Headache for campaign team as Trump gets the band back together

Donald Trump’s getting the band back together. But this time they come with political baggage, conspiracy theories and, in some instances, criminal convictions.

The former US president’s old acolytes are returning to the fold, eager to exert influence on his bid for the White House and have their say in a potential second administration. That poses a headache for his election campaign team, whose efforts to run a disciplined operation can be upended at any moment by the mercurial Trump.

“Trump always wants to feel comfortable about the people who surround him and what better way to do that than to get the band back together?” said Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington. “We could look forward to the greatest hits ad nauseam.”

If a man is judged by the company he keeps, Trump’s speaks volumes. There was uproar in 2022 when when the rapper Kanye West brought the white supremacist Nick Fuentes to dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump’s inner circle includes the far-right representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia; Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat turned rightwing media personality and outspoken critic of aid to Ukraine; and Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur who has pushed the “great replacement” theory and claimed that the 6 January 2021 insurrection was an inside job

Since Trump secured the Republican nomination for president earlier this month, several “Make America great again” (Maga) alumni have sought to regain his patronage or rejoin his team. It is a cast of characters with a chequered history.

Paul Manafort, a veteran political consultant, could return as a campaign adviser later this year, according to the