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Kimberly Guilfoyle attends the Trumpets Gala at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, February 10, 2024 in Palm Beach.
Trump may get his way on appointments
President-elect Donald Trumpannounced Tuesday that he will appoint his son Don Jr.’s ex, Kimberly Guilfoyle, as ambassador to Greece — the same day the New York Post reported that the younger Trump has taken up with a glamorous Palm Beach socialite.
Guilfoyle, a former Fox News broadcaster, was the Trump campaign's finance chair during his 2020 run and has remained a strong supporter. She started dating Don Jr. in 2018 and the two became engaged in 2020.
Trump earlier announced appointments for two other relatives — the fathers-in-law of his two daughters.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheungsaid suggestions that Guilfoyle’s appointment was related to her relationship with Don Jr. were “very sexist.”
Before she can take up her post in Athens, Guilfoyle must be confirmed by the Senate. Her appointment is unlikely to be as difficult as more high-profile picks, such as anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, maverick former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence, outspoken lawyer Kash Patel as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and former Fox News broadcaster Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary.
All of those controversial nominees were expected to run into difficulties winning the approval of senators skeptical of their qualifications, but pressure from Trump may bend senators to his will, as seems to have happened in the case of Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who was persuaded to back Hegseth after first expressing reluctance.
“At this point, it looks like all will be confirmed,” says Eurasia Group’s US Managing Director Jon Lieber, “with the National security roles being the most on the rocks, and Hegseth most of all because of the allegations of mistreatment of women.”
U.S. President Joe Biden stands with his son Hunter Biden, who earlier in the day was found guilty on all three counts in his criminal gun charges trial, after President Biden arrived at the Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Delaware, U.S., June 11, 2024.
Biden pardons son after promising not to do so
So much for the rule of law. After previously promising to allow the justice system to handle Hunter Biden’s federal felony gun and tax convictions, outgoing President Joe Biden instead issued a "full and unconditional pardon" to his son on Sunday. “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision,” Biden said, noting that he felt his son was singled out for political reasons.
The younger Biden’s serious problems with drugs, infidelity, and questionable overseas business deals were frequent targets for Republicans over the last four years, including as part of an aborted attempt to impeach the president. He’ll now avoid possibly decades behind bars, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for less time.
President-elect Donald Trump responded to the pardon by posting on social media, “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” (Nope). Trump is calling the kettle orange when it comes to familial clemency: He pardoned his son-in-law's father Charles Kushner after the 2020 election and just appointed him ambassador to France. But Biden is singing a similar to tune to Trump by pointing to the politicization of the justice system.
What Trump’s cabinet picks reveal so far
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
This is what we're watching in US politics this week: It's Trump's transition, of course. Lots of activity happening over the course of the week with some unexpected developments, including a lot of very unusual cabinet appointees. Sean Duffy at Department of Transportation, former "Real World" star and congressman, who has very little experience with transportation other than presumably driving a car, and of course, competing on the "Real World/Road Rules Challenge" is going to be in charge of the transportation department.
Other picks like Pete Hegseth have been a little more controversial. The former Army National Guard member and Fox News host has been accused of sexual assault. Not a great look for the incoming Secretary of Defense. But he's nowhere near as controversial as the recently withdrawn pick, Matt Gaetz, the firebrand Congressman from Florida who resigned his seat in order to become Trump's attorney general, and then found out that no Republican wanted him in that job.
Gaetz's withdrawal will allow some of the more controversial attention to be focused on people like RFK Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, somebody with a long career in the nonprofit management space, but no experience in public administration and who's been extremely critical of the US's Public Health Administration, including on toxins in foods, additives in foods, vaccines, and the approval process for them. And he's tapped into a strain of anger among Republicans at the public health apparatus that they say failed to protect the public during the COVID-19 epidemic, pointing to inconsistent and sometimes unnecessary masking guidelines. Things like social distancing, keeping the schools closed, and of course the vaccine recommendations that a lot of Republicans rejected during that pandemic. RFK's confirmation odds, however, look pretty good if you look at the relatively warm reception that he's been received with by most Republicans.
One area that's still totally in doubt for the most part is Trump's economic team. It's been two weeks since the election, there's no treasury of the secretary, there's no USTR. There is a commerce secretary pick, another Trump ally who has no experience in public administration, Howard Lutnick, a lot like Wilbur Ross in the first administration, but potentially leaving Trump's trade czar, Robert Lighthizer, without any clear role. So there's a lot more clarity on the national security side than there is on the economic side for now. That may change over the weekend. And of course, the one thing with President Trump is you could always expect the unexpected.
FILE PHOTO: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump greet each other at a campaign event sponsored by conservative group Turning Point USA, in Duluth, Georgia, U.S., October 23, 2024.
All of Trump’s horses and all of Trump’s men
With world leaders descending upon Brazil this week for the annual G20 summit, the specter of Donald Trump’s return looms all around. The summit, along with this month’s COP29 climate summit, bookend the Biden interregnum - a period that opened with a deadly global pandemic and saw the start of two wars.
As we now know, foreign policy did not determine the 2024 election outcome. The pivotal question voters wrestled with was the one Trumpput to them: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” A majority of voters across the electoral map answered this question in the negative. Despite the hyper-polarized political moment, and all the fault lines in US politics – gender, generational, racial, party identification – it was the economic one that proved most salient.
Yet, when Trump is inaugurated in January, he will take the helm of the United States at a moment of vast geopolitical uncertainty. By Trump’s own assessment, the world is on the brink of World War III. Inan interview earlier this year, Yuval Noah Hariri suggested that WWIII may have already started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and “we just don’t know it yet.” Certainly, reports of North Korean troop deployment to the Russia-Ukraine war theater do little to assuage these fears. Nor does US President Joe Biden’s late-in-the-game policy shift this weekend to allow Ukraine to deploy US-provided, long-range missiles to strike inside Russian territory.
Since his resolute victory two weeks ago, Trump has made quick work assembling the team he wants around him for the challenges ahead. It is a team of loyalists and Trump-world insiders (many Washington outsiders)tasked with preventing World War III, restoring peace in Europe and the Middle East, and putting the world together again.
With his cabinet and leadership selections, Trump makes clear that direction will come from the very top. Appointees will be expected to execute the president’s agenda. The pick of veteran and television host Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense is perhaps the clearest indicator of the model to come.
With Europe deeply on edge about whether the US will remain steadfastly committed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Ukraine, and Europe’s common defense, Hegseth’s bureaucratic inexperience offers little clarity or comfort. Known more for his television work and pardon advocacy than any particular security policy position, Hegseth’s promotion to American dignitary has left Europe scratching its collective head. It signals to European leaders that Trump’s transactional, unpredictable approach will dictate the next four years.
Elsewhere, in the Indo-Pacific, a giant question mark hangs over how the second Trump administration plans to engage with a host of partnerships and plans initiated by Biden. Outgoing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with his counterparts in Australia and Japan this weekend for a Trilateral Defense Ministers’ Meeting. In a joint statement following the session, the leaders affirmed the longevity and enduring commitment of the partnership.
With the US-China relationship the essential quandary of our times, will Hegseth (and Trump) remain committed to these relationships? What happens to AUKUS, the trilateral partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the US that’s viewed by Australians as so critical to their security? What about the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with members of the same group plus India? Each of these pillars is viewed by Biden as foundational for the region’s geopolitics, and yet incoming Trump personnel have provided scant details of their plans.
While much is being made of Trump’s flashier picks – Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency – it is the repeat performers who telegraph Trump’s policy priorities. As he said every day on the campaign trail, these are immigration, trade, and the economy.
The return of former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan, now as “border czar,” coupled with Stephen Miller as Trump’s deputy chief of staff, confirm Trump 2.0 will be ideologically tough and swift-acting on immigration. Trumpimplemented 472 executive orders on immigration during his first term. Homan and Miller will be hard at work over the next few months readying actions for Trump’s signature on his first day back in the Oval Office.
On trade, everyone overseas is on pins and needles over Trump’s tariff threats. European political leaders and business executives are kept up at night worrying over whether Trump will seek to impose a universal tariff of 10-20% on imported goods, and, if so, under what authority. Against this backdrop, the reported return of former US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to an expanded “trade czar” role is being closely watched. Both Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act will be relevant channels for Trump’s tariff ambitions. Having Lighthizer by his side provides the president with a dedicated co-pilot.
Finally, that Trump has seemingly taken the most time to land on his picks to lead the Treasury and Commerce departments is unsurprising. Trump’s election, his mandate, and his plans both at home and abroad in his next term each depend on his administration’s ability to execute its economic vision. Trump’s tax extensions, corporate tax cuts, and economic tools of national security like tariffs and sanctions, must also take action on the pivotal question Trump asked voters in November – they must feel better in four years than they do today.
The pace of Trump’s appointment decisions is evidence that he is ready to get to work. The sooner he can roll back Biden’s initiatives and implement the policies he has been discussing again and again over the last four years, the sooner he can remake the US and America’s role in the world in his image.
Putin visits US voters
Turnout in this US election fell. The world's leading expert on American democracy saw, first hand, why that was. #PUPPETREGIME
US election: GOP could win a Trump-led sweep
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
It's election night in America. And a slightly unexpected result tonight, with the election returns coming back very strong for President Donald Trump. He may actually end up winning the national popular vote, which was not, I think, on anyone's bingo card, really.
Big surprise for Trump has been a surge in rural support where the Trump coalition showed up to vote for him. Meanwhile, Harris has somewhat underperformed in urban areas, and while she did have a pretty good showing with women voters, it wasn't enough to keep her ahead of Trump, at least in the results as we know them tonight.
Harris has been underperforming down-ballot Democrats generally, which has kept the Democrats competitive in the House, which could lead to an unusual situation where all three of the main political bodies in the United States, the White House, the House, and the Senate, flip in the same election. The Senate is in the bag for Republicans. They're going to have somewhere between 52 and 55 seats, it looks like. And Trump is probably the favorite to win in the Electoral College.
The House outcome we may not know in the next 24 hours. Some of the House seats that really matter in determining the majority, which is very close, are slow to count. But right now, it does look like Democrats have some momentum with a couple of Republicans losing key seats.
So stay tuned for more of what we're watching this week in US politics.
2024 US election: What to look out for
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
This is what we're watching this week in US politics. It is, at long last, election week. The US has one of the longest most exhausting presidential election cycles in the world. That basically begins two years before general Election Day. And Tuesday of this week, it all comes to a conclusion. It's unlikely that we will know the results of the election on Tuesday night, although if Harris is significantly ahead in the early counting states, like North Carolina, that's going to be a strong signal that she's probably winning the overall electoral college. Seven key swing states to watch. Trump looks like he has the advantage in Arizona and Nevada. And the election, like it did in 2016, could potentially come down to the three so-called Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. On election night, Wisconsin and Michigan are likely to be known, but possibly not till late in the night. They were called for Biden late in the night on 2020.
Pennsylvania is the real outlier when it comes to counting votes, and this is because Pennsylvania does not count its early ballots until the day of the election, which means that the people who vote in person in Pennsylvania, who tend to be Republicans, we'll know where they are when the polls close in the evening, East Coast time, on Tuesday night. But then overnight, you expect to see what's been called the 'blue shift,' which is as those early and absentee ballots get counted, which are primarily democratic, you will see Harris's vote share start to climb. So if the outcome of the race is not known because the outcome in North Carolina is ambiguous or Trump is leading, and there's no clear winner in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that night, or it looks like a close race, officially calling this race could drag on until much later in the week, just exactly what happened in 2020. Now, President Trump tried to exploit that gap in 2020 by saying he clearly had won in Pennsylvania, and all these late-breaking votes were all just fraudulent, which isn't true, but that's what he claimed. And that could happen again this cycle.
The only situation in which we would get a genuinely ambiguous outcome, where we wouldn't know the outcome for weeks at a time, is if, one, there's evidence of widespread massive election fraud, which has not been the case at any time in recent US history and is a very low probability event. Or if it's such a close race in one of the key swing states, like Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Georgia, where we don't actually know the winner because the margins are within several hundred votes. There is precedent for state-wide elections being overturned in recent US history, but typically, those elections come down to about 500 votes. There's been 31 recounts from the year 2000 before the 2020 presidential election, three were overturned because the margin was so incredibly close. And so, this is a very, very rare event, and it's unlikely to play out in this election cycle, but it could. You never know.
The polls are suggesting this is a very close race. So stay tuned for more watching this election week, and hope you find a nice, comfortable place to watch the election results because it could take a long time to count these ballots.
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Putin pulls up to Trump's Madison Square Garden rally
Vladimir Putin showed up in New York to attend Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden over the weekend and had a big surprise. #PUPPETREGIME