Transcript: Swamp Notes — Inside Trump’s new inner circle

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Swamp Notes: Inside Trump’s new inner circle’

Sonja Hutson
As a candidate in 2016, Donald Trump promised to surround himself with only the best people if elected president. But what kind of people would he pick next time around?

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This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the FT News Briefing, where we talk about all of the things happening in the 2024 US presidential election. I’m Sonja Hutson, and this week we’re asking, “What would a second Trump White House look like?” Here with me to discuss is James Politi. He’s the FT’s DC bureau chief. Hi, James.

James Politi
Hi, Sonja.

Sonja Hutson
And we’ve also got Lauren Fedor, the FT’s deputy DC bureau chief. Hi, Lauren.

Lauren Fedor
Hi. Thanks for having me.

Sonja Hutson
So, James, you wrote a piece for the FT recently where you took a look at some of the people in Donald Trump’s orbit who might be asked to join his next administration. Who are some of the characters that stand out to you from that?

James Politi
Oh, we have some new figures, like the political strategist Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, and then we have some members of the old guard, like Stephen Miller, the hardline immigration adviser, who is vowing to kind of purge the justice system in a new Trump White House. And then we have Robert Lighthizer, who is still being listened to very carefully by Trump, and is the former trade tsar who launched the trade wars against China and US allies during the previous administration.

Sonja Hutson
And Lauren, obviously, when Trump was first running for president in 2016, the political landscape was very different in the Republican party. How would you expect his staffing decisions to look differently this time around, given all that’s changed since then?

Lauren Fedor
Well, I think that you would expect a slightly more professional, slick operation, which is what we see on the campaign side now. You know, James mentioned Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles. They’re seen as the real kind of political brains behind the campaign. And this is a campaign that Trump’s allies, but also his critics, acknowledge is just much more professional, much more efficient, in some ways much more ruthless than it ever was in ’16 or in ’20. They’ve done this before. They’re doing it better now than they ever have done more effectively, rather. Should he win you would, maybe, see that carry over into the way that they’re staffing up a White House. You know, back in 2016, the transition — I mean, to put it lightly — was a bit of a mess. I don’t think you would see that this time around. In fact, I feel very confident that you wouldn’t see that this time around because they’re already thinking about that.

Sonja Hutson
What about differences in terms of the actual people who would be tapped to serve in this second Trump White House?

James Politi
So I think it’s going to be, you know, a narrower group of loyalists. One of the lessons learned by the Trump campaign and the Trump camp, is, has been that they don’t want people around him who will slow down his agenda, will restrain him in any way. And so I think you’re seeing sort of a narrower group of people who has accepted his conduct in connection with January 6th, who is fine with the criminal charges that have been levelled against him and who are determined to kind of go through with his agenda.

Lauren Fedor
I think, you know, one of the things I’ll be interested to see, though, is that there are these kind of hardcore loyalists who’ve been with him from basically the get-go, like the Stephen Millers of the world. But then there are others who criticised him. Maybe they criticised him immediately after January 6th. Maybe they kept up the criticisms for a long time. But they’re all coming back into the fold now, right? They’re all kissing the ring, as it were. And I’m just kind of intrigued to see whether or not that’s enough for Trump or whether or not he’s ultimately never gonna trust some of those characters.

James Politi
Well, one of the interesting characters in my story is this, General Keith Kellogg, who has a key foreign policy advisers at the moment. And he is someone who was kind of urging Mike Pence, the vice-president, to certify the results of the election. But then come last year, he didn’t endorse Pence. He endorsed Trump.

Sonja Hutson
Yeah. You know, for every Mike Pence out there, people who fell out with Trump and stayed on the outs with him. There are so many more Republicans that fell out with Trump and then eventually came back into the fold. So I guess I’m wondering, what does that phenomenon tell us about how the Republican establishment has changed since 2016?

Lauren Fedor
I mean, establishment is a loaded word even now. I think when you talk about the Republican party and there is someone that I talk to regularly from what I’d call the, maybe the old guard of the Republican party. And he says to me, he’s not . . . he doesn’t want himself being identified as part of the establishment anymore because the establishment is the Trump party. It’s Trump loyalists on the Hill, but it’s also institutions, something like the RNC, where Trump’s own daughter-in-law is now the co-chair. The Trump wing is not a wing anymore. It’s the dominant force in the party. And more moderate lawmakers, someone like Mitt Romney, who’s on his way out. I mean, he represents a fringe of the party now rather than the mainstream.

Sonja Hutson
James, I want to ask you, I mean, every term presidents come in and they choose their administration. How is this conversation about Trump doing the same thing different? Or like, why are we focusing on it?

James Politi
Well, I had an interesting conversation for my piece with Michael Strain, who’s at the American Enterprise Institute, which is one of the think-tanks which is associated with, like the old-school Republican party. And he was saying, it’s not unusual for a president to pick true believers to staff his administration. What is unusual is that you have these true believers who are kind of talking about mass deportations, about very radical policy proposals. What they want to do is to shut the border, because they feel like what they did in the first term wasn’t sufficient. They want to kind of clean up the administrative state. In particular, they have their eyes trained on the justice system, the FBI, and the career civil servants. They will be pushing for a very aggressive tax cut. The previous round of tax cuts expires at the end of next year. And that’s going to be a massive fight on Capitol Hill.

Sonja Hutson
And those were the tax cuts that were instituted during Trump’s first term, right?

James Politi
That’s correct. They want to enact an agenda that is sort of far beyond the mainstream of American politics.

Sonja Hutson
So, James, you emphasise that they want to do these things. Lauren, do you think that they can?

Lauren Fedor
I mean, it’s a long list of things. So some of them almost certainly yes, right? I mean, I think there are some examples that James has laid out that can be done using the power of the executive. There are others that are going to require buy-in from Congress. That said, control of both chambers of Congress is up for grabs in November, not just the presidential race, which we spend most of our time talking about. And you know, when you look at something like the Senate map in particular, the ball is in the Republicans’ court. You know, it looks like they are kind of in pole position here, to mix my metaphors, to take back control of the Senate, hold on to the House. And then what you could be looking at is a situation where you’ve got Republican control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. That just makes it that much easier for Trump and his inner circle to get done what they want to get done.

Sonja Hutson
Well, I guess that kind of gets to the biggest idea about American politics and institutions that you can have, which is the separation of powers that’s laid out in the Constitution. You know, I hear a lot of Trump critics refer to Trump as having, like, authoritarian tendencies, specifically, when you’re talking about the January 6th insurrection. How would having both chambers of Congress be controlled by Republicans, Trump in the White House? What would that do to kind of, the balance of power of the government?

James Politi
Well, I mean, I think, you know, it’s Lauren’s point. It’s very likely that if Trump wins, that he will have control of both chambers of Congress. And in addition to that, he has a Supreme Court. And this is a big difference compared to 2017. They have a 6 to 3 conservative majority on the court. So he will face much fewer kind of constraints from the judiciary, I think, to getting some of his policies through. And so I think there will be fewer checks and balances next time around compared to 2017.

Lauren Fedor
I would agree with James on most of that or all of it. But I would say that, you know, there are levers within the way, the rules of the way that the Senate and the House operate, for example. That mean you still need, for example, in the Senate, like 60 votes to pass nearly anything. It’s very, very unlikely that the Republicans would have 60 plus votes. We’re probably going to be looking at a very slim majority once again. So I’m sure there’ll be plenty of gridlock on Capitol Hill to look forward to. And then on the judiciary side as well, we have one, if not several Trump-specific-related cases that are going to be coming before the court in the next couple of months. And watching how the court rules on that, I think will be very interesting, very important for the future of our country. And, I don’t know, maybe it’s Pollyanna-ish, but I have faith that the institution might just about hold.

Sonja Hutson
All right. We’re going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we’re going to do Exit Poll.

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And we are back with Exit Poll, where we talk about something that didn’t happen on the campaign trail and apply rigorous political analysis to it. So news broke this week that some of the journalists that have been flying on board Air Force One, which is the president’s plane, have been stealing commemorative items like cutlery and towels and even presidential pillow cases, which I did not know existed until this week. So James and Lauren, Donald Trump has called journalists the enemy of the people, very famously, based on this new report about their sticky fingers. Is he right?

James Politi
I don’t know if he’s right about that. (Laughter) But clearly, I mean, we’re the enemy of, you know, the Secret Service. And there were some, you know, ethical lapses there. (Laughter) I don’t think anyone can dispute that. I’ve never been on Air Force One, so I’m not a culprit for sure. But I have been on Air Force Two, and they do give you little paper napkins, which I might have taken home, or . ..

Sonja Hutson
I feel like that’s fine.

James Politi
. . . a little nametag.

Sonja Hutson
I feel like anything they hand you is fine. If it’s when you, like, start going through other stuff, that things get a little morally grey.

James Politi
I didn’t really see anything that would be, like, stealable.

Sonja Hutson
OK, so maybe they keep all the good stuff.

Lauren Fedor
James, you were looking hard enough. (Laughter)

Sonja Hutson
Lauren?

Lauren Fedor
You know, I don’t think that I’m a felon here either when it comes to stealing, but I understand the inclination. It is pretty cool to travel on Air Force One. There is, you know, a fair amount of White House and presidential branded swag. You know, maybe I’ve taken more than one of the presidential branded Hershey Kisses, for example, or, which are common in West Wing offices, you know. And this week, I did go to the Easter egg roll with my young daughter, and they did say, take one commemorative egg, and we may have taken two. So . . . 

Sonja Hutson
Well, your secret is safe with us and our audience. (Laughter) All right. I want to thank our guest, James Politi. He’s the FT’s Washington bureau chief. Thanks, James.

James Politi
Thank you.

Sonja Hutson
And Lauren Fedor. She’s our deputy Washington bureau chief. Thanks, Lauren.

Lauren Fedor
Thanks, Sonja.

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Sonja Hutson
That was Swamp Notes, the US politics show from the FT News Briefing. If you want to sign up for the Swamp Notes newsletter, we’ve got a link to that in the show notes. Our show is mixed and produced by Ethan Plotkin. It’s also produced by Lauren Fedor. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson. I’m your host, Sonja Hutson. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz, and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Check back next week for more US political analysis from the Financial Times.

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