Former president Donald Trump is headed back to the White House, set to become the second president to serve nonconsecutive terms since Grover Cleveland in the 1890s.
That also means that his MAGA roadshow—after a rally tour of America replete with semi-coherent ramblings that went on longer than Springsteen concerts—will return to Washington with him.
Many of arguably the biggest gaffes of Trump’s campaign came from the coterie of MAGA apparatchiks and surrogates around him.
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Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made the wild and disparaging remarks about Puerto Rico at Trump‘s Madison Square Garden rally, his right-wing firebrand pal Laura Loomer tweeted racist venom about Vice President Kamala Harris, conspiratorial weird guy Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Trump would get fluoride out of America’s drinking water, and Trump’s own running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, was pilloried for mocking “childless cat ladies” and baselessly targeting migrants with racist pet-eating conspiracy theories.
Vance, of course, will join Trump as his number two. And others will follow them to Washington.
Here are some of the MAGA diehards in the Trump orbit that could make the cut.
Elon Musk
Musk, the world’s richest man, went all in on Trump this year, declaring his backing for the president-elect after the July assassination attempt on his life—although he was quietly financing conservative causes well before that.
The MAGA billionaire, who also owns increasingly unstable social network X and runs SpaceX, put up tens of millions of his own money towards his political action committee, America PAC, which did some of the heavy get-out-the-vote lifting in swing states like Pennsylvania that Trump carried.
Trump has floated the idea of making Musk his so-called “secretary of cost-cutting.” No such cabinet post exists and its unclear whether he meant it would involve a formal government role or if Musk—who is reportedly obsessed with human population levels and denied offering his semen to friends and acquaintances—would act as an informal advisor.
Musk has publicly floated the idea of cutting $2 trillion in federal spending, which economic experts called “absurd” and “borderline impossible,” warning it could trigger an economic meltdown.
Through his multiple companies, Musk could massively benefit from policymaking decisions, notably SpaceX competes for government contracts and Trump has long expressed a fascination with space, having created the United States Space Force during his first term in office.
John Paulson
In the world of well-heeled MAGA acolytes, Musk is a johnny-come-lately. The real, OG MAGA billionaire is John Paulson, a prominent New York City hedge fund boss who has backed and fundraised tens of millions for Trump since 2016.
Bloomberg reported in February that Trump has floated Paulson’s name for the coveted Treasury secretary role.
Paulson, a major advocate of tax cuts, tariffs and deregulation, is not shy about wanting a cabinet post, and has said he would be happy to work with “cost cutter” Musk to take a chainsaw to U.S. spending.
Steven Cheung
The indefatigable Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign communications director, worked for a spate of Republican office holders including former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the late Arizona Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign before crossing over into the world of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
The mixed-martial arts behemoth, run by longtime Trump pal Dana White, tapped Cheung as its director of communications in 2013, and like the Trump campaign has had a prickly relationship with journalists, banning some seen as critical from events.
Cheung—who jumped ship from UFC to Trump’s 2016 campaign—is incredibly responsive to reporters these days and known to get statements to them with considerable haste. But he is also known for trading in the abrasive rhetoric that is a hallmark of Trump’s operations.
He served in the White House as assistant communications director from 2017 to 2018, before a falling out with then Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly saw him depart, but returned for Trump’s 2020 and 2024 campaigns.
A New Yorker profile earlier this year flagged one particular missive Cheung—dubbed “big, fluffy, and loveable”—fired off at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in an official campaign statement: “It’s downright bewildering why he would cuck himself in front of the entire country who clearly doesn’t want him as president.”
If he’s appointed to a top comms job in the White House, reporters should expect some, er, colorful statements.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The former Democrat turned independent candidate for president wears a lot of hats: son of the legendary Kennedy clan, guy who carried out a sexting affair with a New York magazine reporter, hubby to Curb Your Enthusiasm star Cheryl Hines, guy who dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park, lawyer, guy who cut off the head of a whale carcass and tried to bring it home, anti-vaxxer and seed oils conspiracist.
Kennedy abandoned his independent bid for the White House in August to throw his support behind Trump, and the president-elect has in return said he would allow the conspiracy theorist—whose own family denounced his beliefs—to “do anything he wants” in his second administration.
Kennedy has personally angled for a cabinet post or a position leading a major health or environmental agency, and recently claimed Trump would remove fluoride from U.S. drinking water, despite experts considering it one of the greatest health achievements of the last 100 years.
Susie Wiles
Wiles has the job of White House Chief of Staff if she wants it. That’s a widely held view in MAGA World, according to most reports.
Trump’s co-campaign manager, a Florida politics veteran, was largely credited as the person who stabilized and professionalized the Trump campaign since taking the reins in early 2023.
Wiles is said to have earned the rare respect of the often tempestuous Trump, expressing her disagreements with him bluntly without any particular fear of his temper.
Wiles hasn‘t held a job in Washington since the Reagan era, but the fact that this makes her a skilled political operator who is not a creature of the swamp would certainly align with Trump’s anti-establishment rhetoric.
Politico reported last month that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and former Trump White House Domestic Policy Council director Brooke Rollins are the two other top candidates for the top White House job.
Alex Bruesewitz
Who was responsible for the racist set by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at the Trump campaign’s rally at Madison Square Garden? The one where he insulted Puerto Rico and threw out a racist anti-Black trope? Where he made remarks so unhinged that even the Trump campaign, known for doubling down on controversy, distanced itself from them?
According to a report in The Atlantic, it was Trump campaign staffer Alex Bruesewitz.
Described as a “terminally online troll and perpetual devil on the campaign’s shoulder” Bruesewitz was a central figure in the efforts to get Trump on a string of bro-y podcasts and livestreams, which put him in front of audiences of millions of impressionable and taurine-infused young male listeners.
Bruesewitz is the one who introduced Hinchcliffe—whose podcast Kill Tony was a target for the Trump campaign but scheduling got in the way—to Trump’s head of planning, Justin Caporale, in advance of the MSG rally. The rest is history.
Tulsi Gabbard
Gabbard, a military veteran and former Democratic congresswoman for Hawaii before retiring, endorsed Trump in August before surprising him with the announcement that she had joined the Republican Party at a rally together last month.
She told Fox News in September that she would “be honored to serve” in a second Trump administration, adding she was aiming for a foreign policy job.
Gabbard, who endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 after her own bid for the Democratic nomination, holds a range of controversial foreign policy views and has been accused of denying atrocities committed by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, taken a neocon hardline view of Islam, opposed sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine war, and downplayed Vladimir Putin’s censorship of the press.
Chad Wolf
His name is Chad Wolf, that alone should merit a MAGA appointment. The immigration hardliner ran the Department of Homeland Security for 14 months on an acting basis during Trump’s first presidency and has been rumored as a potential candidate to lead to DHS again.
Wolf was deeply loyal to Trump’s anti-immigrant and anti-leftist rhetoric, having sent federal agents to Portland, Oregon during the riots that followed the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer.
If Cheung is the paragon example of someone who would dish out rhetoric in line with Trump‘s anti-immigrant views, the former lobbyist and congressional staffer Wolf has shown he’s willing to carry out crackdowns in real life.
Barron Trump
Not in any official capacity, of course. Trump‘s 18-year-old son matriculated at NYU earlier this year and has mostly kept a low profile, living at the family penthouse in New York City with his mother Melania.
His older brothers, Donald Jr. and Eric, took on full surrogate roles during the campaign, but the youngest Trump had a quiet behind-the-scenes role: recommending podcasts for his dad to appear on.
Barron is also listed as a “De-Fi visionary” on the paperwork of his dad’s crypto currency venture, World Liberty Financial. With Trump having promised big things for the decentralized finance sector, Barron may be called upon to offer his apparently prodigious brain to those efforts.
