Hiring is underway for Donald Trump’s coming administration as MAGA hopefuls have begun submitting their resumes to serve the president-elect. Aside from proving their technical qualifications, however, candidates allegedly must also demonstrate their allegiance to Trump in interviews with his most loyal acolytes.
Several MAGA insiders including Charlie Kirk, have been tasked with screening prospective hires for senior posts inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies.
Kirk, a right-wing activist, pro-MAGA podcaster and the founder of Turning Point USA, is part of a personnel team led by Sergio Gor, who runs the publishing company for Trump’s books and ran a multimillion-dollar super PAC that supported the president-elect. Since the election, Kirk’s influence appears to be growing, having become one of an exclusive few from whom Trump seeks advice.
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In recent weeks, Kirk and fellow loyalists have met with applicants out of Trump transition headquarters in Palm Beach, Florida where sources say they grill candidates on their dedication and faithfulness to the president-elect, a New York Times report detailed.
Nine people who either interviewed for jobs or were directly involved in the process spoke to the Times about Trump’s hiring process.
They say that applicants have first been asked questions about overhauling the Pentagon, technologies that could improve intelligence agencies' efficiency, and their feeling about using the military to enforce immigration policy. Then, some candidates told the outlet, they were probed with a set of questions seemingly designed to suss out their loyalty to Trump.
According to the report, interviewers asked who the applicants supported in the three most recent elections, what they thought about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and if they believed the 2020 election was stolen.
Each of these questions, they said, appeared to only have one right answer.
Applicants who claimed they criticized the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 or confirmed that President Joe Biden won in 2020 were met with silence. They say they were not hired.
Loyalty questions, according to multiple sources close to the transition team, are par for the course for interviews related to jobs in several agencies. They say that the president-elect’s team looked into what candidates had said about Trump on the day of and in the days following the Capitol riot.
While Karoline Leavitt, the incoming White House press secretary, declined to address specific questions about the job interviews when approached by the Times, she said “President Trump will continue to appoint highly qualified men and women who have the talent, experience, and necessary skill sets to make America great again.”
