The 2020 Trump reelection campaign has opted not to have foreign or economic policy teams, a move that allows it to avoid the type of problems in 2016 that ensnared junior advisers and led to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Instead, Team Trump will follow the lead of the White House on policy, according to Trump campaign officials. It is the first time in at least two decades that a presidential candidate has decided not to have dedicated policy teams covering national security and the economy.
“We don’t set policy here,” Trump campaign Strategic Communications Director Marc Lotter told the Washington Examiner. “When you’re running for office, on the outside, you do create the policy teams and the advisory groups and things because this is what you want to do. Here, they’re making policy inside the White House with the federal government.”
In 2016, two foreign policy advisers on the Trump campaign played large roles in what would become the Mueller investigation. Both came under suspicion for their connections to Russia.
One, Carter Page, was suspected by the FBI of working for Russia. The other, George Papadopoulos, served 12 days in prison for lying to the FBI about his interactions with people linked to Russia during the campaign. Mueller found no collusion between any Trump campaign officials and the Russian government but his inquiry blighted the president’s first term.
The campaign’s decision to avoid foreign policy advisers this time around could allow Team Trump to sidestep scrutiny over connections to foreign governments, as well as saving campaign cash.
“The fundamental difference between running a campaign for office, and/or being the incumbent, is the incumbent campaign does not need outside policy advisory groups,” Lotter said. “The policy is directed and driven out of the White House.”
Rather than having its own policy advisory teams, the Trump campaign follows the lead of the State Department, the Department of Defense, the National Council of Economic Advisers, and other executive departments on policies, most of which are already well established.
“His positions are known,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell of Trump. “The most important positions are going to be the economy, illegal immigration, and where he stands on tariffs, and he’s in good shape there. The only policy position he has to work on, really, is better messaging healthcare — how he’s going to protect preexisting conditions and keep medical costs down.”
O’Connell said the Trump campaign has a “huge advantage” over 2020 Democratic contenders, who will have to create new policies for a host of issues and try to make them stand out in a crowded field of 23 candidates.
And while some Democrats have rolled out attention-grabbing plans such as free college or “Medicare for all,” others have been noticeably light on policy, something O’Connell was keen to point out
But while the Trump campaign does not need to make policies, it does need to “translate” Trump’s policies into meaningful messages for voters, according to Terry Nelson, political director for President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign. “The campaign needs to be in a position to deploy the policy in a way that’s advantageous to the campaign,” Nelson said.
The campaign’s decision not to have policy people is not “super surprising,” according to Nelson, but diverges from Trump’s predecessors, Obama and Bush, whose reelection campaigns both employed policy advisers.
Columbia University political science professor Robert Shapiro said Trump may change his mind closer to November 2020. “He could choose to hire policy people down the line.”
Lotter said the decision meant the Trump 2020 campaign would be lean and laser-focused: “You’re going to have a massive, but efficient, juggernaut behind him that is built for one purpose only, which is the general election campaign.”
