Donald Trump’s second-term team is just now starting to take shape, with the president-elect selecting Susie Wiles to serve as his White House chief of staff and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
At the same time, we’re also learning about some who won’t be joining his administration. USA Today reported:
President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday he will not ask his former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley or his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to serve in his incoming administration. “I will not be inviting former Ambassador Nikki Haley, or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to join the Trump Administration, which is currently in formation,” said Trump on Truth Social. “I very much enjoyed and appreciated working with them previously, and would like to thank them for their service to our Country.”
Given recent history, and Trump’s capacity for holding a grudge, the online announcement didn’t come as too great of a surprise. Haley, of course, challenged the GOP president-elect for the party’s 2024 nomination and shared some unkind words about him during their competition.
Haley ultimately prioritized partisan considerations above all — she endorsed Trump, touted him at the Republican National Convention, offered to campaign for him, and even wrote an eleventh-hour op-ed pushing his candidacy as Democrats targeted her supporters — probably in the hopes of keeping her future career options intact.
It apparently didn’t work.
Pompeo, meanwhile, flirted with the possibility of a 2024 presidential candidacy of his own, and even took some modest steps to distance himself from Trump in 2023.
Once that door closed, Pompeo tried to work his way back into his former boss’s good graces, and he sent unsubtle signals — before and after Election Day — that he wanted to be nominated for secretary of defense.
So much for that idea. Part of what makes the developments notable is the practical implications for U.S. foreign policy: As The New York Times reported: “By ruling out Mr. Pompeo and Ms. Haley, Mr. Trump was rejecting two Republicans who had backed U.S. support for Ukraine.” It suggests Moscow was likely pleased by Trump’s Saturday announcement. But closer to home, the president-elect also sent a signal to the domestic political world. Politico pointed to the Republican’s missive as fresh evidence of Trump’s “loyalty-at-all-costs approach to his second term.” [The announcement] suggests a Trump team that has been taking careful notes on a naughty and nice list, and is ready to staff its second term accordingly. As Mike Davis, Trump’s self-appointed viceroy, put it on X this week in a note to “Trump Job Seekers”: “Before asking me for help, I am going to ask you to provide me specific and concrete evidence of your loyalty to Trump.”
There’s a seemingly endless list of federal positions to fill, and Republicans everywhere are getting an unmistakable message: Those who’ve failed to show consistent, unyielding and genuflecting support for Trump — all of the time, without exception — need not apply.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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