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Trump’s Transition Circus Heads to Palm Beach

As two competing D.C. factions attempt to woo Trump over the right to staff his putative government, the former president is already planning on moving his transition team to Mar-a-Lago—inciting aspiring hires to fight tooth and nail for their jobs. (Sound familiar?)

donald trump susie wiles
Susie Wiles has already proven herself adept at the delicate task of professionalizing the Trump operation without overstepping or upsetting the principal. Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Tina Nguyen
April 4, 2024

The polling and prediction markets may show Joe Biden and Donald Trump in a statistical dead heat, but fortune favors the drape-measurers, and for Trump allies and hangers-on eying roles in a putative Trump II administration, the jockeying has begun. As I reported in October, there are currently two dueling conservative groups working to staff the next Trump regime: Project 2025, spearheaded by the storied Heritage Foundation, with the participation of every right-wing organization under the sun (the Tea Party Patriots, Stephen Miller’s legal firm, Moms for Liberty, etcetera); and the America First Policy Institute’s Transition Project, featuring a who’s who of Trump has-beens (Kellyanne Conway, Hogan Gidley, Larry Kudlow, Pam Bondi, etcetera etcetera). Both organizations, each obviously headquartered in Washington, D.C., are focused on vetting the next generation of Trump-aligned foot soldiers to parachute into federal agencies on Day One.