Top Trump official says White House appointees will have to show 'loyalty to the man' and Project 2025 is 'radioactive'

The billionaire investor cochairing Donald Trump's transition team said people steering the administration during a second term will have to demonstrate loyalty 'to the man' as well as his policies.

The comment by Trump Transition official Howard Lutnick, in remarks to the Financial Times, are just the latest demonstration of how Trump will try to staff an administration of purists, after fuming that some of his closest past advisors turned out to be 'RINOS' or unintelligent.

Lutnick, who heads the New York investment firm Cantor Fiztgerald, wrote off some of Trump's first-termers as insufficiently with the program. 

'Those people were not pure to his vision,' he said. 'They’re all going to be on the same side.'

'And they’re all going to understand the policies, and we’re going to give people the role based on their capacity — and their fidelity and loyalty to the policy, as well as to the man,' he said.

Trump has long prized loyalty, and for years has vented against those he believes haven't demonstrated it, while keeping at his side even advisors who have suffered personal and professional setbacks.

Trump is seeking reelection despite a stunning number of former top aides now opposing him. 

Among them is former Vice President Mike Pence, who had been the public face of loyalty for four years, but is featured in Jack Smith's latest filing privately urging Trump to 'recognize the process is over' despite Trump's continued claims of massive election fraud. Trump would say before the Capitol riot that Pence lacked 'courage', and in August called him 'delusional.'

Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said last year that Trump 'has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law,' in stunning on-the-record comments to CNN last year. Trump would call him a 'lowlife with a very small brain and a very big mouth.'

Lutnick also disowned Project 2025, the document produced by a stable of former Trump administration figures that the Trump campaign has said repeatedly does not represent Trump or his campaign. 

'Project 2025 is an absolute zero for the Trump-Vance transition,' said Lutnick.

Besides Lutnick, who raised $15 million for Trump at a Hamptons fundraiser, Trump's transition is cochaired by wrestling exec Linda McMahon, who ran the Small Business Administration during the Trump Administration.

She resigned her post in 2019 to run a pro-Trump PAC. Some other Trump cabinet secretaries, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, resigned over January 6.

Trump famously pushed out his 2016 transition chair former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has himself become a Trump critic.

Should Trump want an extra screen for loyalty, his two adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, serve as honorary co-chairs and have been expected to screen for loyalty and ideology. 

Trump spoke to talk host Hugh Hewitt about 'loyalty' shortly before the Democratic convention, when his former Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham is among those who denounced him. 

'I spent four years. I know people better than anybody in the history of Washington,' he said. 'I know the good, the bad, the dumb, the smart. I know the weak, I know the loyal.'

'The loyal is interesting, because loyal, you never really know until certain times, until certain events happen. Loyalty is very interesting,' he mused. 'That’s something you never really know, but learn about. And that’s a little bit of a hit and miss, frankly. A little bit of a hit and miss.'