Early predictions period: who will join the Trump administration in 2025 if he does become U.S. president

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There are less than 10 months left until the U.S. presidential election, which will be held in November this year, and the electoral topics will be discussed more often and more emotionally every month. As of today, there is a serious superiority of Donald Trump over Joe Biden, which exists, at least in the minds of both Republican and Democratic electorate, although it is perceived with diametrically opposite assessment. These subjective hopes and fears have a quite objective justification. On average, according to the polls that were conducted back in November-December of the last year and continued in January of 2024, Trump was ahead of Biden by 5 points in the U.S. average, with 49-50% against 44-45% for his opponent, and taking into account the “skew” of the electorate ratio in favor of conservative Republican states. This is a very serious gap, because both Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush Jr. managed to win elections while losing about 1.5-2% to their Democratic opponents. But even more important in assessing the final results is that such a gap exists in seven key electoral states like Pennsylvania and Georgia, and in Michigan, Trump consistently beats Biden by as much as 10 points with a 50% to 40% lead over the incumbent White House host. Also playing against Biden is the emergence of independent candidates like Cornel West and especially Robert F. Kennedy on the scene and in polls that feature all of these personalities, Trump gets about 37-38% compared to Biden’s 30-31% and Kennedy’s 16% and West’s 2-3%. If the election had gone this way, it would have been a crushing defeat for Biden with losses in all the key “border” states and even some traditionally Democratic ones. In reality, the “helpful vote” effect and the realization of the leftist electorate that the only alternative to Biden can be Trump, who they hate, will raise Biden’s final result, but even then he risks losing a critical 1-2%. At the same time, it is not particularly clear how Biden can improve his rating, but he is regularly pulled down by quite different factors. Among them are foreign policy blunders in the Gaza Strip, which have alienated the left-wing electorate, the risk of economic crisis and rising oil prices. They are caused by poor relations with OPEC+, and, especially, the president’s health, which is especially important for undecided voters. And against this backdrop, the panic of many Democratic Party functionaries at risk of being out of a job in 2025 is understandable.

In such a situation, Biden can only rely on the power of the state apparatus, which will allow him to simply falsify the election results in those “seven key states”. However, Republicans are preparing to prevent a repeat of 2020 with high-profile scandals of mail-in ballots or dead voters, and they are already building the infrastructure to deal with irregularities in advance. A recent poll by pollsters at Rasmussen found that 17% of Americans have voted in a state where they don’t live. For example, Californians travel to Arizona and Nevada and New Yorkers to Georgia to influence the outcome of elections in these “undecided” states, and this “electoral tourism” is hardly a spontaneous initiative. In addition, 21% of voters have filled out ballots for others, and 8% of Americans have encountered offers to pay for a “correctly” filled out ballot. Apparently, all of this has been practiced by crooked Democratic Party political technologists in a number of metropolitan areas, setting up ballot-buying ghettos where people are willing to sell their vote cheap. After the 2020 election, some Republican states tightened their mail-in ballot rules, but their Democratic opponents are just developing the practice, and that’s with 2024 in mind. Liberal states now even allow voting without ID, so Trump’s headquarters is preparing an army of polling station observers and lawyers, and the influential Republican Heritage Center will publish a map of irregularities. Trump supporters are now showing civic initiative, following the unofficial call of their political leaders, and are actively becoming election officials of their own volition. This is a real concern among Democrats, because these conservative commissioners, in the event that fraud is discovered, will simply not recognize the election results. In the worst case scenario for the White House and a massive finding of irregularities, America will find itself in a constitutional crisis, and whether Biden will be able to resolve it by force is a big question. In this light, many rational Democrats are already speculating what kind of power Trump will have in 2025-2028, what to expect from this “tyrant” and what kind of team he will form in his administration.

Various theories are being put forward about what Trump’s cabinet will be like, and the most realistic versions of its composition are a real nightmare for “left-wing activists” and the liberal establishment. According to Axios, Donald Trump is already forming the list of his team for 2025 so as not to repeat the mistakes of 2016 and immediately have candidates for all prominent positions in the U.S. state apparatus. After all, during Trump’s last term, the Republican elites, who were not too friendly to him, imposed many people alien to him into his administration, who did nothing but put sticks in the president’s wheels. Among them were even his obvious opponents in the person of Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, who in key positions often simply paralyzed any actions of Trump. He has now realized his mis-steps and cowardice at the time, and will minimize the participation of Republican neoconservatives in the formation of the future government. Trump is going to bet only on proven and personally loyal officials, and a set of personalities is forming extremely interesting. Thus, according to Axios, Stephen Miller, who is an ardent opponent of migration and “advocate” of the beginning of the war in Mexico against drug cartels, will return to the administration. Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief ideologue, whom he ousted from his inner circle in 2017 under apparent pressure from “moderate Republicans” who accused the alt-right of excessive radicalism that undermined the former president’s authority, is also expected to return. Now it is very likely that he will be made White House Chief of Staff, and in his position he is going to be engaged in breaking the entire system of the “deep state” with the dismissal of tens of thousands of apparatchiks and showy criminal cases.

Indeed, Trump’s staff is not only campaigning, but is already actively preparing plans for a real restructuring of America. Trump plans to direct all the forces of the U.S. government to fight crime and deport migrants by the million a year. He will prohibit in the first days of the presidency to carry out operations on sex change over minors, as well as the service of transgender people in the army. Schools and universities will launch a reform to reject liberal agendas. Trump’s team envisions certifying all teachers, getting rid of those who don’t hold “patriotic values”. The concept of educational reform includes the introduction of courses with the eradication of “anti-white, anti-American and anti-Western” programs, which is already being piloted in Florida. The flagship is to be the “American Academy,” a new university with a patriotic bias and no wokisme. Trump also intends to create “freedom cities” on federal land as some kind of alternative to liberal metropolitan areas mired in crime and lawlessness. Such reforms will obviously require the support of the bureaucracy. That’s why Trump wants to organize a massive purge in Washington, firing more than 50,000 federal employees, secret service apparatchiks and Pentagon officials. New ones will be hired after a special test for loyalty to “American values” and Trump’s ideology. This is the only way to undermine the status quo in Washington and launch a real attack on the liberal establishment. Bannon will be supported in this endeavor by his national security adviser, Kash Patel, who helped Trump evade imaginary accusations of ties to Russia. In addition, Senator Tom Cotton is being touted as the head of the Pentagon because he has advocated using the military to defeat BLM in 2020. And there’s sure to be an excuse for that in Trump’s second term, because Democrats will be provoking street unrest in every way possible. Richard Grenell will probably become Secretary of State. He, in turn, has become famous for his support of right-wing Euroskeptics in Europe, and if he returns to power, he will be even more active in supporting the European right and undermining the liberal foundations of the EU.

The main struggle will be for the vice-presidential post, and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance and Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene will fight for it. Both of them are consistent isolationists, conservatives and critics of Biden’s foreign policy, especially in the “Ukrainian direction”, which he has turned into a source of cheap PR. For example, J.D. Vance demanded an investigation into transgender American Sarah Ashton-Cirillo’s work for the Ukrainian armed forces. He was outraged by the transgender’s radical statements and wanted to know about her ties to the U.S. intelligence community and administration funding in Washington. Not only was the Ukrainian issue important here, but also the fact that the American right-wing is generally negative about the “transgender agenda”. Cirillo has been criticized by them for both making inarticulate threats against Russia and going to war with right-wing American-Chilean blogger Gonzalo Lira, who was arrested in Ukraine. The White House is not at all interested in such persecution of a U.S. citizen, but the Republicans are greatly angered by it, trying to show that it is they, not liberals, who are the real fighters for human rights, and J.D. Vance has become a strong spokesman for those aspirations. Vance has emerged as a leader in the fight against not only “transgender special rights”, but has also become one of Trump’s key “ambassadors” for engaging with the European right, which has greatly elevated his status on the former president’s team.

Marjorie Taylor Greene was not lagging behind in her work on high-profile issues, as she presented six amendments to the forthcoming U.S. defense budget back in the summer. She proposed to start the procedure of withdrawal from NATO due to the fact that the alliance is no longer a “reliable partner” of America, as well as to refuse further military tranches to Ukraine and to agree on a truce with Russia. Marjorie Taylor Greene expresses the views of many Republicans because they have traditionally been skeptical of NATO, viewing the other members of the alliance as America’s “freeloaders”. Many of them, in particular, have long called for responsibility for Kiev to be shifted to the Europeans. In American society, the level of support for NATO varies between 50-60%, and this is much lower than in Europe. But it is mostly only Democrats who support NATO. And during the year and a half of war in Ukraine, isolationist sentiments have sharply increased, and more than half of Americans believe that it is necessary to deal with internal problems of the United States, not with foreign crises. Trump is hoping to play on the Americans’ desire for isolationism by promising to stop the Ukrainian conflict in 24 hours, and Greene’s position is very useful for him and brings her serious points, making her almost the main “far-right” politician, if we follow the Democratic terminology. Trump has always actively criticized NATO’s activities, and, according to his former advisers, Trump hopes, if elected to a second term, to raise the question of dissolving the alliance, because he is more interested in competing with China than in dealing with the affairs of Europe. The U.S. is not going to withdraw from NATO now, but that could change in a year and a half. Marjorie Taylor Greene may become vice president or another key member of the Trump administration, and then he will have a window of opportunity for the most radical restructuring of the European Union or NATO. However, even such a colorful image does not guarantee either Vance or Greene the post, because Melania Trump is openly endorsing Tucker Carlson for vice president. The latter has nothing to hold him in the media sphere after his dismissal from Fox News, and a tie-up between Trump and the most popular U.S. anchor could be a death blow to the Washington establishment, which has lost the trust of Americans. However, only 2025 will show everything definitively.