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Now that Trump is president-elect, who could serve in his administration?

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Former President Donald Trump has secured the White House, now raising the question: who will serve in his administration?

Trump admitted on the Joe Rogan podcast just before the election that one of his biggest mistakes in his first term was putting the wrong people around him, a critique that has been widely shared by Trump’s own supporters.

Now, Trump has another chance to stock his administration.

Trump announced Thursday that his campaign co-chair Susie Wiles would serve as White House chief of staff, a powerful, wide-ranging position where she will help form the new administration and steer its policies.

A range of Republican establishment picks are jockeying to lead the U.S. Treasury Department, State Department, Department of Defense and others, but here are a few of the highest profile potential picks to serve in Trump’s administration.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Lifelong Democrat RFK Jr. ran for president as a Democrat and then became an Independent before finally backing the Trump campaign. Trump repeatedly touted Kennedy’s endorsement, saying that Kennedy would be kept far from energy policy because of his liberal views but would be allowed to work on health issues.

Kennedy has declared a war on junk food and speaks passionately about chronic health issues and how the American food industry and the Food and Drug Administration policies have helped create the chronic disease epidemic in the U.S.

RFK is considered a likely leader in the administration, probably in a health role. RFK has recently publicly said that “entire departments” at the FDA need to go because they are failing or even doing harm.

“They’re not protecting our kids,” he told MSNBC in a recent interview. “Why do we have Fruit Loops in this country that have 18 or 19 ingredients and you go to Canada and it’s got two or three?”

Elon Musk

Musk gave Trump a full-throated endorsement and helped propel him to victory with his posts on X and his financial backing. WHile Musk is more than busy running several successful companies, Trump publicly said he would pick Musk to improve government efficiency.

Musk gained a reputation in that department when he bought Twitter, fired much of the staff, and still kept the company running. Musk expressed surprise at just how inefficient and wasteful Twitter was when he took over.

“I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government,” Trump said in September.

Tulsi Gabbard

Gabbard served as a Democrat in Congress but later backed Trump on the campaign trail. Gabbard is known for her foreign policy chops and military service, potentially positioning her for an ambassadorship or State Department position.

Gabbard told Fox News in September that she would be “honored” to serve in Trump’s administration. The same month, she also told a crowd at the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition that she could help Trump prevent WWIII and deal with the military industrial complex.

“I feel I can make the most impact in these areas of national security and foreign policy, and work to bring about the changes that President Trump talks about,” she said in her speech.

Vivek Ramaswamy

During the Republican presidential primary, billionaire and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy quickly built his popularity and reputation as an erudite speaker and younger mouthpiece for many of Trump’s ideas.

He also refrained from attacking the President-elect and called for abolishing the Department of Education. He could oversee the dismantling of that agency or be placed somewhere in the Commerce Department or elsewhere, where his business background would serve him well.

Notably, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, will now need to appoint a U.S. senator to replace Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance. Ramaswamy lives in Ohio and could make the cut.

Scott Jennings

Scott Jennings has gone viral online in recent days for his commentary on CNN where he clearly defined Trump’s victory as a coalition of working class people as the mostly liberal panelists fretted over Trump’s victory.

Several viral clips have led to preliminary calls for Jennings to serve as press secretary.

“Scott Jennings = strong candidate for White House press secretary or communications director,” Real Clear Investigations senior reporter and New York Post columnist Paul Sperry wrote on X, one of several to make the same point. “He has been excellent throughout this campaign, arguing effectively as the lone GOP voice on a hostile, biased CNN panel, while keeping his cool and class.”

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

Sen. Marco Rubio was considered on the short list for vice president. While Trump will need the support in the Senate, Rubio could be repurposed in a position that utilizes his focus on national defense.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum

Burgum was also considered a vice president contender. His wealth and business background could put him on the short list for the Small Business Administration or another economic-related role in the new Trump administration.

John Ratcliffe

Former lawmaker and congressman Ratcliffe served as director of National Intelligence and is considered a potential pick to serve as attorney general.

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Business

Will Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs End In Disaster Or Prosperity?

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By J.D. Foster

“Liberation Day” has come. So what does it mean? Beats the hell out of me.

What we know is that President Trump’s avalanche of tariffs was to hit a peak on April 2; not end, mind you; not necessarily “the” peak, as more could be on the way; but a peak.

No Trump policy more completely breaks with America’s past than his “beautiful” tariffs on just about everything coming into the United States from just about anywhere.

Will this new policy liberate American manufacturing from foreign shackles? Will it usher in a new era of prosperity, keeping in mind the United States had for many years the consistently best-performing economy in the industrialized world, even overcoming the many inane obstacles erected by the Biden-Harris Administration?

Or will it leave the United States isolated, friendless, and weakened?

The correct answer at this point is no one knows, not even the bloviating talking heads on TV confidently predicting demise or Shangri-la.

Think of it this way. Suppose you’re a restaurant chef and a woman hands you a new recipe. Her father turns 75 soon and they want to have a party at the restaurant. The recipe is for the father’s favorite dish, one her mother made for years.

The recipe looks old, with odd ingredients and processes you’ve not seen before. Now judge it as a chef.

You can’t. Even as you start chopping and dicing, mixing ingredients as instructed, you’re not too sure how this is going to turn out. You have to wait until the dish is on the plate and taste it.

That’s the case with Trump’s tariffs. How will this all turn out? It’s too soon to tell.

The stock market sure doesn’t like it, but why should it? The investor class doesn’t understand this any better than you do. What they do understand is this new policy has upended assumptions and created enormous new uncertainties. We know that dish as those ingredients are always good for a big pullback.

Much of the confusion arises because we don’t know the underlying policy and likely this uncertainty is intentional. Trump likes keeping his counterparts, in this case our trading partners, guessing. If it means Americans are confused for a bit, Trump’s cool with that. Breaking eggs to make an omelette. It will pass and America will be great again afterward. Bon appetite.

If the core policy is to erect massive and mostly permanent tariff walls behind which American firms can hide, then we know how this will turn out: America, meet the dustbin of history.

If the core policy is to force our trading partners to deal with America fairly by reducing their trade barriers after which Trump will remove his tariffs, then this could turn out very well. Tariffs (and non-tariff barriers) in the U.S. and those of our trading partners would fall, reinvigorating the free trade that has energized prosperity for decades.

Which is it? Walls and doom or freedom and prosperity? Again, too early to tell.

Whatever else Trump does in his second term, these tariffs will define his presidency, akin in consequence to Ronald Reagan’s pro-growth tax cuts and Joe Biden’s inflation.

Trump in his second term clearly lives by the saying, “go bold or go home.” He’s got “bold” down pat. We will see over the next year or so whether he and the Republicans go home. Has he liberated Democrats from any fear of Republicans in the mid-terms or in 2028, or he’s liberated America from any fear of Democratic socialism and wokism returning in our lifetimes. The chips are all-in. Soon we will see the cards. Uncertainty, indeed.

JD Foster is the former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget and former chief economist and senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He now resides in relative freedom in the hills of Idaho.

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Business

‘Time To Make The Patient Better’: JD Vance Says ‘Big Transition’ Coming To American Economic Policy

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JD Vance on “Rob Schmitt Tonight” discussing tariff results

 

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Hailey Gomez

Vice President JD Vance said Thursday on Newsmax that he believes Americans will “reap the benefits” of the economy as the Trump administration makes a “big transition” on tariffs.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,679.39 points on Thursday, just a day after President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs against nations charging imports from the U.S. On “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Schmitt asked Vance about the stock market hit, asking how the White House felt about the “Liberation Day” move.

“We’re feeling good. Look, I frankly thought in some ways it could be worse in the markets, because this is a big transition. You saw what the President said earlier today. It’s like a patient who was very sick,” Vance said. “We did the operation, and now it’s time to make the patient better. That’s exactly what we’re doing. We have to remember that for 40 years, we’ve been doing this for 40 years.”

“American economic policy has rewarded people who ship jobs overseas. It’s taxed our workers. It’s made our supply chains more brittle, and it’s made our country less prosperous, less free and less secure,” Vance added.

Vance recalled that one of his children had been sick and needed antibiotics that were not made in the United States. The Vice President called it a “ridiculous thing” that some medicines invented in the country are no longer manufactured domestically.

“That’s fundamentally what this is about. The national security of manufacturing and making the things that we need, from steel to pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, and so forth, but also the good jobs that come along when you have economic policies that reward investing in America, rather than investing in foreign countries,” Vance said.

WATCH:

With a baseline 10% tariff placed on an estimated 60 countries, higher tariffs were applied to nations like China and Israel. For example, China, which has a 67% tariff on U.S. goods, will now face a 34% tariff from the U.S., while Israel, which has a 33% tariff, will face a 17% U.S. tariff.

“One bad day in the stock market, compared to what President Trump said earlier today, and I think he’s right about this. We’re going to have a booming stock market for a long time because we’re reinvesting in the United States of America. More importantly than that, of course, the people in Wall Street have done well,” Vance said.

“We want them to do well. But we care the most about American workers and about American small businesses, and they’re the ones who are really going to benefit from these policies,” Vance said.

The number of factories in the U.S., Vance said, has declined, adding that “millions of workers” have lost their jobs.

“My town [Middletown, Ohio], where you had 10,000 great American steel workers, and my town was one of the lucky ones, now probably has 1,500 steel workers in that factory because you had economic policies that rewarded shipping our jobs to China instead of investing in American workers,” Vance said. “President Trump ran on changing it. He promised he would change it, and now he has. I think Americans are going to reap the benefits.”

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