Former President Donald Trump just made a personnel move with regard to his 2024 re-election campaign that appears to be at odds with his initial 2016 campaign and anti-establishment rhetoric ever since then.
Trump has reportedly hired a staffer from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's failed 2016 campaign, Trevor Naglieri, to manage his 2024 campaign efforts in New Hampshire, according to the Daily Wire.
Though New Hampshire is a small state, it arguably wields outsized importance for most presidential candidates in that it is the first state primary and, depending upon how that early election plays out, can substantially bolster or completely derail the campaigns of some aspirants to the White House.
Politico reported on Tuesday that Trump not only hired the veteran staffer of the Bush 2016 campaign but also gave him something of a promotion in terms of his job duties in the upcoming Republican primary cycle.
In 2016, Naglieri initially served as a field coordinator for Bush but, after the governor dropped out of the race, moved on to work for the failed 2016 campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), first as the New Hampshire field director and then as Cruz's national field director.
More recently, Naglieri was the campaign manager for an unsuccessful GOP congressional candidate in Pennsylvania and he has also worked for Axiom Strategies, a Republican-linked consulting firm.
For the Trump 2024 campaign, Naglieri will be elevated to serve as the former president's New Hampshire state director, meaning he will essentially be in charge of the entire campaign within that particular state which Trump won in the 2016 primary but lost in both the 2016 and 2020 general elections.
Politico further reported that this isn't Trump's first big hire for his 2024 campaign nationally or even in New Hampshire, as the former president in January secured a commitment from a longtime state-level ally, former New Hampshire GOP chair Steve Stepanek, to serve as his senior advisor in the state.
They will both work under the guidance of Alex Latcham, who Trump hired in Iowa to serve as the campaign official in charge of all of the campaign's early primary state operations.
The Daily Wire noted that Trump's hiring of Naglieri seems odd in light of the prior close connection to the losing Bush campaign that Trump so thoroughly obliterated and incessantly mocked throughout 2016 and beyond.
Indeed, Trump has routinely slammed former Gov. Jeb "low energy" Bush as a "globalist" and "RINO" and member in good standing of the hated GOP establishment.
Most recently that has been as part of his concerted broadside attacks against current Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who is not actually a presidential candidate but is widely assumed to be Trump's main rival in the 2024 primary season if he were to actually enter the race.
President Trump: "Ron DeSanctimonious is being CRUSHED in the polls, all of them. Many GLOBALISTS are having second thoughts. RINO'S like Karl Rove, Pauline Ryan, and Jeb "Low Energy" Bush are beside themselves...They have rarely witnessed a CRATERING of this magnitude!" pic.twitter.com/FZWeAWG4oo
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) March 28, 2023
Naglieri may well be a capable campaign staffer, but his hiring in light of Trump's incessant anti-establishment rhetoric will undoubtedly raise questions among critics and supporters alike
