By Gram Slattery
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign said on Friday two major donors would lead a transition team formed to help vet personnel and draft policy should the former president win in November.
Wrestling magnate Linda McMahon and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick will serve as co-chairs, the campaign said in a statement.
Two of Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, along with his vice presidential running mate, Senator JD Vance, will serve as honorary chairs.
McMahon, co-founder and former CEO of the professional wrestling franchise WWE, is the chair of the America First Policy Institute, an organization that has drafted some proposed policies for a possible second Trump administration.
McMahon served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration during most of Trump’s 2017-2021 term. Lutnick has emerged as a key money-raising figure for Trump, hosting a $15-million fundraiser for the former president in the Hamptons earlier this month.
It is standard practice for presidential campaigns to assemble a transition effort in the months before an election. But it is not clear how much sway Trump’s transition team will ultimately have should he defeat Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, in the Nov. 5 election.
Trump fired much of the transition team he had installed before he won the 2016 election after falling out with former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who led the effort until mid-November of that year. At the time, Trump privately expressed dissatisfaction with Christie’s staffing picks and concern over a lingering political scandal that had engulfed some of Christie’s former aides.
Trump is more focused right now on campaigning, according to several people who talk to him, given that his polling lead has all but evaporated in recent weeks since Harris replaced President Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Rod Nickel)
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