President-elect Donald Trump has significantly reshuffled his Cabinet for his second term, leaving it much different than it looked like at the end of his first term.
Very few of Trump’s former Cabinet members have returned after the contentious first term that ended abruptly with President Joe Biden‘s victory in 2020.
From former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Nikki Haley, some of Trump’s closest advisers have been reassigned to his blacklist.
And MAGA backlash can be fierce against even the closest in Trump’s orbit – if they have seemingly betrayed the president-elect.
Those on Trump’s ‘blacklist’ have not been included in his new inner circle including dozen billionaires estimated to have a combined net worth of nearly $500 billion.
Here are the some of the former officials who crossed with Trump over the years and have not been welcomed back:
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
Pompeo, a four-term congressman from Kansas was first in his class at West Point, and a graduate of Harvard Law University before entering the Trump administration in 2017 as the director of the CIA.
Trump then shifted Pompeo to serve as Secretary of State as he did for the remainder of the administration.
President-elect Donald Trump’s propsoed cabinet looks much different than the one in his first term
Pompeo is well respected by Washington insiders but deeply mistrusted by prominent political and media figures in the MAGA movement as a warmonger for his aggressive positions against Russia and Iran.
Pompeo was accused of criminal behavior by journalist Tucker Carlson after reports surfaced of his reported plan to assassinate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
‘Mike Pompeo, who is a very sinister person, the worst, and I always thought that and I’ve told Trump that, never should have let him run CIA or State,’ Carlson said in a podcast interview with TV star Roseanne.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
US former ambassador to the United Nations and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley
Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley
Nikki Haley resigned as U.N. ambassador in 2018, prompting speculation that she was positioning herself politically for a future run for president.
That turned out to be true as Haley ran for president against Trump in the 2024 presidential primary.
Haley repeatedly attacked Trump as mentally ‘diminished’ and ‘unhinged’ during the campaign, urging Republicans to reject the ‘chaos’ he brought to the political arena.
She refused to drop out of the primary early even though Trump handily won every early primary state until it was mathematically impossible for her to win.
Haley quietly endorsed Trump in May 2024, refusing to join the Republicans who sided with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Haley also maintains hawkish views on Russia and Iran putting her in the same camp as Pompeo regarding MAGA fears of ‘warmongers’ and war hawks entering his administration.
Trump specifically ruled out Pompeo and Haley as future Cabinet officials to assuage some of those concerns.
‘I will not be inviting former Ambassador Nikki Haley, or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to join the Trump Administration, which is currently in formation,’ he wrote shortly after winning reelection in November.
Central Intelligence Agency director Gina Haspel
Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Gina Haspel
Gina Haspel was an agency legacy pick as Director of the CIA, supported and endorsed by Mike Pompeo, Trump’s first CIA director that Trump shifted to Secretary of State in 2018.
Haspel tangled with Trump behind the scenes after the 2020 election, threatening at one point to resign after Trump proposed installing Kash Patel as the Deputy Director of the CIA position.
She also pushed back against Trump’s attempts to declassify documents related to the Russian election interference investigation of the 2016 election.
Trump did not bring Haspel back into his administration, choosing former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe instead to serve as director of the CIA.
Former attorney general Bill Barr
Former Attorney General Bill Barr
Barr resigned in protest of Trump’s assertion that the 2020 election was fraudulent and went on to criticize Trump for his ‘bogus’ claims of election fraud.
He ultimately agreed to vote for the Republican ticket, publicly endorsing Trump in April 2024, but the relationship was too damaged to repair.
Trump’s former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos served Trump for nearly his entire first term
Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos
Trump’s former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos served Trump for nearly his entire first term, but stepped down shortly after the January 6th riots on Capitol Hill in protest.
‘There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation and it is the inflection point for me,’ DeVos wrote in her resignation letter to Trump.
DeVos has only had good things to say about Trump since that day and fully endorses his plan to eliminate the Department of Education, but she was not asked to return to the Trump administration.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar
Former Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar
Azar served as Trump’s HHS Secretary throughout his administration, including during the challenging times of the coronavirus pandemic.
The January 6 riots also posed a problem for Azar who resigned in protest in mid-January. The date his resignation took effect, however was Jan. 20th, the same day the Trump administration left office.
Before he was Trump’s pick for HHS Secretary, Alex Azar was the president of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.
Trump is bringing an entirely new perspective to his second administration by nominating Big Pharma skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his new secretary of health.
Elaine L. Chao, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation
Former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao
President Donald Trump appointed Chao in his first administration as a nod and a favor to her husband Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The relationship between Trump and McConnell has only deteriorated in recent years, particularly after the January 6 riots.
Chao resigned in protest on January 7th, declaring that Trump’s role in the day’s events ‘deeply troubled me in a way I simply cannot set aside.’
In subsequent years, Trump suggested that Chao was a communist agent, calling her ‘Coco Chow’ and McConnell the ‘Old Broken Crow’ who worked with Biden, the Democrats, and China.
James Mattis, former U.S. secretary of defense
Former Defense Secretary James Mattis
President Donald Trump was very impressed after meeting former General James Mattis, appointing him as his Secretary of Defense at the beginning of his administration.
But Mattis resigned in 2018, protesting Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria.
‘Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position,’ Mattis said.
Mattis went on to criticize Trump publicly, denouncing him as a threat to the Constitution in the Summer of 2020 after the president summoned the national guard to help quell the George Floyd riots in Washington, DC.
‘We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution,’ he wrote in a lengthy statement condemning Trump.