Trump appointees must prove ‘fidelity and loyalty’, says campaign official

A senior official on Donald Trump's campaign has said any appointees in a second Trump administration would need to prove "fidelity and loyalty".

The official also sought to distance the former president from Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation plan calling for a far-right federal government in the event of a Trump victory at the voting polls in November.

Howard Lutnick, the chief executive officer of Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald and co-chairperson of the former president's transition team, told the Financial Times that appointees to any second Trump administration are "all going to be on the same side, and they're all going to understand the policies, and we're going to give people the role based on their capacity - and their fidelity and loyalty to the policy, as well as to" Trump.

The comments come as the Trump team are trying to dispel concerns that a second Trump government would be as chaotic as the first, marked in part by infighting and a staff turnover calculated at 92% as of the day Joe Biden took office as president in 2021.

"Those people were not pure to his vision," Lutnick told the outlet.

It is unlikely Lutnick's comments will calm concerns among those who believe government officials should place American democracy above Trump or any other president.

Lutnick joined Trump's transition team in August along with Linda McMahon, the head of the Small Business Association under the former president and wife of the ex-World Wrestling Entertainment boss Vince McMahon in August.

He maintained that Project 2025 was "radioactive", though its authors openly support Trump and his running mate, JD Vance.

"Project 2025 is an absolute zero for the Trump-Vance transition," the billionaire said. "You can use another term - radioactive."

Democrats have made the controversial document part of their campaign, describing it as a blueprint for a fast-tracked program to increase presidential power and "strip away our freedoms - by forcing states to report on women's miscarriages and abortions, cutting Social Security and Medicare, and eliminating the Department of Education".

While Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, Democrats' campaigns for congressional seats have launched billboards in more than two dozen districts harnessing the document to the Republican agenda.

"All of the data we have shows that Project 2025 just has huge interest and traction, more so than virtually every other issue," Represenative Jared Huffman of California, the leader of a task force on countering the project's agenda, told Axios.

The Trump campaign has tried to distance itself from the document and its authors. But lines to the heart of the campaign are clear enough, among them Vance's foreword to Dawn's Early Light, a book by the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts.

Lutnick told the FT that his job selecting candidates to become Trump appointees was that of "a painter of a mosaic" - and they would need to prepare for a "fast and furious" term if the former president was re-elected.

Lutnick said he had given more than $10m to Trump's 2024 effort and another $500,000 for the transition. He also said he had raised about $75m for the campaign in total.

Furthermore, Lutnick appeared on Trump's The Celebrity Apprentice in 2008 and had previously donated to Democrats.

His firm, Cantor FitzGerald, lost 658 employees in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, including his brother. Lutnick said his experience hiring new employees was akin to his work for the Trump transition team.

"You go to world-class people that you rate highly, and you ask them to help you," he said.