After the defenestration of Jim DeMint, interim Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner promised his staff that they’d remain “Donald Trump’s favorite think tank.” Soon, though, they could be the defense industry’s darling.
When news broke that Heritage was considering David Trulio as one of four candidates to be president, foundation staffers scrambled for Google. Many had never heard of the man who could be their boss. When asked about the candidate, the most common reply was “Trulio-who?”
In short, Trulio is a lawyer, a Bush White House alum, and most of all, a war merchant.
The candidate has spent the better part of a decade at two of the biggest defense contractors in America. Currently, he’s the vice president for international government affairs at Lockheed Martin, and before that, per his resume, he worked at Raytheon as director of operations, “accessing the global market, identifying opportunities, and capturing business abroad.”
“I really have no idea who the Lockheed guy is,” said a conservative operative who’s close to Heritage and who summed up what staffers wouldn’t, or couldn’t, say on the record. “But a defense lobbyist for the head of Heritage?”
Though not a lobbyist, Trulio is definitely a war hawk and, under his realm, Heritage would become an even greater boon to the defense industry.
Already hawkish, the think tank rails against military budget cuts and they regularly cheerlead the Trump administration’s saber rattling. At least in the Davis Institute for National Security, the military silo on the fifth floor of Heritage, Trulio would find plenty of friends.
The Heritage board has been mostly silent in their leadership search and the Heritage communications department has gone dark. They do not respond to requests for comment and they do not want to discuss the search process. No doubt because of the bitter exit of DeMint.
There’s no explanation why they want a relatively unknown conservative to walk alongside intellectual heavyweights like Yuval Levin at National Affairs and Arthur Brooks at the American Enterprise Institute. But Trulio does run in the same circles as Trump’s nominee for general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, John Mitnick.
Currently senior vice president and general counsel, Mitnick knows Trulio from their time together at the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and Raytheon. As Mitnick prepares to leave, Trulio might enter Heritage’s sprawling campus on 214 Massachusetts Ave. That’s good news for the defense industry.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
