随着特朗普在选举中取得决定性胜利，第二任期的过渡迅速开始
【中美创新时报2024 年 11 月 7 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）唐纳德·特朗普在南佛罗里达州举行的选举之夜派对被大肆宣传为庆祝活动。这最终成为他第二任总统任期的发令枪。《波士顿环球报》记者萨姆·布罗迪（Sam Brodey ）对此作了下述报道。
当特朗普于周三凌晨 2 点刚过登上棕榈滩会议中心的舞台时，人们对在势均力敌的关键摇摆州进行旷日持久的选票争夺战的预期已经消散，取而代之的是选举团和普选票的决定性胜利。
新当选总统有整整 75 天的时间准备就任，直到就职日。开始为政府配备人员和制定政策目标的工作将立即开始。这对于即将上任的总统来说尤其重要，他发誓要重塑联邦官僚机构，清除“深层政府”的敌人，以便他能在总统任期的第一天启动大规模的驱逐计划等举措。
与 2016 年相比，当时他的胜利让全世界甚至他自己的团队措手不及，而特朗普更准备好在 1 月 20 日开始实施他的议程。不仅他自己的组织更加团结和稳定，而且几个资源充足的实体，以及他上届政府的校友，在过去四年里一直在为下一届政府奠定基础。
“他们的情况比 2016 年好多了，”前佐治亚州众议员、特朗普的代理人杰克·金斯顿 (Jack Kingston) 说，他可以追溯到那次初选。“第一支球队，这是一个艰难的过渡，一个艰难的团队，有很多绿色人。”
金斯顿说，这一次，渴望加入政府的共和党人“人数更多”，与 2016 年大不相同，当时许多可信的共和党官员要么反对特朗普，要么对加入他的政府不感兴趣。金斯顿说，特朗普过渡期的候选人名单至少一个月前就开始征集主要联邦机构的任命名单。
值得注意的是，特朗普的过渡将受益于四年前他拒绝给予拜登总统的一项关键资源：合作。由于特朗普拒绝接受他在 2020 年的失败，他的政府拒绝参与过渡进程的基本方面。直到 11 月 24 日，也就是拜登赢得大选近三周后，一个重要的联邦机构——总务管理局才承认了拜登的胜利。
正如她周三在华盛顿承认的那样，哈里斯承诺她和拜登将全力支持平稳过渡。总务管理局还发表声明称，将为特朗普提供所有资源。
但这并不意味着这个过程会很顺利。在选举前的几周，他的团队打破了长期以来的惯例，拒绝与拜登政府达成正式协议，正式启动过渡进程的关键方面。
据联邦政府贸易刊物《政府行政官》报道，这一决定可能会推迟特朗普新人员抵达联邦机构开始讨论移交程序的时间，从而可能减缓过渡进程。2016 年，这些谅解备忘录要求特朗普过渡政府向奥巴马政府提供每个获准进入每个联邦机构的人员的姓名，并证明每个人都同意了透明度规则和行为准则。
特朗普竞选团队的发言人没有回应对这些协议或总体过渡工作状态发表评论的请求。
虽然特朗普政治机构的最新版本没有受到争执和内斗的拖累——这种争执和内斗导致克里斯·克里斯蒂在选举后几天就被免去 2016 年过渡主席的职务——但特朗普的共和党机构仍然是一个充满尖锐对手的圈子。几乎可以肯定，争夺关键政府职位和对当选总统的影响力的竞争将十分激烈。
在 2024 年的竞选活动中，潜在冲突的预兆就已经出现，民主党密切关注特朗普第二任期的新蓝图，尤其是由他在传统基金会智库的盟友精心制定的蓝图。这份被称为“2025 项目”的蓝图概述了详细的政策和监管立场——其中一些立场非常极端，例如禁止色情内容——它还推荐了即将上任的政府中的具体人员。
民主党试图将“2025 项目”变成一个不太可能的妖怪，并试图将共和党与其不受欢迎的提议联系起来。作为回应，特朗普竞选团队积极地将这位前总统与传统基金会文件划清界限——尽管该文件的设计者拉塞尔·沃特是特朗普政府的高级官员——并发誓，如果特朗普赢得连任，任何与蓝图有关的人都将无法获得职位。
然而，在特朗普获胜后，一些直言不讳的保守派人士夸口说，这种疏远行为将是一种诱饵和转换。 “我很荣幸地告诉大家，2025 项目自始至终都是真实的，”在选举之夜，颇具影响力的亲特朗普社交媒体发帖人本尼·约翰逊 (Benny Johnson) 在推特上写道。
竞选活动的最后几周以及过渡期的早期几个小时表明，过渡期可能包括特朗普过去竞选和执政时期的熟悉人物以及近几个月迅速出现的权力掮客。
特朗普过渡工作的主席是著名华尔街公司 Cantor Fitzgerald 的亿万富翁董事长霍华德·卢特尼克 (Howard Lutnick) 和职业摔跤企业家琳达·麦克马洪 (Linda McMahon)，后者成为特朗普第一届政府中的共和党权力玩家，并最终成为小企业管理局局长。
特斯拉和 X 的亿万富翁首席执行官埃隆·马斯克 (Elon Musk) 凭借对当选总统立场的忠诚，以及最重要的是他为推动特朗普当选而花费的数千万美元，一跃进入了特朗普的核心圈子。选举之夜和周三，他被拍到在特朗普的海湖庄园与特朗普及其家人共度时光。
与此同时，前独立总统候选人、现特朗普盟友罗伯特·肯尼迪 (Robert F. Kennedy) 多次被特朗普及其支持者称赞为将迅速掌管公共卫生事务的领导者。肯尼迪长期以来一直对疫苗持怀疑态度，尽管他是一名环保主义者，但特朗普在选举之夜开玩笑地警告他“远离液体黄金”，即化石燃料。
据报道，其他参与其中的人都是特朗普世界的坚定支持者。据 Politico 报道，曾在第一届政府担任美国贸易代表的罗伯特·莱特希泽 (Robert Lighthizer) 负责审查经济工作人员，而曾担任特朗普国家情报总监的约翰·拉特克利夫 (John Ratcliffe) 负责审查国家安全和情报人员。
2016 年，特朗普过渡期的权力斗争被认为阻碍了其进展，因为从春季到就职典礼的每个小时都非常宝贵。
虽然特朗普的一些盟友乐观地认为 2024 年的过渡将会更加顺利，但一些人仍然重申警告。“如果你错过了 75 天的期限，”金斯顿说，“你就无法挽回了。”
题图：唐纳德·特朗普在周三凌晨宣布胜利后与妻子梅拉尼娅一起走下舞台。DOUG MILLS/NYT
附原英文报道：
Transition to second Trump term begins swiftly with decisive election victory
By Sam Brodey Globe Staff,Updated November 6, 2024
Donald Trump walked off stage with his wife, Melania, after declaring victory early Wednesday morning.DOUG MILLS/NYT
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Donald Trump’s election night party in south Florida was hyped as a celebration. It ended up being the starting gun for his second term as president.
By the time Trump took the stage at the Palm Beach Convention Center shortly after 2 on Wednesday morning, expectations of a drawn-out battle for ballots in narrowly divided key swing states had melted into a decisive Electoral College and popular vote victory.
Instead of a muddled and contested process of transitioning to a new administration — one that might have involved both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris until a winner was called — the new president-elect has the full 75-day period until Inauguration Day to prepare to take power.
The work to begin staffing the administration and preparing policy goals will begin immediately. It is of particular importance to an incoming president who has vowed to remake the federal bureaucracy and clear it of “deep state” enemies so he can launch sweeping efforts, such as a massive deportation program, on day one of his presidency.
Compared to 2016, when his victory caught the world and even his own team off guard, Trump is more prepared to begin implementing his agenda on Jan. 20. Not only is his own organization more cohesive and stable, several well-resourced entities stocked with alumni of his last administration have spent the last four years laying the groundwork for the next one.
“They’re in a lot better position than they were in 2016,” said Jack Kingston, a former Georgia congressman and Trump surrogate dating to that initial campaign. “The first team, it was a rocky transition, a rocky crew, it had a lot of green people.”
This time around, Kingston said, there’s a “bigger player pool” of Republicans eager to join the administration, a far cry from 2016, when many credible GOP officials either opposed Trump or were uninterested in joining his government. Kingston said the Trump transition-in-waiting began soliciting names for appointments at key federal agencies at least a month ago.
Notably, Trump’s transition will benefit from a crucial resource that he denied President Biden four years ago: cooperation. As Trump refused to accept his defeat in 2020, his administration resisted participating in basic aspects of the transition process. It wasn’t until Nov 24, nearly three weeks after Biden won the race, that the General Services Administration, a key federal agency, even acknowledged the victory.
As she conceded in Washington on Wednesday, Harris pledged her and Biden’s full support for a smooth transition. The GSA also issued a statement saying all resources would be made available for Trump.
But that doesn’t mean the process will be smooth. In the weeks leading up to the election, his team broke with longstanding custom by declining to enter official agreements with the Biden administration that formally launch key aspects of the transition process.
That decision could potentially slow the transition by delaying when new Trump personnel can arrive at federal agencies to begin discussing the hand-over process, according to Government Executive, a federal government trade publication. In 2016, these memorandums of understanding required the Trump transition to provide the Obama administration with the names of each person authorized to go to each federal agency and certify that each had agreed to transparency rules and a code of conduct.
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the status of those agreements or the transition effort in general.
While this latest version of the Trump political apparatus is less weighed down by feuds and infighting — the kind that caused Chris Christie to be booted as the 2016 transition chair just days after the election — Trump’s GOP apparatus remains a circle of sharp elbows. There will almost certainly be intense competition for key administration posts and for influence with the president-elect.
Previews of potential conflict came during the 2024 campaign itself, in which Democrats focused closely on emerging blueprints for a second Trump term, especially one crafted by his allies at the Heritage Foundation think tank. The blueprint, dubbed Project 2025, outlined detailed policy and regulatory positions — some of them extreme, such as banning pornography — and it also recommended specific personnel to staff a coming administration.
Democrats tried to make Project 2025 into an unlikely bogeyman and sought to link Republicans to its unpopular proposals. In response, the Trump campaign aggressively put distance between the former president and the Heritage document — even though its architect, Russell Vought, was a top Trump administration official — and vowed that anyone linked to the blueprint would fail to secure a position if Trump won reelection.
After Trump’s victory, however, some vocal conservatives boasted the distancing act would be a bait-and-switch. “It is my honor to inform you all that Project 2025 was real the whole time,” tweeted influential pro-Trump social media poster Benny Johnson on election night.
The final few weeks of the campaign, as well as the early hours of the transition period, illustrated how the transition could include a mix of familiar figures from Trump’s past campaigns and administration as well as power brokers who have rapidly emerged in recent months.
The chairs of Trump’s transition effort are Howard Lutnick, the billionaire chairman of storied Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald, and Linda McMahon, the pro wrestling entrepreneur who became a GOP power player and eventually Small Business Administration chief in Trump’s first administration.
Elon Musk, the multibillionaire CEO of Tesla and X, has catapulted himself into Trump’s inner circle with his fealty to the president-elect’s positions and, most important, the tens of millions of dollars he spent to boost his election. He was photographed spending time with Trump and his family at his Mar-a-Lago club on election night as well as Wednesday.
Meanwhile, former independent presidential candidate turned Trump ally Robert F. Kennedy has been repeatedly hailed by Trump and his supporters as a leader who will quickly take charge on matters of public health. Kennedy has long pushed skepticism of vaccines and, though he has been an environmentalist, Trump jokingly warned him on election night to “stay away from the liquid gold,” meaning fossil fuels.
Others reported to be involved are Trumpworld stalwarts. According to Politico, Robert Lighthizer, who served as US trade representative in the first administration, is leading the charge for vetting economic staff, while John Ratcliffe, who was the director of National Intelligence for Trump, is vetting national security and intelligence staff.
In 2016, power struggles on the Trump transition were believed to have stymied its progress, given how valuable each hour is during the spring to the inauguration.
While some Trump allies feel optimistic that the 2024 transition will be much smoother, some still reiterate a warning. “If you blow the 75 day period,” Kingston said, “you can’t recover.”
