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Trump Posts ‘Blacklist’ of Candidates Who Need Not Apply for Jobs in his White House

Trump Posts ‘Blacklist’ of Candidates Who Need Not Apply for Jobs in his White House

As difficult as it may be to believe that the brash billionaire from New York had little or no idea of the traps that had been set for him by the administrative state, it was the truth.

On Wednesday night, President-elect Donald Trump took to Truth Social to share a list of individuals who will be excluded from consideration for roles in his second administration. Highlighting that his team has already hired more than 1,000 “outstanding” individuals, he wrote:

In order to save time, money, and effort, it would be helpful if you would not send, or recommend to us, people who worked with, or are endorsed by, Americans for No Prosperity (headed by Charles Koch), “Dumb as a Rock” John Bolton, “Birdbrain” Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, disloyal Warmongers Dick Cheney, and his Psycho daughter, Liz, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, General(?) Mark Milley, James Mattis, Mark Yesper, or any of the other people suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, more commonly known as TDS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Predictably, this post did not sit well with our friends on the Left side of the aisle. One man attached Trump’s comments to a post on X with the caption, “Trump makes clear that he is discriminating against candidates for administration jobs if they have links to his political opponents or critics.”

Discrimination? I call it discernment.

It’s not only understandable that Trump would avoid hiring individuals associated with those who actively undermined or opposed his first-term agenda—and, in many cases, continued that opposition over the following four years, it’s essential. Naturally, he wants to surround himself with loyal staffers who share his vision and will steadfastly support his goals. Every president does.

Personnel decisions can often shape the course of a presidency. For example, President Lincoln replaced five commanding generals during the Civil War before finally selecting Ulysses S. Grant, who ultimately led the Union to victory.

Poor hiring decisions significantly hampered Trump’s first term, a point he has openly acknowledged. For instance, Trump should have replaced FBI Director James Comey upon taking office, rather than allowing him to remain in the role. Other blunders included appointing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, and the outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray.

At a Fox News town hall in September, Trump was asked, “What could you share that you’ve learned from your first time being in the Oval Office for those who are hesitant to vote for you now?”

Trump replied, “The most important thing I found, and you can say this is true in business also, we have to get the right people. I didn’t know much about Washington. I was there 17 times in my whole life. And I wasn’t in D.C. very much.”

He continued, “But I got to know ’em, and I got to know ’em the hard way. And I know the good ones, the bad ones, the weak ones, the smart ones, the dumb ones. I know ’em all now.”

The bottom line was to “get the right people. You put the right person and the right group of people at the heads of these massive agencies, you’re going to have tremendous success. And I now know the people better than anyone would know them,” Trump said.

Trump was spot on. As difficult as it may be to believe that the brash billionaire from New York had little or no idea of the traps that had been set for him by the administrative state (or whatever one chooses to call the permanent group of unelected officials who run the government), it was the truth. His unfamiliarity with how things worked in D.C. left him completely unprepared for the injustices that lay ahead. It’s fair to say he was naive. He took advice from those who wanted him to fail and he trusted the wrong people.

He will return to the White House in three days. His eyes will be wide open. And he will be surrounded by trustworthy individuals who share his goals and his vision for the future.

He’s already begun.


Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.

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Comments

This is a great relief.

I was worried Bolton would not be available to take my garbage and recycling to the curb each week.

A problem with draining the swamp is that the creatures remaining become more closely associated…. more scum per square mile. Let’s hope the crowding leads to more infighting. Dispersing the agencies to their respective and needed areas of the country would help. Trumped tried that but Biden reversed it. The task of changing Rome on the Potomac to Reagan’s City on the Hill would make Hercules faint.

    mailman in reply to alaskabob. | January 17, 2025 at 1:59 pm

    It goes the other way, once you remove the invasive foreign predators all the native hard worker species can finally flourish and become productive 🤌🙂

    JohnSmith100 in reply to alaskabob. | January 17, 2025 at 4:49 pm

    “more scum per square mile.”

    This is the essence of cities, that it is much easier for them to scheme and collude with like minded people. The Beltway is orders of magnitude worse.

Fifth columnists need not apply?

HOW DARE HE.

    The Gentle Grizzly in reply to Tiki. | January 17, 2025 at 3:11 pm

    Yeah! Who does he think he is? PRESIDENT?!?

    diver64 in reply to Tiki. | January 17, 2025 at 4:03 pm

    “Trump makes clear that he is discriminating against candidates for administration jobs if they have links to his political opponents or critics.”

    Uh…yeah? That’s the point in a new administration. You usually don’t hire people that want to undermine you and your agenda at every turn, undermined your first administration or that just don’t like you. I think Trump needs to recall Miley to active duty and have a Courts Martial hearing then bust him to 2cd LT and give him an other than honorable discharge. Removing everyone not in government security clearance should be day 1. In fact, review everyone in government that has one and start yanking them.

      jqusnr in reply to diver64. | January 18, 2025 at 2:55 pm

      this … clearances need to be reviewed stringently .. and “Gen” Mark Milley needs to face a general courts martial .

Democrats may come to regret cheating on the 2020 election. Having Biden come in between Trump’s first and second term literally changed the world.

Trump had his hands tied in his first term, not to mention the fact that he was surrounded by all these traitors and back stabbers. If he’d just gone straight into his second term, he would not have the tremendous impact that he is having right now. Four years gave Trump time to regroup, get better organized and lay plans to make this term a game changer.

Dolce Far Niente | January 17, 2025 at 1:54 pm

Leftists are completely justified in being outraged that Trump is refusing to have leftists, traitors and spoilers in his administration.

Their rice bowl is in serious danger of being broken by these America First extremists.

    CommoChief in reply to Dolce Far Niente. | January 17, 2025 at 5:09 pm

    Absolutely! Not just the bigger more well known figures either. By refusing these folks for appointment to his Admin he prevents these folks from bringing in their acolytes, understudy and protege. That in turn prevents another round of resume building by the neocon hacks. Without an appointment they can’t point to ‘I served as deputy assistant, undersecretary’ in the past and be considered ‘qualified’ to advance in another admin to a more Senior position.

AF_Chief_Master_Sgt | January 17, 2025 at 1:58 pm

Wow. I guess the left would prefer that Trump hire Chinese Communists because otherwise it would be discrimination.

But the left is good at this. Swallows had his own private Chinese tramp. The dead dimwit from California had her own Chinese Communist Party Driver.

The left fought long and hard to give Communists control of this country from going back more than 100 years.

Why wouldn’t they get their panties in a wad about not hiring those with TDS.

In other news a jury has just found CNN guilty of libel and has awarded 5mil in direct damages and next week discusses how big the punitive damages against CNN will be.

If there is any justice in this world the punitive damages awarded against CNN should dwarf the billion dollars what’s his face had to pay the sandy hook families!!

Trump’s biggest mistake from the first term was buying the ‘fine men and women’ nonsense, and trying to treat it like a business that he had taken over where the employees didn’t like him.

When you take over a business, you can rely on performance and expect employees to want to actually do their jobs and make the business money, even if they didn’t like the new boss at first. Maybe you need to weed out a few incompetents but you can

Trump was totally unprepared for the fact that a large number of the so-called ‘non-partisan’ employees wanted him to fail and were willing to INTENTIONALLY outright sabotage him, and would rather see government fail and Americans be hurt than allow Trump to succeed.

He also put too much stock in the RINO crew of McConnell and Ryan to staff himself with a bunch of deadweight that would just straight up lie to him about what they were doing.

He learned from the ‘non-partisan’ disasters of Comey and Wray. He should have fired Comey on day 1, and never should have listened to the RINOs saying Wray was ‘non-partisan’.

He’s approaching this term prepared, it seems.

What exactly did Trump gain with that name-calling, flame-throwing post?

    wendybar in reply to jb4. | January 17, 2025 at 2:42 pm

    Getting the truth out??

    Danny in reply to jb4. | January 17, 2025 at 2:55 pm

    Nothing he won by going to the center and winning exactly the people who supported someone like Nikki Haley and the people who support Mike Pence.

    Luckily that was his last election lets hope he gets things done in congress so wins the midterms this time so we could finally stop caring when Trump celebrates Festivus.

    At this point midterms will be all about what do we do with our majority Trump antics are very fortunately no longer relevant.

    gonzotx in reply to jb4. | January 17, 2025 at 3:04 pm

    It seems unnecessary in truth

      Right. We can add another in the “Unnecessary” column.

      CommoChief in reply to gonzotx. | January 17, 2025 at 7:16 pm

      Who are you and what did you do with gonzotx? That’s twice in less than a week you’ve criticized the man you called :’The One’ and castigated anyone who dared disagree with him even one jot.

    alaskabob in reply to jb4. | January 17, 2025 at 4:16 pm

    Nothing any harsher than the Left. Smash mouth politics. Islam does this in the real world, except someone gets buried. The Left demands total commitment from its believers. No use playing nice when nice doesn’t work.

    ThePrimordialOrderedPair in reply to jb4. | January 17, 2025 at 4:23 pm

    A harmless chuckle.

    I certainly liked it. And it had the added benefit of being truthful.

Nimrata Randawah Haley sure disappointed me.

    gonzotx in reply to scooterjay. | January 17, 2025 at 3:05 pm

    She was a good UN representative, not so good Governor

    And sold herself

    Kind of like DeSantis but at least he seemed to wake up

    DSHornet in reply to scooterjay. | January 17, 2025 at 3:28 pm

    I was thinking the same thing. Haley??
    .

    Stuytown in reply to scooterjay. | January 17, 2025 at 4:41 pm

    I believe she received 20% of the primary vote in some states. Why alienate Haley voters?

      ThePrimordialOrderedPair in reply to Stuytown. | January 17, 2025 at 4:56 pm

      Those were states with open primaries – i.e. they were democrats.

      CommoChief in reply to Stuytown. | January 17, 2025 at 8:46 pm

      If the choice is between ‘Haley voters’ and her constituency of grifting neocon goons who’ve effed up pretty much every foreign policy decision of the last 35 years OR the the huge number of center right populists and their groundswell of support for a clear eyed foreign policy agenda that places the best interests of US Citizens as it’s priority and not those of the defense industrial complex and megalomaniac ‘nation building/compassionate conservative BS then it’s a very easy choice….unless you believe that Ukraine’s border is more important than our own.

Triggered Tom on Xtwitter must not realize that Presidents don’t hire their political opponents as a matter of common sense.

Only Trump could get the point across this way, despite the hand wringing by some. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Christopher B | January 17, 2025 at 3:39 pm

I believe Trump’s NSA designate has also told all the agency people seconded to the NSC to clear their desks by noon on the 21st, and his team will select the people they want for staff.

Wow. What is Trump thinking? I can name a ton of Trump supporters in Biden’s administration.

ThePrimordialOrderedPair | January 17, 2025 at 4:21 pm

Nikki Haley has to be one of the most annoying creatures ever. Now, I can ignore the annoying part, but after what she did in the primary I have no interest in ever seeing or hearing from her again.

    Yeah after what she tried to pull with trying to get Democrats to let her ‘win’ the primary, she and everybody who worked for her can shut their mouths and go away forever.

    You proved you were not to be trusted. Don’t whine that nobody trusts you now.

Most of you are reacting to the reaction of the left. Few of you are noticing that normal people don’t do this. He’s on course for self destruction—just like last time.

Stuytown,

No political figure has ever endured what Trump has (short of successful assassination, and that’s debatable). These people each and all absolutely f**cked him. They deserve to be called out. Trump doesn’t hold all the cards now, but he’s got the most anyone’s had in many, many years. Get some popcorn.

    Stuytown in reply to geecheeboy. | January 18, 2025 at 2:58 am

    Democrats vote in midterms, too. And many Democrats actually voted for Trump come election time. So did many Haley-voting Republicans. How do you keep them? Not like this.

    An administration bent on resentment and retribution will waste time and resources—and may fail—no matter how much the other side deserves to suffer.

      irishgladiator63 in reply to Stuytown. | January 18, 2025 at 1:18 pm

      Out of curiosity, how does a politician like Haley get the Trump voting Republicans? No one ever seems to ask that. And given how handily Trump won the last three Republican primaries the Haley’s of the world need to give serious thought to that.

“Discrimination” is not a bad word. A “discriminating” person “discriminates,” meaning he gives due thought to his choices before making decisions.

The BOSS is back!