Last month, the New York Times ran a lead story saying that a little-known attorney and policy bigwig, Brooke Rollins, had the inside track to becoming White House Chief of Staff if Donald Trump wins again.
The news was greeted by a collective ‘WTF?’ inside the Trump campaign.
Firstly, why would the New York Times, no friend of Trump’s, have the first word about the most important appointment in his next administration?
Second, who could’ve be authoritative enough within Trumpworld to leak such an unlikely name and convince the Times that it wasn’t pre-election prank.
Well, Donald Trump himself, for one.
Last month, the New York Times ran a lead story saying that a little-known attorney and policy bigwig, Brooke Rollins, had the inside track to becoming White House Chief of Staff if Donald Trump wins again.
Perhaps the former president – who is known to call reporters personally – was using Rollins as way to strike fear into his top staff, especially as the race grew ever closer.
But insiders suggest that there was another distinct possibility – that the leak was coming from someone who regularly speaks to the Times: Jared Kushner.
The former president’s son-in-law had, arguably, been the most successful staffer in the first Trump White House.
After the humiliation of 2020, he and his wife Ivanka have kept a public distance from Trump – decamping from Washington DC to Miami, and largely refusing to engage with the 2024 campaign, as Kushner focused instead on shoring up multi-billion-dollar investments from patrons in the Middle East for his new private equity fund.
It is understood, however, that Kushner’s influence with his father-in-law has never dimmed — and he could, in the words of one campaign staffer, ‘big foot’ anyone whenever he sees fit. Indeed, insiders are in no doubt that, were Trump to be re-elected, Kushner would seek to exercise that influence.
Brooke Rollins was one of Kushner’s key lieutenants in the White House.
In the aftermath of 2020, she helped organize and lead the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) – a think tank that has raised money to promote key MAGA issues and employs many former Trump staffers.
The former president’s son-in-law had, arguably, been the most successful staffer in the first Trump White House.
After the humiliation of 2020, Jared Kushner and his wife Ivanka have kept a public distance from Trump – decamping from Washington DC to Miami and largely refusing to engage with the 2024 campaign.
It is understood, however, that Kushner’s influence with his father-in-law has never dimmed — and he could, in the words of one campaign staffer, ‘big foot’ anyone whenever he sees fit.
Really, there could be no clearer sign than the Times story that the messy fight for power and proximity to Trump’s ear has begun once again in earnest.
Since 2020, conservative think tanks like AFPI and the Heritage Foundation – responsible for the so-called new Trump manifesto, ‘Project 2025’ – have employed countless former Trump staffers.
Many will now be angling to re-enter the presidential orbit. But they will find themselves faced with two major obstacles: Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, co-heads of the 2024 campaign.
It is often true that a president’s White House is controlled by the people who won it for him.
Wiles and LaCivita, figures of little standing in the first Trump administration, have much to be thanked for: having shepherded Trump’s come back from January 6 exile to the precipice of victory.
So far, they have also managed to hold the door against many of the old Trump cronies.
In contrast Trump’s darker ‘stolen election’ impulses, Wiles and LaCivita both represent a more traditional and moderate type of Republicanism – more RINO than MAGA, focused on results rather than crazed ideology.
If Trump wins, and despite his famous reluctance to extend credit to anyone else, it will be hard to ignore that it was their political acumen that won it for him.
The likely scenario, or at least the logical one, is that Wiles, a 67-year-old grandmother — quietly breaking the mold of most of the women around Trump — will become Chief of Staff.
Certainly, it would be the first time someone has come into that key position with a proven record of being able to manage Trump and even protect him from his worst instincts.
Meanwhile, LaCivita, a 58-year-old Gulf War veteran with a purple heart, would become Trump’s primary political aide, taking something like the Chief Strategist job that Steve Bannon once held, with the difference that Bannon had little political experience and LaCivita has a long history in GOP politics.
Many will now be angling to re-enter the presidential orbit. But they will find themselves faced with two major obstacles: Susie Wiles (pictured next to Trump) and Chris LaCivita (far left), co-heads of the 2024 campaign.
Perhaps the former president – who is known to call reporters personally – was using Brooke Rollins (pictured) as way to strike fear into his top staff, especially as the race grew ever closer.
Publicly, both Wiles and LaCivita have insisted that they may not choose to go into the White House. And certainly, that’s the proper affect to employ around Trump, who hates those he perceives as trying to get something from him (he likes people to grovel, but not to grasp).
Yet both Wiles and LaCivita have also assiduously fought off attempts by others in the Trump orbit to make meaningful inroads.
Most notably, they are believed to have helped convince Trump to disavow the Heritage Foundation’s controversial ‘Project 2025’ paper. This had the effect of both muting one of the Democrat’s big talking points and putting those who work at the Heritage Foundation into political perdition and, thus, took out potential West Wing competition.
Of course, in the blood sport of politics, their success, has made them obvious kill targets. All roads to high influence in a new Trump White House would now involve dispatching them.
In early August, Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, and his top former aide, Kellyanne Conway, reportedly met with Trump at his Bedminster golf course.
Conway, who has not been publicly involved in this campaign, may well have gotten the Chief of Staff role in the first White House but for the fact that her then-husband, George, was waging a daily Twitter war against the president.
Lara Trump, Eric Trump’s wife and a former TV producer, is now the co-chair of the Republican National Committee and is seen as a newly ascendant family member, seeking that special ‘in-law portfolio’ that had been created by Kushner.
Now, according to insiders, with Kamala Harris rising in some significant polls, a divorced Conway and Trump’s newly ambitious daughter-in-law have made a pitch for Trump to rethink his campaign team, and potential top White House staff.
Their stalking horse, according to these insiders, was Corey Lewandowski, who Trump, on their suggestion, immediately brought back into the inner campaign circle.
Lewandowski was Trump’s first campaign manager in the 2016 campaign before he was promptly fired following reports of an internal power struggle that summer and replaced by Conway.
Lara Trump, Eric Trump’s wife and a former TV producer, is now the co-chair of the Republican National Committee and is seen as a newly ascendant family member.
Nonetheless, he remained something of a Trump favorite and was, often, leaned on for advice.
By summer’s end, Lewandowski, in an audacious grab, appeared to be taking over once again.
And so, in a united push, Wiles and LaCivita reportedly confronted Trump and, with his assent, exiled Lewandowski to the campaign’s metaphorical suburbs.
A subsequent series of press leaks damning to Wiles and LaCivita — particularly in relation to the money the duo appeared to be personally making from additional channels related to the campaign — were likely down to Lewandowski and, as intended, were said to infuriate Trump who doesn’t like people profiting off him.
Success in politics, or the prospect of success, is when the knives and the dreams truly come out.
Along with this crowd of ambitious politicos, there is, too, the billionaire class, who see a Trump White House as something of a God-given opportunity.
John Paulson, the hedge funder who made his fortune virtually overnight by shorting the housing market prior to the 2008 financial crisis, is thought to be jockeying for the role of Secretary of the Treasury, though he has little, if any, political experience.
Howard Lutnick, long-time Trump pal and financial services CEO, has been running the presidential transition team (charged with hiring ahead of a new administration), which seems to suggest that the Wall Street community will have significant influence in an otherwise populist, anti-elite White House.
Meanwhile, tech money has been having supporting JD Vance which that could see him emerge as a figure of unexpected clout as Vice President, particularly when Trump immediately becomes a second-term lame duck.
And then there is Elon Musk, whose wealth puts him in a special status beyond even other billionaires.
If Trump wins, and particularly if he carries Pennsylvania, where Musk has devoted vast resources, Musk will surely claim credit and demand his due.
Trump has already promised Musk that he will be the government’s ‘efficiency’ tsar, whatever that means. But one thing it might mean is that there will be two kings of the world in the West Wing, which could make for an awkward development.
Another job that has been promised is to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He’ll be a new health tsar, charged with ‘women’s health’ among other things.
And then there is Elon Musk, whose wealth puts him in a special status beyond even other billionaires.
Another job that has been promised is to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He’ll be a new health tsar, charged with ‘women’s health’ among other things.
The problem is: This job, like the one promised to Musk, is not, in fact, real.
But that, too, is part of life in Trumpworld, where people who come to believe they have influence and standing before they are never heard from again.
And then, finally, there is the family.
Trump seems to both deride, even belittle, his children and their spouses, while also granting them a special, and unassailable status.
It is widely thought that his eldest, Don Jr — about whom Trump once reportedly said he’d like to take back his name if he could — plans to make a career as a politician or power broker.
Lara Trump has been heard telling people she expects a senior West Wing job. When one Trump ally suggested to him that Lara really has too little experience, the former president reportedly replied: ‘Yes, but she’s family.’
And then, once again, there is Kushner – the ultimate wild card.
Even though he managed to transform himself from a callow New York socialite into the White House’s most adept infighter – and then into a global player with billions at his disposal – he is still underestimated. Or at least, he is by those who have not seen him manage his father-in-law and work the levers of power in the Trump circle.
Some insiders suggest that if there is a Republican Senate majority — ideally, a majority of at least three — then Kushner will be the likely Secretary of State.
Still, of course, at the top of the Trump org chart, determining everything below it, is a man who tends to thrive off chaos more than organization.
Everyone who goes to work for Donald Trump believes they will be the one to make a difference, bringing order and agenda.
But mostly they just all find themselves in a crowded Oval Office, listening ad nauseam to the man in charge who will countenance no interruption. And, before they know it, they too, like so many before them – whether out of frustration, disgust, or because they simply had the temerity to interrupt – will shortly find themselves shown toward the door.
