LOYAL, LOYAL-ER, LOYALIST — The verdict on Donald Trump’s early staffing choices is in: Trump is stocking his new administration with “loyal defenders,” as a recent headline from The New York Times put it, and leaning on “loyalists” to fill key positions, as Vox put it. It’s true that almost all of Trump’s selections for top administration jobs have pledged their fidelity to him in one way, shape or form. But loyalty to Trump is not the only — or even the most important — basis upon which to evaluate his early personnel choices. A more fundamental question is whether Trump’s selections see eye-to-eye with him (and each other) on basic questions of policy and ideology. And with every new pick that Trump announces, the answer becomes clearer: No. Despite the carefully staged performances of fealty from Trump’s selections, his administration is shaping up to be a hodge-podge of ideological rivals and competing policy factions. In the long run, the inevitable conflict that will arise between these factions may chip away at whatever sense of loyalty his new picks bring to the early administration. In this respect, at least, Trump’s nascent administration reflects the Republican Party as a whole. Trump’s conquest of the GOP in 2016 famously blew up the traditional Republican coalition, opening the door to more explicitly populist and nationalist factions and diminishing the influence of more conventional conservatives like Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney. These conflicts have raged on below the surface of the GOP even as Trump has consolidated his political control over the party, fueled by the fact that Trump himself is driven more by instinct than by explicitly-articulated ideology. The intra-party conflict remains particularly fierce on two key issues: foreign policy and trade. On foreign policy, the party remains divided between two major camps. On the one side are the more hawkish Republicans — often labeled derisively (but not always accurately) as “neoconservatives” — who want to see the U.S. retain its standing as the global military and economic hegemon. On the other side are the “restrainers” or non-interventionists , who would like to see the U.S. play a more limited role in a “multipolar” world defined by competition between multiple global powers. In selecting his top foreign policy picks, Trump has drawn from both sides of this divide. Marco Rubio, Trump’s choice to run the State Department, hails from the more hawkish side of the GOP, despite paying some lip service to the non-interventionists’ position. By contrast, Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s selection for director of national intelligence, has aligned herself with the restrainers since joining the Republican Party earlier this year, joining Trump’s vice president JD Vance, who is inarguably the most prominent voice of restraint within the mainstream GOP. Meanwhile, Trump’s incoming national security advisor, Florida Rep. Michael Waltz, has been critical of the decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan — a decision that restrainers cheered during the first Trump administration. At this point, these disagreements may seem largely academic, but they could have significant downstream policy ramifications when it comes to, say, setting a timeline for ending U.S. support for the war in Ukraine or responding to a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Trump seems to lean instinctually toward the restrainers’ position, but the lesson of his first stint in office is that he’s easily persuaded by his advisors. Which faction will have his ear the second time around remains an open question. Similar disagreements can be found within the GOP on the issue of trade, where the party is divided over the question of how far to take Trump’s protectionist impulses. As of today, Trump has not yet named his most important economic advisors, but there are already signs that his administration will encompass conflicting positions on trade. Vance represents one pole of the debate over protectionism, based around the argument that the administration should implement fairly sweeping tariffs as a way to boost domestic manufacturing and raise wages for U.S. manufacturing workers. Meanwhile, Vivek Ramaswamy, who Trump recently appointed with Elon Musk to run the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, has staked out a more libertarian position on trade , arguing that the U.S. should use tariffs for the more narrow purpose of lessening its industrial dependence on China, even if that means increasing trade with friendly nations like South Korea and India. Others, like former Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow, have framed tariffs even more narrowly as a tool for rebalancing the global trading system with the ultimate goal of returning to a more or less free trade paradigm. Where the Trump administration lands on the tariff question will likely depend on who Trump selects for top positions at Treasury, Commerce, and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. But regardless of whom he picks, these underlying disagreements within the party are unlikely to evaporate entirely. All that said, it’s fair to ask: Will any of these disagreements really matter, given the Trump appointees’ overriding loyalty to Trump himself? At the end of the day, won’t his senior officials simply defer to whatever Trump tells them to do? There’s some truth in that analysis, but it also misinterprets the underlying dynamics of Trump world. As his first term in office showed, Trump makes policy decisions based on a mix of political and aesthetic considerations — what makes his preferred constituencies happy, weighed against what makes him and his administration look strong. Because Trump doesn’t operate on an explicitly ideological basis, the ideological orientation of his advisors takes on an outsized role. Whomever can articulate their preferred policies in terms that appeal to Trump’s gut instincts generally win out. In that context, the ideological distinctions between Trump’s senior administration officials matter more than they would in a typical presidential administration. Loyalty gets you so far, but beyond a certain point, it can only paper over deeper disagreements, not resolve them. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at iward@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @ianwardreports.
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