Trump's early staff picks show sway held by Don Jr., Tucker Carlson

President-elect Donald Trump has only begun to fill out the ranks of his incoming administration. His first choices confirm that his son Donald Jr. and the former Fox TV personality Tucker Carlson have emerged as major influences over his picks.

Carlson and Trump Jr. played a role in persuading Trump to choose JD Vance as his running mate at the Republican convention in Milwaukee. They appeared to have wielded their influence again this weekend as Trump announced Saturday that former Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley wouldn’t serve.

Pompeo had been angling for a job as defense secretary but was seen as too supportive of Ukraine. Pompeo had also considered a presidential run this year and criticized Trump — though never by name — several times.

But Trump Jr. and Carlson, who now holds forth with a webcast on X, made no secret of their opposition. In May, Don Jr. said Pompeo should be “smart enough” not to run against his father. And a day after Trump made the announcement about Pompeo and Haley, Don Jr. wrote on X: “Agreed 100% 100% 100%!!! I’m on it” in response to a tweet that said “the ‘stop Pompeo’ movement is great but it’s not enough.”

Carlson had said in a podcast in April he thought Pompeo was “sinister.” And in an episode of his show aired Sunday, he said: “Someone like Mike Pompeo, I’ll just say the name, who I don’t think is going to get a job in this administration — I would pray that he’s not.”

In the end, they appear to have gotten what they wanted. And Carlson may get another chance to demonstrate his sway soon with Elbridge Colby, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense whom he was interviewing when he made the remark about Pompeo. Colby’s name has been mentioned repeatedly for a senior Pentagon post.

“You’re one of the very few people with deep experience in national security who shares the president’s priorities in national security,” Carlson told Colby at the beginning of the interview. Colby declined to comment when contacted Monday, but in an X post linking to Carlson’s interview, he said he makes “no presumptions about roles for myself.”

“But I deeply and fervently hope that @realDonaldTrump is able to implement the foreign policy vision that he has so ably — and bravely — laid out,” he wrote.

That endorsement reverberated quickly. One person familiar with the situation, asking not to be identified discussing the internal deliberations, said other people vying for jobs are now courting Carlson and trying to persuade him to endorse them too.

The dynamic will be a familiar one for those who followed Trump’s first term. Back then Carlson was a leading advocate for the president to quit the United Nations World Health Organization. Trump did so, though Pompeo worked behind the scenes to try to claw back some funding.

This time, it seems Trump has broadened his circle of informal advisers even more. Most famously that includes Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, who like Carlson has been at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in recent days. Musk, who also owns X, even joined Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week and has been vocal in his opinions about who should serve in the administration.

It all amounts to a process that “is entirely off the rails,” according to Max Stier, the chief executive of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service.

“The normal process is that the dominant source of information about potential nominees comes through a process that is very careful and run by people who have been at this for for a long period of time, and involves a series of efforts around vetting,” Stier said.

This time, it appears the vetting is coming largely from Trump’s family. That includes Trump Jr., who took a back seat to Jared Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump in the first term but is playing a more prominent role this time around, especially as a gatekeeper. Kushner and Ivanka Trump have forsworn such roles this time.

In an interview with Fox and Friends on Nov. 7, Trump Jr. said his job was to ensure the loyalty of those who work for the president.

“I want to make sure now that we know who the real players are, the people who will actually deliver on the president’s message, the people who don’t think that they know better than the duly elected president of the United States — I want to make sure that those people are in his cabinet,” he said.

One litmus test for Trump 2.0 may focus on the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and the response. A person familiar with the matter said the transition team is scouring potential candidates’ comments for how they described the attack and whether they blamed Trump for it.

Even as Trump Jr. plays an active role in advocating for his favorite personnel picks, he has opted for a role outside the White House for himself. He’s joining 1789 Capital, a conservative venture capital firm run by Trump donor Omeed Malik. Still, he won’t stray far from Carlson’s sphere of influence. Last year, 1789 Capital invested $15 million into Last Country, a social media venture that Carlson co-founded.

And Carlson has ruled out any formal role in the Trump administration for himself.

“I don’t think I’m suited for it,” Carlson said on an episode of his show posted Monday, when asked if he would serve. “One of the things I’ve disliked all of my life and had no respect for is people who get out of their lane. Do what you’re good at.”

_____

(With assistance from Katrina Manson.)

_____