Campaign staff of President-elect Donald Trump were promised jobs in the incoming administration, but those making hires have yet to hear whether the pledge was real, a report suggests.
Jasmine Wright, writing for NOTUS, revealed that the new administration had already broken its promise that top Trump aides "swore off" of Project 2025. The transition team is using the vetted job bank of MAGA loyalists to fill jobs in the new Trump government.
Meanwhile, campaign staff were promised positions inside the White House, but those jobs haven't manifested, according to some potential hires.
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“There’s growing frustration among the would-be’s,” one of those Republicans told NOTUS. “There’s only three weeks left til inauguration and some people are trying to figure out what their future is going to look like with no clarity.”
Other staff were told they would hear in January whether they would be joining the administration as promised.
The report said that the "well-liked" insiders of Trump's world got first pick of positions. One source told NOTUS that they were told to "submit résumés along with three positions they would want in the new administration." Instead of hiring based on experience, the staff would do their best to match the staffer with the request.
Those working with Mark Meadows at the America First Policy Institute will be the "second rung of priority." One Republican official said that it was the AFPI that was working after 2020 to avoid "a lot of those pitfalls in terms of loyalty, that we didn't run into the same thing."
The top-tier Trump staff will also have a tighter grip on Trump than in the first administration. A former Trump staffer called them "The Four Horsemen;" Taylor Budowich, James Blair, Stephen Miller and Dan Scavino. Unlike in 2017, there won't be a free-for-all of people walking into the Oval Office. The "senior hierarchy" will control Trump, the report states.
Despite the promises and job banks, sources involved in the transition told NOTUS that they're hiring "at a more glacial place" than the previous administration. They're cautious about hiring undersecretaries and agency staff. The best way to get those jobs is through spam.
“You basically just blast around [a name] until you get a response, and then you make sure they apply on the inside, and then you follow up weeks later, and you keep on pushing,” said an outside Trump ally trying to help those jockeying for positions. “I haven’t heard of a better way to guarantee anything.”
One major test on hiring decisions won't just be about support of Trump in 2016, but on Jan. 7, 2021, after the GOP briefly turned against Trump, said Sergio Gor, a longtime GOP aide who started a publishing company to push out Trump's self-published books.
