President-elect Donald J. Trump chose his attorney general almost on a whim, in the sky between Washington and Palm Beach, Fla. He scoffed at a candidate for the Department of Homeland Security, then abruptly changed his mind. His defense secretary pick was a snap judgment during a slide presentation at Mar-a-Lago.
Emboldened, confident in his instincts and more contemptuous than ever of Washington expertise, Mr. Trump is staffing the most important roles in his government at breakneck speed. Advisers have been stunned at how fast he is ticking through his choices, filling the government’s most important positions roughly a month sooner than he did in 2016.
Much of the action has taken place under the chandelier in the tearoom at Mar-a-Lago, where Mr. Trump surveys his potential Cabinet nominees on giant video screens.
He flicks through shortlists that his transition team, led by the billionaire Howard Lutnick, has drafted over the past months. If Mr. Trump shows an interest in a candidate, the presentation is designed to allow him to immediately watch videos of the potential nominee’s TV appearances — essential for any would-be Trump cabinet official.
Mr. Trump’s legal adviser Boris Epshteyn, who is still under indictment for his role in the so-called fake electors scheme in Arizona, has wielded substantial influence in the tearoom and elsewhere, and is said to have encouraged Mr. Trump’s choice of Matt Gaetz as attorney general. The president-elect’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is a constant there too, as are Donald Trump Jr., his eldest son, and Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man.
The president-elect is picking people he considers true loyalists, with little regard for whether they can pass Senate confirmation. In the space of 48 hours this week, Mr. Trump announced four picks that stunned Washington: Mr. Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, Pete Hegseth for defense secretary and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services.
Mr. Hegseth, a 44-year-old Fox News host and military veteran, in particular has drawn negative attention about his lack of experience and support for combat veterans accused of war crimes. He also was the subject of a sexual assault complaint in 2017 in Monterey, Calif., although no charges were filed. But the campaign only learned of it after Mr. Hegseth was announced as the nominee, according to a person familiar with the decision.
The surprise raised questions about how much — or whether — the campaign was vetting some of Mr. Trump’s picks.
Mr. Trump’s other candidates have drawn skepticism as well, including from Republican senators. “I was shocked by the announcement,” Senator Susan Collins of Maine said of Mr. Gaetz, who was investigated by the Justice Department on suspicion of child sex trafficking, although the case was closed without charges. “I’m sure that there will be a lot of questions raised at his hearing.”
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition who will be the White House press secretary, brushed off the concerns.
“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail — and his cabinet picks reflect his priority to put America first,” she said.
Mr. Trump is acting like a man who knows he will return to Washington with immense power, facing guardrails that he has steadily worn down and a Republican Party over which he has almost complete command. He has demanded that the next Senate majority leader, John Thune, allow recess appointments that would let him stock his cabinet with people who might be rejected if the full Senate were to vote.
Privately, Republican senators already express fear about getting on the wrong side of Mr. Trump and his MAGA movement. Few of them are interested in facing the attacks that Mr. Trump’s allies deploy online, or in having the president-elect back their political rivals.
2016 vs. 2024
Mr. Trump is operating differently from his 2016 transition. He is more confident in his judgments and does not feel the need to deliberate or heed the counsel of Washington institutionalists hoping to shape him into something resembling a traditional Republican president.
In late 2016 and early 2017, after his shock victory over Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump delighted in parading job-seekers through the lobby of Trump Tower so the news cameras could catch them as they flattered him, and he often went down to the lobby himself to speak to reporters. Back then, he took his time, auditioning candidates like they were on “The Apprentice,” his reality TV show, and rolling out his first cabinet picks in December of 2016.
There has been no parade this time, and Mr. Trump has stayed uncharacteristically out of public view. With the exception of his visit to the Biden White House and the meeting with the House Republican conference at a Hyatt hotel in Washington, Mr. Trump has barely interacted with the news media since his victory on Nov. 5. Instead, he has stayed at his home and private club in Palm Beach, occasionally golfing at another nearby club.
One exception was a brief appearance at Mar-a-Lago gala on Thursday night, when he revealed that he had chosen Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, to be his secretary of the interior — a choice that Mr. Trump said was originally intended to be announced the following day.
And while he has called everyone from lawmakers to members of the press soliciting input on whom he should appoint, he has been less deferential to certain opinions than in the past.
Eight years ago, as he prepared to take office for the first time in a city and a job he knew little about, he relied on the advice of Republican leaders and former officials with whom he was barely acquainted, like the former Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, to appoint people he knew essentially nothing about.
He hired people on first sight, including for the most important jobs in government, such as his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and his first defense secretary, Jim Mattis. Those relationships ended terribly; many of Mr. Trump’s first batch of aides ended up writing critical books about him and describing him as unfit for office.
Mr. Trump is determined not to make that mistake again. He still loves credentials and pedigrees from top schools and top companies, but he is far more willing to forgo that than in the past. He is hiring — above all else — for loyalty. He has told advisers that his biggest regret from his first term was personnel, and that he was betrayed by “traitors” like his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, and his attorney general, William P. Barr, both of whom resisted his efforts to mobilize the U.S. government to overturn the 2020 election.
This time, there will be no one in the room who sees it as their job to restrain Mr. Trump. There will be nobody like John F. Kelly, the former Marine general who was Mr. Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff. There will be no one even approximating Mr. Kelly.
‘Best day ever’
For the jobs he cares most about, like attorney general, Mr. Trump has selected people he believes will go after the career government officials he despises as the “deep state.”
He wants at the C.I.A. a trusted ally, John Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence in his first term. He has chosen Ms. Gabbard, a former Democrat who has railed against the national security establishment, as his director of national intelligence. And he has picked Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Representative Elise Stefanik of New York — two former critics turned staunch allies — as his secretary of state and U.N. ambassador.
After the announcement of Mr. Gaetz and a handful of other appointees on Wednesday afternoon, the reaction of Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s bomb-throwing former chief strategist, was: “Best day ever.”
Mr. Trump’s inner circle is led, as it has been for four years, by Ms. Wiles, who was his campaign manager. It also includes Vice President-elect JD Vance; his powerful domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller; and his eldest son, who sees his role as ensuring that no potential turncoats find their way into the second Trump administration. Mr. Musk is in nearly every meeting, and has made clear he intends to leave a deep imprint on the federal government.
There are still disagreements and behind-the-scenes fights about personnel. Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, for example, was far from a unanimous choice to lead the Department of Homeland Security, and several advisers hoped to steer Mr. Trump away from her. Mr. Trump scoffed at first when an aide brought her up during one meeting, but he changed his mind after he checked with a handful of immigration hard-liners who supported her, according to a person briefed on the matter. He then offered the position to Ms. Noem.
But there are far fewer such disputes than there were in the first transition.
Even with the differences since 2016, all signs so far indicate that the 78-year-old president-elect is sticking to some of his old habits. It sometimes seems to his staff as if half the world now has Mr. Trump’s cellphone number. Even since becoming the president-elect, he still seems willing to take every call — even calls from unknown foreign numbers.
Mr. Trump is said to be in an ebullient mood since his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. When he’s not running through personnel, he has been spotted in the tearoom beneath the gold-canopied roof, or out on the Mar-a-Lago patio, picking out music on his iPad and blasting Pavarotti.
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