President-elect Donald Trump barred ex-Cabinet officials Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo from his new administration in a Truth Social post on Saturday, opting for retribution over unity in one of his first transition announcements.
By blocking both of them—one a former presidential primary rival, the other a man with presidential ambitions who has criticized Trump in the past—the incoming president has stayed true to a quest of prioritizing loyalty over all else when building out his second administration.
“I will not be inviting former Ambassador Nikki Haley, or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to join the Trump Administration, which is currently in formation,” Trump wrote. “I very much enjoyed and appreciated working with them previously, and would like to thank them for their service to our Country.”
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Trump‘s sentiments were a far cry from his attacks on Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations whom he labeled a “birdbrain” throughout the GOP presidential primary and minimized her husband‘s military service. Even after Haley endorsed Trump, he made efforts to sideline her. Haley got a last-minute speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in July after initially saying she would not speak, and Trump seemed annoyed last month over calls to deploy Haley on the campaign trail despite Haley’s offers to do so.
“They keep talking about Nikki, Nikki,” Trump told Fox & Friends. “I like Nikki. Nikki, I don’t think, should have done what she did, and that’s fine that she did it. But even in her own state — in South Carolina, where she was the governor — I beat her by a number. … And then they say, ‘Oh when is Nikki coming back in?’ Nikki is in. Nikki is helping us already.”
Trump has remained more mum on Pompeo, who last year criticized the Trump administration’s $6 trillion contribution to the national debt in an interview and urged the GOP to move away from “celebrity leaders” with “fragile egos” in a speech. (He later claimed he was not referring to Trump.)
Pompeo, the former secretary of state, later ruled out a 2024 presidential bid though appeared willing to join a second Trump term. “If I get a chance to serve and think that I can make a difference,” he told Fox News, “I’m almost certainly going to say yes to that opportunity to try and deliver on behalf of the American people.”
Still, Trump allies have resisted their encroaches. Roger Stone, the firebrand personality who‘s remained a close Trump confidant, singled out Haley and Pompeo as the “most egregious examples of the type of person who should be excluded in the administration” in a blog post on Friday. He claimed Pompeo undermined Trump’s America First agenda while secretary of state and that Haley too often opted to criticize Trump rather than uplift him.
