Nibbling on crabs, sushi and sugar cookies, some of the richest and the soon-to-be most powerful people in the world waited for the election results on Tuesday night at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s gilded fortress on the sea.
At one of the tables, Trump sat with Elon Musk, the billionaire technology executive, and Dana White, chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Hours before the final outcome was established, Musk decided to call the whole race. “Game, set and match,” he posted on X, the platform he owns, to his 200mn followers, at 10.32pm.
The next day, after it was confirmed that the Republican had defeated Kamala Harris, Trump and Musk ate together on the terrace of the resort, with Musk wearing a T-shirt of astronauts walking on the moon with Mars in the distance.
“Novus Ordo Seclorum,” Musk wrote on X, the Latin expression for “a new era is born”.
Amid the jubilant scenes at Mar-a-Lago, there were plenty of signs about how a second Trump presidency might be different than the first one — and, in particular, just how changed his new inner circle will be.
The 78-year-old Republican appears to be even more influenced by his billionaire donors and allies than he was during his first term in office — particularly Musk. He is also more willing to embrace the ideology of the politically ascendant new American right, and more determined to press ahead with his aggressive agenda from his very first day in office.
Trump’s inner circle
Eight years ago, Trump was forced to lean on the Republican establishment for counsel: this time, the group of individuals who have his ear are largely Maga loyalists, ranging from his vice-president-elect JD Vance and his eldest son Don Jr to a circle of wealthy allies pitching for plum jobs in the administration.
On Thursday, Trump made his first big personnel announcement, tapping Susie Wiles, his top campaign strategist and a longtime political operative in Florida, to be the next White House chief of staff.
It marks the opening move in what is expected to be a flurry of personnel announcements over the coming week that will reveal Trump’s team, including his cabinet, as he prepares to move back into the White House on January 20.
Trump’s goal will be to quickly implement policies ranging from the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants to sweeping tax cuts and across-the-board tariffs on imports that he promised on the campaign trail, along with exacting retribution against his political opponents.
At this stage in 2016, after defeating Hillary Clinton, many in Trump’s entourage were political novices who were unprepared for the task of building a new government. Trump eventually turned to his then vice-president-elect, Mike Pence — a former governor and member of Congress with deep roots in the Republican party — to run his transition operation.
He also tapped Reince Priebus to be chief of staff, Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary and Rex Tillerson for secretary of state — all figures who were palatable to traditional business groups and the national security apparatus, but whom he did not know particularly well.
Trump has come to regret those choices for restraining the populist agenda he really wanted to pursue and has been desperate to avoid that scenario again.
“It was a free-for-all. Nobody expected Trump to win,” says John Feehery, Republican former congressional aide now at EFB Advocacy, a consultancy, about the aftermath of the 2016 election.
“People are now understanding that instead of pursuing their own visions, they’re trying to pursue Trump’s vision.”
It is not unusual for chief executives and business leaders to have close access to politicians, especially during a campaign, but Musk’s proximity to Trump has been especially remarkable — and a sign that the next administration may have a distinctively plutocratic element to it.
Musk publicly endorsed Trump, bankrolled a Super Pac that spent $172mn on the 2024 election, hosted him on X for a lengthy conversation, and canvassed the crucial state of Pennsylvania, which ended up flipping to Trump.
In return, Trump has said he will appoint the Tesla and SpaceX chief to a commission that will roll back regulations and drastically cut government spending. Musk has said the election is crucial for his vision of colonising Mars.
“He actually helped Trump get elected. He got his fingernails dirty and got it done,” says Feehery. “The level of his work . . . gives him tons of loyalty from Trump.”
Their alliance carries big risks in terms of potential conflicts of interest, which Trump allies deny, as well as potential disagreements down the line over policy. But, for now, it seems to be suiting both men.
There are other top executives in Trump’s new orbit. Two billionaires are chairing his transition team. Personnel is being led by Howard Lutnick, the long-standing boss of Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm that lost hundreds of employees in the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. Lutnick is an old friend of Trump and even once appeared on The Apprentice.
The transition’s policy programme is being led by Linda McMahon, the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment who is also chair of the America First Policy Institute, a think-tank that has been trying to develop an agenda to support Trump’s ideas.
Both are considered potential cabinet picks — Lutnick for treasury and McMahon for commerce — after writing multimillion dollar checks to the campaign. But other top billionaires in the inner circle are also angling: hedge fund managers John Paulson and Scott Bessent, who was in Palm Beach wearing a pro-Trump pin on his lapel this week, are also in contention for Treasury.
The Trump family will remain influential in the new administration, but this time with a more Maga flavour.
In 2016, Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner took on senior White House positions. Kushner, who was a Democrat when he was younger, was considered by some foreign governments to be one of the more pragmatic people to deal with amid the chaos of the first Trump term. But neither Ivanka Trump or Kushner are expected to join this administration.
The most influential family member this year has been Donald Trump Jr, the 46-year-old eldest child. He played an important role in persuading his father to back JD Vance, the Ohio senator, to be his running mate, and he was one of the voices pushing for Trump to engage more with podcasts popular among young men.
Trump Jr also helped build the campaign’s relationship with Robert F Kennedy Jr — the scion of the Democrats’ most famous family who was at one stage running a third-party bid for the presidency, before swinging behind Trump. During the campaign, donors got the chance to win a day of falconry together with the two men. “A true Renaissance man,” Trump Jr described Kennedy.
Trump Jr has not always appeared to be his father’s favourite. But more than any other family member, he has been an energetic champion of the new right, including on his own podcast.
Although he appears to have little appetite for taking a formal position in the administration, he intends to play an important role in the transition, policing potential appointments for their loyalty. Before the election, he talked about the need to create a “Maga bench” of potential officials and keeping “bad actors” out of the administration, as he believes happened in 2016.
“Now we know who the real players are, the people who will actually deliver on the president’s message, the people who don’t think that they know better than the duly elected president of the United States,” he told Fox and Friends this week. “I want to make sure that those people are in this administration.”
Vance, 40, will also play an influential role in setting the direction of the White House. As the youngest vice-president since Richard Nixon served in the role seven decades ago, he is in prime position to shape the future of the Republican party.
He has risen from poverty to become a senator, picking up along the way a Yale Law School diploma, four years in the Marines, Silicon Valley venture capitalist experience under Peter Thiel and a best-selling book, Hillbilly Elegy. He has also helped overturn the GOP’s old country club image.
“We won’t cater to Wall Street. We’ll commit to the working man,” Vance said at the Republican party’s convention this summer.
A person close to Vance said that tech and immigration were two core policy interests; he told the Financial Times in August that Google “ought to be broken up”, but Trump later questioned whether that would be going too far.
According to Oren Cass, chief economist at the think-tank American Compass and also an FT contributing editor, “Vance has been an integral leader within the new right since its formative stages.”
In August, Trump added Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard — another Democrat turned Trump supporter — to his transition team. Both were at Mar-a-Lago this week, but it was unclear what kind of role they would get. Kennedy is in “meeting after meeting after meeting. And he dislikes meetings,” says a person close to the Trump campaign.
But Kennedy has been speaking to reporters about potential roles in the new administration in the areas of health and science, vowing to review research on vaccines and calling for the elimination of fluoride from drinking water.
Many of the candidates for top jobs have been present in Palm Beach this week. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, a potential pick for energy secretary, was standing right in front of the stage at the victory rally on election night, while former acting national intelligence director Ric Grenell and Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty — rumoured as top State Department picks — were also spotted around town. Kash Patel, former US defence department chief of staff who could be given a top job in intelligence, was also in attendance at Mar-a-Lago.
Amid the speculation, there is little tolerance for anyone who criticised Trump in the past. Trump adviser Tim Murtaugh says former staffers who turned against Trump are “trying to figure out how to pivot for their own professional betterment”. He adds: “We’re all aware of who those people are.”
Even the wealthiest Palm Beach locals worry about the impact of all the well-to-do people coming to pitch for positions.
Thomas Peterffy, the billionaire chair of Interactive Brokers and a Trump donor, who lives two minutes from Mar-a-Lago, laments that his neighbour’s victory will increase road closures on the island.
“I remember, eight years ago, after he got elected, people kept coming and going because he was constantly interviewing people for ambassadorships and various cabinet positions,” says Peterffy. “So, this traffic jam is going to go on for a while.”
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