So far, the ex-president has suggested creating a third-party movement that would allow him to support MAGA-friendly candidates in the elections of 2022 and beyond. He is also interested in becoming “the country’s leader in voting and voting integrity,” his senior adviser Jason Miller said in a podcast last Thursday.
But while Trump carefully traces the next steps, he is doing it more and more on his own. Two of his most trusted confidants, Johnny McEntee and Hope Hicks, refused to join him in Florida after spending years with him on the election campaign and in the west wing.
“He did very well when he was in the private sector, so I think he will just do what he wants,” said a former Trump employee about McEntee.
Many other advisors left his side, eager to start afresh from their former boss. White House advisers and government officials who once enjoyed their perches in the west wing have gone on remote trips – profiting from a mountain of unused vacations. Others are frantically asking former colleagues to help find work while prioritizing their own careers rather than whatever chapter Trump is planning for himself.
“There are a lot of resumes being passed and people just wanting to help them get up,” said a former Trump White House official.
It has not been easy. Tarnished by Trump’s reputation, several Trump advisers described an increasingly bleak job market, with virtually no chance of getting jobs in corporate America and some even having seen promising leads disappear after the U.S. Capitol riot. A second former White House official said he knew of “people who had their jobs terminated because of January 6”. A Republican strategist was more direct.
“They are really upset,” said the strategist, pointing to some senior officials who stayed with Trump until the bitter end. “Hill Scramble, one of the few places where they would be welcome, has been going on for about a month … They repeatedly said to take your hand off the hot stove, and they didn’t want to hear it.”
It is not just lower and middle level employees being pressured. Two people familiar with his thinking said that Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who spent seven years in the House of Representatives before joining the White House, was even considering a job at the Trump Organization for lack of options.
Faced with these employment obstacles, employees circulated an informal directory of plausible job openings. Other Trump officials have decided to open their own businesses or have transitioned back to Republican Capitol offices or hired their former colleagues. Former White House director of strategic communications Alyssa Farah, for example, recently called on a former adviser to Vice President Mike Pence to join his new consulting operation, according to a person familiar with the move.
It’s a very different reality from where Trump and his aides imagined they would be. A month ago, everything seemed crystal clear: he had lost the 2020 election, but he would soon launch a massive campaign for the presidency in 2024, and his allies and inner circle would be there to help. Now the ex-president’s team is on the run – willing to leave Washington, in some cases for red states like Texas and Florida, to increase its job prospects – while his second act is overshadowed by uncertainty.
A former senior government official noted that many inside the White House were waiting until Electoral College votes were counted to begin their job search seriously, so as not to step on messages about Trump’s efforts to contest the results. of the election. But then, the Capitol riots foiled his plans.
“They looked at this [Jan. 6] like the end of the state of limbo, people were operating so they could start moving forward, ”said the former employee. “But the 6th was a shock for that.”