Should voters elect to send Donald Trump back to the White House in 2024, Americans can expect a return to a Trumpocentric administration in which he is the unchallenged and undisputed head of the government. It would contrast with the Biden White House in which staffers have more power and the president relies more on the consensus of his staff instead of making hard decisions.
The next Trump administration would be made up of people who are more ideologically aligned with the former president.
His second administration would implement an America First agenda that emphasizes American exceptionalism instead of what Obama’s people called “leading from behind.”
Former Trump Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney previews what can be expected if Trump wins in a column for The Hill. He notes that Trump will micromanage the entire government and that everyone in the Cabinet will be direct reports. Another Trump term will be unlike the last.
“A key focus will be establishing the role of the ‘unitary executive,’ which is something many Republicans have been wanting for decades. The ‘Deep State’ — loosely defined as government bureaucrats who think they are policymakers instead of policy executors — is real. And you can expect a lot of attention to be put toward fixing that,” Mulvaney writes.
First Trump Term Hobbled By Lack of Ideological Unity
In the first term, Trump and his people were completely unready to govern once they won because they did not expect to win. Hundreds of slots in the federal bureaucracy went unfilled and countless Obama appointees were held over into the Trump administration, which set up the disastrous investigations that plagued him as president.
Trump insiders note that son-in-law Jared Kushner was in the driver’s seat when it came to filling cabinet positions. Kushner’s views were more in line with the liberal values of the Manhattan business community. As a result, people such as Marine Gen. James Mattis, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, and Marine Gen. John Kelly were brought into senior positions even though their ways of thinking were not aligned with Trump’s.
Mattis wanted to bring Democrat hawk Michelle Flournoy, a senior Obama administration official, to be his deputy despite a clear ideological difference with Trump. Such differences led to inevitable tensions.
Former UN Ambassador John Bolton took the National Security Advisor role even though he knew on his first day that he and Trump likely would not get along.
At the same time, individuals who were more aligned with Trump’s way of thinking were denied jobs in the administration by the White House Office of Presidential Personnel.
Trump kept FBI Director James Comey who continued the Russiagate conspiracy against him that the Durham Report documented was hatched in the Obama administration.
Trump Plans Ideological Purity in Federal Bureaucracy
Trump loyalist Stephen Miller allegedly plans to staff a second Trump administration with attorneys who are more compliant with Donald Trump’s vision instead of individuals who would get in his way.
This has Democrats and Never Trumpers running scared.
Vanity Fair Contributing Editor Eric Lutz writes, “Trump—the clear GOP frontrunner who is, in some polls, leading President Joe Biden—openly aspires to be an autocrat. In a second Trump administration, he just might be able to get his wish, with a White House run by the ‘…. enablers,” as a former Trump Pentagon official warned ex-Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor. As bad as the first four years were, a second term would surely be even worse. ‘Trump 2.0 would be the Delta variant of democracy,’ as David Axelrod said earlier this fall. ‘It would be a thousand times more virulent and harder to control.’”
Mulvaney rebuts those who claim Trump wants to be a dictator by saying that a president should have the right to set the agenda for his administration.
“This will be couched by Trump detractors as a dictatorial power grab, but the truth is that it is completely fair to suggest that presidents, by virtue of their election, are entitled to an executive branch that aligns with their agenda,” Mulvaney writes.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
