed back:

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

Pompeo, a four-term congressman from Kansas, was first in his class at West Point and graduated from Harvard Law University before joining the Trump administration in 2017 as director of the CIA.

Trump then moved Pompeo to the position of secretary of state, as he did for the rest of the administration.

Pompeo is highly respected by Washington insiders but deeply distrusted as a warmonger by prominent political and media figures in the MAGA movement for his aggressive stances against Russia and Iran.

Pompeo was accused of criminal conduct by journalist Tucker Carlson after reports surfaced of his reported plan to assassinate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

“Mike Pompeo, a very sinister person, the worst, and I always thought that and I said that to Trump, should never have let him run the CIA or the state,” Carlson said in a podcast interview with TV Star Roseanne.

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley

Nikki Haley resigned as UN ambassador in 2018, sparking speculation that she was positioning herself politically for a future run for president.

That proved true when Haley ran for president against Trump in the 2024 presidential primaries.

Haley repeatedly attacked Trump during the campaign as mentally “impaired” and “unhinged,” urging Republicans to reject the “chaos” he brought to the political arena.

She refused to drop out of the primaries early, even though Trump handily won every early primary state until it was mathematically impossible for her to win.

Haley quietly endorsed Trump in May 2024, refusing to join Republicans who sided with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Haley also maintains hawkish views on Russia and Iran, putting her in the same camp as Pompeo regarding MAGA fears of “warmongers” and war hawks entering his administration.

Trump specifically ruled out Pompeo and Haley as future Cabinet officials to assuage some of these concerns.

“I will not invite former Ambassador Nikki Haley, or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to join the Trump administration currently in formation,” he wrote shortly after winning re-election in November.

Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Gina Haspel

Gina Haspel was a legacy of the agency as director of the CIA, backed and endorsed by Mike Pompeo, Trump’s first CIA director whom Trump moved to secretary of state in 2018.

Haspel came into contact with Trump behind the scenes after the 2020 election and at one point threatened to resign after Trump proposed installing Kash Patel as deputy director of the CIA position.

She also opposed Trump’s efforts to release documents related to the Russian investigation into election interference in the 2016 election.

Trump did not bring Haspel back into his administration, instead choosing former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe as director of the CIA.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr

Barr resigned in protest of Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent and subsequently criticized Trump for his “bogus” claims of election fraud.

He eventually agreed to vote for the Republican ticket and publicly supported Trump in April 2024, but the relationship was too damaged to repair.

Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos

Trump’s former Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, served Trump for almost his entire first term, but resigned in protest shortly after the January 6 riots on Capitol Hill.

“There is no doubt about the impact your rhetoric had on the situation and it is the turning point for me,” DeVos wrote in her resignation letter to Trump.

DeVos has had nothing but good things to say about Trump since that day and fully supports his plan to disband the Department of Education, but she was not asked to return to the Trump administration.

Former Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar

Azar served as Trump’s HHS secretary throughout his administration, including during the challenging times of the coronavirus pandemic.

The January 6 riots also posed a problem for Azar, who resigned in protest in mid-January. However, the date his resignation took effect was January 20, the same day the Trump administration left office.

Before being picked by Trump to be HHS secretary, Alex Azar was the president of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.

Trump brings a whole new perspective to his second administration as Big Pharma skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be nominated as his new Minister of Health.

Former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao

President Donald Trump appointed Chao in his first administration as a nod and a favor to her husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The relationship between Trump and McConnell has only deteriorated in recent years, especially after the January 6 riots.

Chao resigned in protest on January 7, stating that Trump’s role in the day’s events “deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot put aside.”

In subsequent years, Trump suggested that Chao was a communist agent and called her “Coco Chow” and McConnell the “Old Broken Crow” who worked with Biden, the Democrats and China.

Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis

President Donald Trump was very impressed after meeting former General James Mattis and appointing him Secretary of Defense at the start of his administration.

But Mattis resigned in 2018, protesting Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria.

“Because you have a right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views better align with yours on these and other issues, I believe it is right that I resign my position,” Mattis said.

Mattis then publicly criticized Trump and denounced him as a threat to the Constitution in the summer of 2020, after the president called in the National Guard to help quell the George Floyd riots in Washington DC.

“We must reject and hold accountable those in office who are making a mockery of our Constitution,” he wrote in a lengthy statement condemning Trump.