“A colonoscopy feels great,” he joked about the new attention.
The second Trump administration was blossoming to life around him, dressed in black tie and glittery dresses. The action star Sylvester Stallone would soon speak. The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, made the rounds, along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s proposed pick for health and human services secretary, who had accused the federal health agencies of “mass poisoning the American public” just 82 days earlier.
“The mood is just so freaking hot,” said Caroline Wren, a longtime Republican fundraiser and strategist, who had been telling people at the members-only club that the only job she wants in a second Trump term is to dress as the Easter Bunny on the White House lawn. “It’s cloud nine at all times.”
But beyond the celebration and behind closed doors, much was not going according to plan. The transition has properly vetted some potential nominees, but Trump has also been operating off his own script with many of his personnel choices — choosing unvetted candidates and acting outside the transition structure in a way that has immediately created serious political challenges, according to interviews with 18 people involved, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly. The president-elect has been largely unfazed, ebullient and soaking in his win on the Mar-a-Lago patio.
Unlike 2016 — when the novice president-elect was uncertain of how he wanted to shape government and drew from a well of establishment Republicans for most of his Cabinet picks — Trump has approached this round of appointments determined to reward loyalty and find warriors who will do battle with what he views as his “deep state” government foes.
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