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After Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris to win the US presidential election, people soon started discussing who would join the president-elect’s administration.
On Tuesday, November 5, the Republican nominee won 312 electoral votes in the 2024 election against Ms Harris’s 226. He needed 270 votes to take the presidency, which he will officially assume on January 20.
Reactions to Mr Trump’s win have been mixed. While some, including X (formerly Twitter) and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk, have celebrated the win, others including Stephen King and Cardi B have shared their concerns.
The names of those who will form president-elect Trump’s team and help him realise his vision for America are now being revealed.
So who has been confirmed for Team Trump 2.0?
Elon Musk
One of Mr Trump’s many billionaire friends and one of his biggest financial supporters during the election, the SpaceX and X chief executive Elon Musk has officially been promised a role in the president-elect’s upcoming administration.
Mr Musk, 53, is set to co-lead a new department: the Department of Government Efficiency (which shares its name with crypto-currency dogecoin). The ‘DOGE’ will operate outside the confines of government and “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” the president-elect said.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Mr Musk’s co-lead is American entrepreneur, Vivek Ramaswamy. The businessman ran to be the Republican’s presidential candidate for the 2024 election but ended his campaign back in January.
Like the X owner, the Cincinnati native is a billionaire.
He studied at both Harvard and Yale, and while at the former, he founded the Campus Venture Network, a private social networking website for university students who wanted to become entrepreneurs. The company was sold to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in 2009.
He has also worked for hedge funds and, in 2020, co-founded Chapter Medicare, a Medicare navigation platform.
In more recent years, he’s turned his attention away from business and instead focused on his political ambitions.
Pete Hegseth
Mr Trump has raised eyebrows with his choice for secretary of defense: Fox News host Pete Hegseth.
Mr Hegseth has served in the US military, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but he has no senior national security experience.
Politically, he has positioned himself firmly on the right, championing an ‘anti-woke’ agenda and lobbying for the pardoning of service members charged with war crimes. He’s also questioned the role of women in combat.
“Everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat, that means casualties are worse,” he previously said on a podcast.
Susie Wiles
Susie Wiles was named the first member of Trump’s team. In his victory speech on November 7, he referred to Ms Wiles as “the ice maiden”. He thanked her for her part in his win and invited her to speak to the crowd — which she declined. “Susie likes to stay in the back, let me tell you,” Mr Trump said.
Ms Wiles was the de facto manager of Mr Trump’s election campaign and was considered the favourite for the position. The daughter of former American footballer Pat Summerall will become the first woman in history to be chief of staff.
The 67-year-old’s political career began in the 1970s as an assistant to Jack Kemp, a Republican representative for New York and former professional American football player who played alongside her father. She also worked on Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign and Dan Quayle’s vice-presidential campaign in 1988.
The 2024 election isn’t the first time Wiles has worked with president-elect Mr Trump. In 2020, he credited her with being an integral part of his unsuccessful presidential bid.
Tom Homan
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A large part of Mr Trump’s presidential campaign was his pledge to launch the biggest deportation of undocumented migrants in the country’s history. To help lead this, the president-elect has recruited Tom Homan, the former director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He announced Mr Homan’s appointment as the new “border czar” on November 10. via his social network, Truth Social.
“I’ve known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders,” he wrote, explaining that Mr Homan will be responsible for “all deportation of illegal aliens back to their country of origin”.
President Barack Obama appointed Mr Homan, 62, as the executive associate director of ICE in 2013. Mr Trump promoted him to acting director during his first stint as president in 2017.
Although Mr Obama rejected Mr Homan’s proposal for a controversial family separation policy to deter immigrants from entering the US illegally, Mr Trump supported the idea. He introduced it as a “zero-tolerance” immigration enforcement policy in 2018.
Elise Stefanik
The BBC reported on November 12 that New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, 40, had become an ambassador to the United Nations.
The BBC said she was a long-time Mr Trump ally and a staunch supporter of Israel. She has reportedly criticised the UN for what she argues is a lack of sufficient backing for its war against Hamas elected to Congress.
Over the past decade, Ms Stefanik shifted from moderately conservative to the far right. She became one of Mr Trump’s most loyal supporters, fiercely defending him during his 2019 impeachment hearings. This prompted Mr Trump to call her a “Republican star”.
Marco Rubio
The president-elect is expected to name Marco Rubio, 53, as his Secretary of State.
Mr Rubio is the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee and was considered for Mr Trump's vice president shortlist earlier this year.
He has previously called for a stronger foreign policy to be implemented, especially against the likes of China, Iran and Cuba.
Mr Rubio ran for president unsuccessfully in 2016 against Mr Trump.
Whose roles have not yet been confirmed?
Robert F Kennedy Jr
The nephew of John F Kennedy was an independent candidate for president before withdrawing and voicing his support for Mr Trump in August. An anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, the environmental lawyer, 70, has been lined up for a top spot in Mr Trump’s administration, possibly in healthcare.
Speaking at a rally before the election, the president-elect said that Mr Kennedy — who is better known as RFK — would have a “big role in the administration” and that he’d let him “go wild on food” and “go wild on medicines”.
“We don’t know what I’m going to do. I talked to the president about it yesterday, and he asked me what I wanted, and I said, we’re developing a proposal now,” Mr Kennedy later told Fox News.
Don Jr, Eric, Ivanka and Lara Trump
Judging by Mr Trump’s first time as president, he likes to keep things in the family. Despite telling Fox News in 2023 that his children wouldn’t be a part of his administration a second time around (”It’s too painful for the family, my family’s been through hell”), his sons Don Jr and Eric played large roles in his 2024 campaign.
Donald Trump Jr, the president-elect's eldest son, had a leading role in his father’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to President Joe Biden. As an adviser to his father, it is believed he encouraged him to appoint Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate.
The roles of Don Jr and Eric — the latter serves as the executive vice president of the Trump Organization — have not yet been announced. Eric’s wife, Lara, may also join her father-in-law’s administration. The co-chair of the Republican Party, she has long been a campaigner for Mr Trump’s presidential bids and even considered running for Senate in 2022.
Ivanka, Mr Trump’s eldest daughter, played a prominent role in his last presidency as his senior adviser, alongside her husband, Jared Kushner.
However, both were notably absent from his 2024 campaign. “I love my father very much,” 43-year-old Ivanka — often believed to be Mr Trump’s favourite child — said when her father announced his presidential run in 2022.
“This time around, I am choosing to prioritise my young children and the private life we are creating as a family.”
