Donald Trump’s transition chief says appointees must prove ‘loyalty’

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Donald Trump’s transition team co-chair has warned that people appointed to the former president’s next administration must prove their “loyalty” and slammed the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 as “radioactive”.

Howard Lutnick, who is also the head of investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald, told the Financial Times that Trump would execute his agenda at a “speed no one’s ever done before” if he was elected again in November.

But after the infighting and staff turnover that characterised the Republican nominee’s first term in office, Lutnick said appointees to a new Trump administration would need to show “fidelity” to the agenda and the president himself.

“Those people were not pure to his vision,” Lutnick said, referring to senior advisers who quit Trump’s White House or became hostile to his presidency.

“They’re all going to be on the same side, and they’re all going to understand the policies, and we’re going to give people the role based on their capacity — and their fidelity and loyalty to the policy, as well as to the man.”

In an interview in New York, Lutnick also dismissed Project 2025, the controversial blueprint for the Trump administration created by conservative think-tank the Heritage Foundation.

“Project 2025 is an absolute zero for the Trump-Vance transition,” the billionaire said. “You can use another term — radioactive.”

Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has made Project 2025’s radical conservative agenda a centrepiece of her efforts to depict Trump as an extremist on issues including abortion.

The contest between the two candidates ahead of the November 5 poll is finely poised, with little to separate them in the battleground states that will decide the election.

While Trump and his campaign have tried to distance themselves from Project 2025, many of his allies played critical roles in writing the manifesto. JD Vance, his running mate, wrote the foreword to a book by Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation.

Trump appointed Lutnick and former World Wrestling Entertainment chief executive Linda McMahon to vet personnel and draft policy in August, giving them just a few months to find thousands of potential candidates, including for crucial roles heading the defence and treasury departments.

Lutnick described his job selecting candidates as that of “a painter of a mosaic” and said appointees would need to be prepared for a “fast and furious” new Trump term.

Trump offered Lutnick the role on his plane after they spoke at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville in late July, and announced the appointment after the investor held a fundraiser at his Hamptons home that raked in millions of dollars. 

Lutnick said he had given more than $10mn to Trump’s 2024 effort and another $500,000 for the transition, and had raised about $75mn for the campaign overall.

The investor, who has known the Republican nominee for years and even appeared in 2008 on Trump’s NBC show The Celebrity Apprentice, previously donated to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton.

He likened his selection spree for Trump to his experience hiring thousands of employees following the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 that killed 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees, including his younger brother Gary.

“I’ve done this before,” said Lutnick. “You go to world-class people that you rate highly, and you ask them to help you.”

Some members of Trump’s previous administration, such as former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, have endorsed Trump. Others, including Trump’s vice-president Mike Pence, another ex-secretary of state Rex Tillerson, former chief of staff John Kelly, and former defence secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark Esper, have not.

Lutnick said the “establishment” did not understand Trump’s “objectives” or “intuition” and “thought they knew better” than the elected president.

The Cantor Fitzgerald chief had been rumoured to be a potential ambassador to Israel, but told the FT he had “no interest”. He did appear open to running a department.

“If he wants me in the mosaic, he would have to put me in,” said Lutnick of Trump. “I’m not putting me in.”