A search is underway by Team Trump to ferret out MAGA loyalists already embedded in the Biden administration.
That is according to The Atlantic's Barton Gellman who appeared on MSNBC's "Alex Wagner Tonight" to discuss an article "How He Gets Away With It?" that games out the ways the former president reclaims the White House and installs essentially a Trumpistan government.
"Trump's people are looking," Gellman said. "Do they have some MAGA people undercover already in the U.S. government?"
The writer is floating an effort to find and assign shadow Trumpers at senior levels, or as Gellman explains with a GS-15 pay scale — where they can start designing out ways to fill key positions that will help shape and exact Trump's policies.
"If not, they have to find someone who is at least GS-15 on the federal pay scale," he said.
Wagner asked how a Trump administration would be able to get some of his diehards into pivotal roles when many of those slots are scrutinized by Congress.
Gellman spelled that out.
For example supposed loyalists that Wagner brought up, Stephen Miller or Kash Patel, might find vacancies to fill and navigate around Congress.
"You have to start off by thinking: 'Who could be confirmed by the Senate?' And it depends who controls the Senate," he said.
"But someone like Stephen Miller is sufficiently controversial; maybe he would have trouble even in a Republican Senate."
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That's where Gellman unfolded what he believes is the possible workaround to get Trumpers to occupy those key roles as temps.
"It's not the end of the question," he said. "Because then there's the Vacancies Reform Act, which allows Trump, who loves acting appointments, to appoint someone Secretary of Homeland Security or Attorney General on an acting basis."
