'What are you doing?' New book blows the lid off MAGA infighting among Trump’s inner circle
ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl discussed the push and tug between affluent Donald Trump supporters in the aftermath of Trump’s November election win, with certain personalities grinding against others at the very onset.
Vanity Fair published an excerpt of Karl’s new book “Retribution,” which lays out early opposition to certain appointments by billionaire World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder Linda McMahon and America First Policy Institute CEO Brooke Rollins — who Vanity Fair writer Bess Levin described as a member of Trump’s “brick-s—— scary new cabinet.”
Karl said McMahon and Rollins quickly despised Trump’s pick of former campaign worker Susie Wiles for White House Chief of Staff and “rushed over to Mar‑a‑Lago in a last‑ditch effort to derail the pick.”
“Various Trump aides, most of whom had worked for Wiles during the campaign, managed to impede the two women on their way to see Trump. They even orchestrated a phone call with Vice President–elect JD Vance to delay the two aspiring chiefs of staff on their way to Trump’s office. By the time McMahon and Rollins got in to see Trump, it was too late. He had already asked Wiles to be chief of staff,” Karl wrote. “They would have to settle instead for secretary of education and secretary of agriculture, respectively.”
Trump’s billionaire friend Howard Lutnick, meanwhile, campaigned early to topple the appointment of former Republican lawmaker and MTV reality star Sean Duffy for the role of transportation secretary. Claiming “the man has no relevant experience” doesn’t get far with Trump, according to Karl, so Lutnick “tried to appeal to the president‑elect’s ego instead, tasking his team with searching through Duffy’s hundreds of television appearances to find any criticism of Trump.”
Duffy, according to Karl, was a consistent supporter. Lutnick had to scroll all the way back to the early days of the 2016 Republican presidential primary “to find anything Duffy had said that was remotely negative about Donald Trump.”
Lutnick eventually found a September 2015 interview in which the then‑congressman had said he didn’t believe Trump was a real conservative and didn’t think he would win the party’s nomination. Of course, even then, Duffy had praised Trump for “boldly speaking and saying things that the conservative wing wished that their leaders would say.”
“As weak as Lutnick’s effort to dig up dirt turned out to be, that one stray comment from almost ten years earlier nearly cost Duffy the job,” Karl wrote. “Trump, reconsidering the pick, called Duffy and his wife, Rachel, and they were able to convince the president‑elect that Sean had long since changed his views on Trump’s conservative bona fides.
Trump’s advisor Steve Bannon launched his own attack against the appointment of Kristi Noem as secretary of the sprawling Department of Homeland Security.
“‘We still got the global war on terror,’ an exasperated Steve Bannon told me two days after Trump made the announcement. ‘She runs the whole thing? She runs the f—— Secret Service? It’s all of it. It’s the global war on terror. It’s all that’” Karl reports. “‘What are you talking about? She’s never been in law enforcement!’”
But Bannon didn’t put the blame on Trump for making what he considered a terrible choice. He blamed Corey Lewandowski for convincing the president‑elect to do it.
“’This motherf—— asked for somebody who’s obviously unqualified — and it’s dangerous,’” Karl reports Bannon telling him. “‘This is dangerous. What are you doing?’”
Read the full Vanity Fair excerpt at this link.
