Trump Finally Announces His Transition Team

Former President Donald Trump on Friday announced the leaders of a transition team tasked with overseeing key personnel choices and preparing his policy playbook should he return to the White House.

Linda McMahon, a former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment who was once Trump’s administrator of the Small Business Administration, and Howard Lutnick, the CEO of financial services giant Cantor Fitzgerald, are set to co-chair the transition. Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), and his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are set to serve as honorary chairs.

Trump Jr. recently said he wanted “veto” power over top appointments in his father’s second administration.

“I don’t want to pick a single person for a position of power. All I want to do is block the guys that would be a disaster,” he said in a July interview with Axios. “I want to block the liars. I want to block the guys that are, you know, pretending they’re with you.”

McMahon is a top Donald Trump donor; Lutnick recently hosted a Hamptons fundraiser for him in New York that raked in $15 million.

“The 2024 GOP Platform to Make America Great Again is a forward-looking agenda that will deliver safety, prosperity and freedom for the American people,” Trump said in Friday’s announcement. “My administration will deliver on these bold promises.”

His selection comes notably late in the presidential campaign, as HuffPost previously reported. When Trump sought to take the White House in 2016, his campaign had a formal transition team in place by June 1.

The delay this time around points to the possibility that he plans to outsource the actual transition to Project 2025, a vast right-wing blueprint for transforming the federal government into a MAGA policy factory.