WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump will return to the White House accompanied by a group of longtime friends and aides as well as recent, flamboyant allies.
The Republican president-elect has only just begun naming key figures in his administration, but he has brought in a number of partners on and off the campaign trail in recent weeks, who joined him on stage early Wednesday as he announced his victory.
Here’s a look at some key figures in Trump’s orbit as he prepares to occupy the White House once again.
Susie Wiles
For the second time, Trump won the White House with a woman running his campaign. Wiles, who joined his 2024 effort early, effectively served as his campaign manager and was named his recent chief of staff on Thursday. She is credited with being a steadfast and peaceful force behind Trump’s third White House campaign, running a largely disciplined and ultimately victorious operation.
Wiles is a longtime Republican strategist from Florida who ran Trump’s campaigns in the state in 2016 and 2020. Previously, she managed Rick Scott’s 2010 campaign for governor of Florida and briefly served as manager of former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman’s 2012 presidential campaign.
Wiles is the daughter of the tardy NFL player and now broadcaster Pat Summerall.
Lara Trump
In both business and government, Trump has always ensured that relatives hold key roles. If physical proximity is a sign of power, it’s worth noting that the person standing to Trump’s right at his victory party was Lara Trump.
She is married to the former president’s middle son, Eric, and has been tapped by Donald Trump to co-chair the Republican National Committee since the spring.
Lara Trump, a former television producer, was a prominent campaigner for her father-in-law and was considering a run of her own in 2022, where she weighed a run for Senate in her home state of North Carolina before deciding against running.
At the RNC, she is a TV-ready advocate for the former president and is tasked with boosting fundraising, expanding voter reach and advancing the party’s “election integrity” initiative. She has also tried a side gig as a singer and has released several songs that sometimes contain political imagery.
Dana White
White is the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and Trump’s longtime friend. They date back to 2001, when White hosted a UFC fight at the Republican’s former Trump Taj Mahal casino hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Trump has appeared with White at UFC matches over the years, particularly in his 2024 campaign as he sought to appeal to younger male voters.
White, for his part, had speaking roles at the 2016, 2020 and 2024 Republican conventions and appeared on stage at Trump’s victory party on Wednesday, even briefly addressing the crowd.
Linda McMahon
McMahon, the other co-chair of the president-elect’s transition team, is Trump’s longtime friend.
She and her husband Vince founded World Wrestling Entertainment and grew the organization into a powerhouse. Trump has attended a few WWE events over the years, and McMahon was one of his most generous patrons during his 2016 campaign.
Trump appointed her during his first term as head of the Small Business Administration. She left to work on his re-election campaign and spent the years since he left office as one of the leaders of the America First Policy Institute, strategizing for another Trump term.
Howard Lutnick
Lutnick, CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, is co-chair of Trump’s transition team and is helping identify the team that will work in the next administration.
Lutnick has donated to both Democrats and Republicans in the past, once appeared on Trump’s NBC reality show “The Apprentice” and has become part of the president-elect’s inner circle. He shared the stage with Trump at events in the final days of his campaign, including the rally at Madison Square Garden.
In the final days of the campaign, he came under fire for an interview with CNN in which he repeated Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s debunked criticism of vaccines.
Boris Epshtyn
Epshteyn is a lawyer who coordinated with Trump’s various legal teams and a longtime adviser to Trump who was a key surrogate in his 2016 campaign. Epshteyn briefly served as an adviser in the Trump White House and as an on-screen political analyst for Sinclair Broadcast Group.
After Trump refused to accept his defeat in 2020, Epshteyn worked with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in efforts to overturn the result. He was accused of carrying out a scheme with Giuliani to present bogus voters for Trump in Arizona and prevent Congress from certifying the results. He has pleaded not guilty to nine felony charges in Arizona in connection with the case.
Epshteyn also appeared at Trump’s side in his court appearances.
Stephen Miller
Miller was a senior adviser during Trump’s first term and played a central role in many of the former president’s policy decisions, particularly his move to separate thousands of immigrant families as a deterrence program in 2018. Miller helped craft many of Trump’s speeches and plans for hardliners on immigration.
Since Trump left office, Miller has been president of America First Legal, an organization of former Trump advisers founded as a conservative version of the American Civil Liberties Union that challenges the Biden administration, media companies, universities and others on issues such as freedom of Language and religion and national security.
He is expected to take a leading role in Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, promising the largest deportation effort in U.S. history.
Richard Grenell
Grenell is Trump’s former ambassador to Germany and former acting director of national intelligence, who remains a key foreign policy advisor and political advisor to this day. He is expected to be at the top of Trump’s list for secretary of state.
Throughout the campaign, Grenell played a role in events with Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, and the Log Cabin Republicans. He was a key facilitator in Trump’s outreach to Arab Americans in Michigan and joined Trump in September when he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Grenell gained a reputation as a pro-Trump opponent in Berlin. Trump has joked about former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s delight in removing Grenell from his ambassadorial post to move him to the intelligence position.
Elon Musk
One of the most powerful figures in Trump’s environment is currently Musk, the billionaire boss of the car manufacturer Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX.
Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and converted it to X, empowering conservative and far-right voices on the platform. After once supporting President Barack Obama, Musk has moved to the right and become a leading voice among American conservatives. He supported Trump after the Republican survived an assassination attempt in July and invested more than $119 million in support of Trump’s campaign, including a $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes in Pennsylvania.
Trump frequently praises Musk and tells the crowd about his awe at the SpaceX rocket landings. Trump has announced that he will give Musk, a key government contractor, the job of leading an efficiency commission in his administration that will examine the entire federal government.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy, an anti-vaxxer and environmentalist, is a scion of the Democratic Party whose rise into Trump’s sphere of influence was one of the surprises of the 2024 presidential campaign.
Kennedy entered the race as the Democratic candidate, left the party to run as an independent before abandoning his candidacy, and then endorsed Trump with a promise to influence health care policy in a future administration.
In recent weeks, he has talked about exerting control over the U.S. Department of Agriculture or gaining the power to reorganize federal health agencies. He has said that when Trump takes office, he would push local water systems to remove fluoride from drinking water – one of the great public health achievements of the last century – and allow him to study the safety of vaccines which he has been spreading theories that have been debunked for a long time.
Brooke Rollins
Rollins is another long-time employee seen as a potential addition to the recent administration. She is Trump’s former domestic policy chief and was president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute.
America First Policy remained under the radar compared to the Heritage Foundation, which ran Project 2025, which was frequently attacked by Democrats to the chagrin of Trump’s campaign, which insisted that Project 2025 and Heritage did not speak for it.
Rollins previously served as an adviser to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and ran a think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
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Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard contributed to this report.
