Donald Trump is the most media-savvy president in history. From the United States and the whole world. He appears before the media almost every day, sometimes two or three times. Not like all his predecessors, with brief and forced interventions at best, but long appearances, answering dozens of questions. Additionally, he constantly writes on his social media, gives interviews, and calls into his favorite TV or radio shows. When he's not staging incredible spectacles from the Oval Office live. This overexposure is part of a strategy, a reflection of a way of being and the core of his way of governing. And inevitably, it conditions and influences his team.
His ministers are also constantly on television. The Vice President, JD Vance, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, or the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent. Also, the trade negotiators Howard Lutnick or Jamieson Greer, very active in recent months. The National Intelligence Director, Tulsi Gabbard, the Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem. But although they are the most well-known and powerful, they are not necessarily the most influential in the White House.
Unlike his first term, when he was an amateur, inexperienced, with good advisors and relying solely on his family, random recommendations, and figures placed by the Republican Party, this time Trump is surrounded by loyal followers. Prepared, committed individuals (a disproportionately high number of them from Florida, where his Mar-a-Lago residence is located) who have spent four years, if not eight, outlining a very detailed plan for the most significant revolution in recent U.S. history. With enormous leeway, instructions, and access to the leader. A group of less media-savvy figures who work much more discreetly but relentlessly.
SUSIE WILES
The most relevant person in the hierarchy is undoubtedly the Chief of Staff. "She can devastate a country with a simple phone call. I think she could be the most powerful person in the world," the president said of her a few weeks ago. Through her hands pass Trump's daily agenda, meetings with Congress or world leaders, legislative projects. She is always close to her boss, coordinating the White House, but from a secondary position. Without speaking publicly, without interviews or social media presence. Her job is to guide an uncontrollable president, not to overshadow him. In these seven months, and in the previous campaign months, none of the thousands of journalists covering U.S. politics has reported clashes, disagreements, or issues of jealousy or envy between Wiles and her boss. And unlike in 2017, there have been no high-profile dismissals, scandals managed with great skill, and her leadership has unfolded without threats, at least since Elon Musk left the picture.
STEPHEN MILLER
The Deputy Chief of Staff, responsible for policies and homeland security, is the complete opposite of Wiles. A volcanic individual, driven by his likes and dislikes, radical in his ideas, methods, and proposals. The architect of separating parents from their children eight years ago to reduce immigration, of the most brutal measures to deport foreigners (or nationals) to El Salvador without due process or pressuring judges. The ABC network, under pressure from the White House, recently fired veteran journalist Terry Moran after he described Miller not just as "the brain behind Trumpism", one of the people who conceptualizes the movement's impulses and translates them into policies, but as his "bile." Miller, according to Moran, "is a man with a great capacity for hatred. He is a top hater who thrives on his hatred."
RUSSELL VOUGHT
Although his position, Director of the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, may seem purely technical, Vought is perhaps the most ideological, calculating, and meticulous figure in the Administration. He has the clearest vision of the conservative revolution led by Trump, as he was one of the architects of the so-called Project 2025, the roadmap that the president is implementing point by point. "We want bureaucrats to experience trauma. When they wake up in the morning, we want them not to want to go to work," he said before the elections. Upon taking office, he began firing thousands. A Christian nationalist and self-proclaimed "radical constitutionalist," he believes that the Executive should prevail over the other branches of power. He is perhaps the most strategic thinker and a ubiquitous figure. Many thought that Elon Musk was the one with the chainsaw, but it is Vought who wields it, the one who knows the inner workings of the federal Administration best, the budgets, the regulations. And who has advocated for changes within the Republican Party for two decades in all kinds of think tanks, on TV talk shows, and now, once again, from within.
Elbridge A. Colby'
The profile of the Pentagon's second-in-command, responsible for its policies and the brains of the department, is causing friction in this new administration. Colby, 45, is anything but an outsider or one of the gurus of the MAGA movement. The grandson of former CIA Director William Colby, a Harvard graduate, is an administration veteran on issues such as China, Iran, and nuclear weapons. Many Trump supporters reject him because they believe he is part of the Deep State or a warmonger, but he has become the dominant figure in defense matters, responsible for measures such as irritating the United Kingdom and Australia by expelling them from the Indo-Pacific theater or trying to cut off arms shipments to Ukraine so that the US can focus on what, he says, should be its sole obsession: China. "World War III could break out in a few years, and we are not ready," he said recently. He ingratiated himself with Trump when he embraced the theory that the 2020 election was rigged, and he is married to Brazilian Susana Cordeiro Guerra, recently appointed vice president of the World Bank, a close friend of Donald Trump's daughter, and a liaison with Jair Bolsonaro. He was responsible for the 2018 National Security Strategy and is behind the one to be released this month.
TODD BLANCHE
The Deputy Attorney General of the United States has become a key player in the Administration. Not only by handling many of the processes equivalent to the Department of Justice, while his boss Pam Bondi serves as the face and spokesperson to the media almost full-time, but also by directly negotiating with Ghislaine Maxwell, sentenced to 20 years in prison for aiding pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in procuring underage victims for his sexual perversions. Blanche, like his boss, was the president's personal lawyer and is managing the government's main image problem. Maxwell has managed to be sent to a minimum-security prison and may receive a pardon if she assists Trump. During his confirmation hearing, Blanche stated that his loyalty to the president came before his position. And he proves it every day.