Former President Donald J. Trump has been privately asking confidants what they would think of his appointing his former White House domestic policy adviser, Brooke Rollins, as his chief of staff if he wins the election, according to three people with knowledge of his conversations.
In multiple private conversations in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has said that he thinks Ms. Rollins would make “a great chief of staff” and that “she’s tall” and “she’s got the look,” among other attributes.
Ms. Rollins, a conservative lawyer who ran domestic policy in the final year of the Trump administration, is a close ally of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The House Speaker Mike Johnson has also agreed with Mr. Trump’s assessment that Ms. Rollins would make a great chief of staff, according to a person briefed on their conversations.
Ms. Rollins said in a statement that she has “had zero conversations with President Trump or his team about this,” and added that she is focused on “building the America First movement” and helping to make sure Mr. Trump wins the election.
Ms. Rollins is playing a significant role in the transition team preparing for Mr. Trump’s potential return to power.
Since the end of the Trump presidency, she has been running the America First Policy Institute, a think tank stocked with former senior Trump administration officials, including Mr. Trump’s former economic adviser, Larry Kudlow; his former principal deputy press secretary, Hogan Gidley, and his former acting secretary of homeland security, Chad Wolf.
The institute has spent the past few years preparing policy for a second Trump administration and the chair of its board, Linda McMahon, is also the co-chair of Mr. Trump’s presidential transition team. Ms. McMahon and a number of people involved with the institute, including Ms. Rollins, have taken responsibility for the policy side of the transition effort. Mr. Trump’s friend, Howard Lutnick, the billionaire chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, is overseeing the personnel side of the transition operation.
A spokesman for the institute, Marc Lotter, declined to comment. In response to a request for comment, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, did not address The New York Times’ reporting about his private remarks on Ms. Rollins. Ms. Leavitt said in a statement that “President Trump has built the most powerful presidential campaign in history” and that “when he wins,” he will choose “the best people to help him make America great again.”
Allies of Mr. Trump said that he had raised other names for potential chiefs and had made no decisions about White House staffing.
During her time in the Trump administration, Ms. Rollins played a key role in helping Mr. Trump secure bipartisan criminal justice reform. She is viewed skeptically by some Trump loyalists for her association with Mr. Kushner, a former Democrat, and for her role in developing the First Step Act, which some conservatives pejoratively branded “the jailbreak bill.” Others have raised questions about the America First Policy Institute having on its staff some advisers who are more free market conservatives, like Mr. Kudlow, rather than Trump-style populists.
The role of chief of staff for Mr. Trump has been fraught: In his four years as president, Mr. Trump cycled through four chiefs of staff, and some former advisers described it as an almost impossible job.
There was no common through-line in his choices for chief of staff. He picked a Republican Party chairman with no experience in the federal government (Reince Priebus); a four-star general (John Kelly); a budget wonk (Mick Mulvaney); and an ambitious congressman and far-right power broker (Mark Meadows).
Of that group of former Trump chiefs, one has been indicted (Mr. Meadows); one calls him the “most flawed person” he’s ever met (Mr. Kelly); one resigned after Jan. 6 (Mr. Mulvaney) and another’s departure was announced unceremoniously by tweet (Mr. Priebus).
Of all these chiefs, Mr. Priebus is the one who maintains the warmest relationship with Mr. Trump. He led the fund-raising for this year’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Mr. Trump has a good relationship with Ms. Rollins and often praises her to allies as smart and effective. But he has also complained privately about the America First Policy Institute raising money off his name, and even told associates that Ms. Rollins should give him varying sums of money to make up for the use of his “America First” brand in the group’s fund-raising.
At different times he has floated the figures of $25 million and $50 million as “fair” amounts to make up what is owed to him. Mr. Trump has complained that donors were confused and thought they were giving money to him when they heard the words “America First” as part of the institute’s name. Mr. Trump has also privately criticized the institute for “wasting money” on printing glossy policy books, according to a person with direct knowledge of his comments. Mr. Trump said, “Remember, there’s no policy without me,” the person added.
But he’s made fewer of these complaints in recent months. He has hosted three of the institute’s events at his private club and home, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla. And the institute, in turn, hosted Mr. Trump for a speech the first time he returned to Washington, D.C., after leaving the White House.
The central challenge for whoever might serve as chief of staff should Mr. Trump win a second term is that he does not want a gatekeeper, preferring to give tasks directly to various people working under him. His first White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, used to say that Mr. Trump ran the White House with a “hub and spokes model” — often giving the same task to multiple people.
Susie Wiles, Mr. Trump’s top adviser, is viewed by many close to Mr. Trump as the person who has done the best job of managing both his political operation and the often-feuding factions surrounding him. Many close to Mr. Trump have privately said that they hoped Ms. Wiles would serve as his chief of staff should he win, and that they believed that her political acumen would be essential in the role.
But it’s unclear whether the former president has discussed the job with her or whether she’s interested in the role.
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