Fox Business host Larry Kudlow will not be joining President-elect Donald Trump's administration after reportedly taking himself out of the running to lead either the U.S. Treasury or the National Economic Council.
Kudlow, who served as as the director of the National Economic Council under the president-elect during his first stint in the White House, told Trump's team he did not want to return to a government position, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Following Kudlow's decision, Trump met Friday about a top economic role with investment analyst Scott Bessent, who is on the president-elect's short list to serve as Treasury secretary, according to the Journal. Bessent has been aggressively maneuvering for the Treasury role along with billionaire CEO Howard Lutnick.
Trump is also reportedly considering considering Robert Lighthizer and asset management CEO Marc Rowan for top economic positions, including Treasury secretary. Lighthizer was Trump's U.S. trade rep during his first term.
Kudlow has often touted Trump's economic positions on Fox.
He also once called on President Biden to recruit Trump to encourage the public to get COVID vaccines. Trump was not a proponent of the vaccines for the disease that killed more than one million Americans, and claimed COVID cases would be "down close to zero in a couple of days" after its outbreak when he was last in office. Trump has nominated vaccine foe Robert Kennedy Jr. to head Health and Human Services.
Kudlow could have become the second Fox host to be nominated to the Trump administration.
The president-elect has already nominated Fox host and veteran Pete Hegseth, who has no management or Defense Department experience, to become Defense secretary. But that pick could be now in trouble after a past sex assault allegation against Hegseth has since resurfaced. In addition, Hegseth was reported as a possible "insider threat" to the military after a fellow National Guard member in 2021 reported that Hegseth sported a tatoo on his chest associated with white supremacists.
