The Most Notable Friendships Trump Formed This Year

After spending much of the last decade sparring with Democrats of all stripes and Big Tech platforms, Trump is now stuffing his Cabinet with left-wingers and bragging that “everyone wants to be my friend!!!”

He has made nice with leaders who have compared him to Adolf Hitler, called him a “terrible president,” and said he should not run for office.

Here is a breakdown of some of the most important friends Trump made this year during his campaign to become president again.

1. Elon Musk

Although critical of the “woke” ideology peddled by Democrats, Musk shared in March that he would not endorse a candidate in the presidential election.

But just minutes after the failed attempt on Trump’s life, the X owner and SpaceX CEO endorsed him for president.

Musk moved quickly. He set up a super PAC that, by October, reportedly spent $80 million on the election to boost Trump. Musk invited Trump to join him on X for a wildly successful and wide-ranging discussion, and he joined Trump for his second rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Since the election, Trump has welcomed Musk at Mar-a-Lago frequently, and Musk has joined the president-elect during transition meetings.

Musk, who has expressed concern that federal government regulations are “choking” technological innovation, has been tapped to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency alongside former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

While it will operate as an advisory committee, Musk’s appointment raises concerns of a conflict of interest, given that SpaceX is a recipient of billions of dollars in government contracts.

This is not the first time Musk will work in conjunction with a Trump administration. He served on two economic advisory councils during the first administration but left after Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement, which seeks to curb climate change.

2. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In July, Kennedy called Trump a “terrible president,” but by the end of August, he suspended his campaign and gave Trump his endorsement.

Throughout the campaign, Trump criticized Kennedy, and like both the Biden and Harris campaign teams, he expressed concerns that Kennedy would be a spoiler for him. Some polls in August suggested that Kennedy would take more votes away from Trump than from Harris.

However, by welcoming Kennedy to his campaign in the final stretch, Trump tried to win over Kennedy’s supporters in swing states such as Michigan and Wisconsin, where Kennedy’s request to be removed from the ballot was rejected by the Supreme Court.

But Trump’s embrace of Kennedy extended past the election as he nominated the former independent presidential candidate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

Trump’s nomination of Kennedy to oversee health policies garnered criticism from both Democrats and Republicans. Kennedy has espoused anti-vaccine rhetoric, making claims that there is a link between autism and vaccines.

As HHS secretary, Kennedy has said he would like to put greater restrictions on food additives and remove fluoride from drinking water — both of which are an embrace of greater government regulation that does not align with conservatives’ smaller-government policy.

But Kennedy’s crusade against chronic illnesses piqued Trump’s interest, with the president-elect sharing that he nominated him to the Cabinet position because he has a “very open mind.” Trump and Kennedy began talks centered on America’s chronic health crisis just days following the first assassination attempt on the Republican thanks to the influence of Dr. Calley Means, a Trump adviser who helped broker the alliance.

And so the slogan “Make America Healthy Again” has become the new rallying cry of the incoming Trump administration.

3. Eric Adams

Adams was indicted on five federal charges, all of which stemmed from accusations that he took money from Turkish diplomats. The embattled mayor has not publicly petitioned Trump to intervene in his legal difficulties, though Trump has hinted at the possibility that he could use his pardon power once in office to make Adams’s problems go away.

Adams’s meeting with Trump “border czar” Tom Homan garnered accusations from Democrats that Adams is just seeking to win over Trump to save himself. The mayor also called Trump a “great patriot” after the president-elect said he would “certainly look at” pardoning Adams.

Adams’s concern with the illegal migrant population existed before he was indicted. He has been critical of the Biden administration’s handling of the border crisis and has shared that the city is lacking the assistance it needs to handle the situation properly.

In September 2023, Adams said that, if left unchecked by the federal government, the migrant crisis “will destroy New York City.”

Trump has sympathized with Adams after battling several lawsuits with federal prosecutors over the last two years, saying he thinks the DOJ has treated the New York mayor “pretty unfairly.”

“Being upgraded in an airplane many years ago — I know probably everybody here has been upgraded,” Trump said in response to the allegations that Adams accepted gifts from the Turkish government in exchange for pressuring officials to approve swiftly the building code of a new consulate.

4. Tulsi Gabbard

Former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard first gained nationwide fame during the 2020 Democratic presidential debate when she aggressively went after then-Sen. Kamala Harris over the role she played in the mass incarceration of black men for marijuana use.

Just four years later, she was on the campaign trail again, this time preparing Trump for his one-on-one debate against the vice president.

But Trump and Gabbard have not always seen eye to eye with one another. After the United States launched an air strike on a Syrian airfield in 2017, Gabbard said the Trump administration had acted recklessly, claiming the strike was “dangerous, rash, and unconstitutional.”

That year, Gabbard met with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad twice. She refused to call him an enemy of the U.S. and said Syria “does not pose a direct threat” to the U.S.

In 2022, Gabbard left the Democratic Party, accusing it of being controlled by an “elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness,” and since February, she has campaigned for Trump.

Her performance on the campaign trail and as a Trump surrogate gained her such favor with the president-elect that she was nominated to serve as director of national intelligence after he won. However, her support for pro-Russian propaganda has some senators concerned that there may be a conflict of interest if she were to lead the agency.

5. Amer Ghalib

Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan, endorsed Trump for president, citing his confidence in Trump’s ability to “end the chaos in the Middle East.”

Originally from Yemen, Ghalib was elected in 2021 in a city just outside Detroit. With a strong immigrant population from the Middle East, Hamtramck is the first U.S. city to have a Muslim-majority city council.

“It was a combination of both disappointment and hope — disappointment [with] the current administration on how they handled the situation in the Middle East because that is one of the most important, determining factors of our decision, who to vote for as Arab-Americans this time,” Ghalib shared upon explaining his endorsement of Trump. He said there is “a hope that some change will bring peace to the Middle East, and we found President Trump is so determined about that.”

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Many Arab Americans’ unhappiness with the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war gave birth to the uncommitted movement, in which 30 Democratic delegates refused to cast their vote for Vice President Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention.

Ghalib is joined by other Muslim leaders, who rallied around Trump as the best hope for bringing stability to the Middle East. While Trump is noted to have a more pro-Israel stance than both Harris and President Joe Biden, his tough stance on Iran gives Arab Americans confidence that he can end the war.