Reince Priebus, former chief of staff to Donald Trump and ex-chairman of the Republican National Committee, says he’ll be involved but won’t get ”too much in the matrix” during the second Trump administration.
“I’ll be involved in things here and there,” president and chief strategist for the law firm Michael Best & Friedrich told WISN’s “UpFront,” produced in partnership with WisPolitics. “But I’ve got a good life outside the White House, and I’m happy with what I’m doing. But I’m also always involved. You could say I try to keep a balance.”
Priebus praised Trump’s decision to name Susie Wiles his incoming chief of staff.
“It’s a tough job,” he said. “I mean, obviously Donald Trump is a force in nature, but Susie is up to it. I think she’s a great pick for this job. I think it’s a little different, too. Donald Trump’s been through it already. I mean, we put together a team in 2016 really quickly. It was sort of like a team of rivals, which is kind of a complicated thing to do.”
Priebus said Trump won because of undecided voters who swung for Biden in 2020 and now for Trump in 2024.
“People aren’t stupid,” he said when asked about what could have been campaign missteps in the final days of the campaign. “They know that this comedian at Madison Square Garden was foolish for making such comments, that it wasn’t Donald Trump making the comments.
“So look, I think people aren’t dumb,” he added. “They know what the truth is and what’s not. And it turns out that a lot of these people go to the grocery store and buy groceries. And it turns out that a lot of these people put gas in their car, so that actually these things matter to people.”
Priebus said Trump’s first 100 days will be “a little bit more orderly” than in 2017.
“I think it’s going to start with immediately shutting down the border,” Priebus said. “They’ve got the 2025 tax cuts that they need to renew, which is going to take up almost the entire legislative process, at least to probably start that in the House, and then they’ve got the confirmations in the Senate. So you know, as far as the deportations, the one thing that you can count on is Donald Trump is going to follow through on his promises. And the other thing is, I hope people aren’t going to be surprised by this. This was a central theme of Donald Trump’s campaign.”
Ben Wikler, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, says the party must find ways to “show up and speak to voters where they are.”
“What went wrong in Wisconsin was less than what went wrong just about everywhere else,” Wikler told “UpFront.” “There was a national shift of about 6 percentage points towards Trump. Wisconsin had the smallest shift of any of the battleground states. It was a shift of 1.5 percentage points.
“I think people were most of all frustrated about prices and inflation and took that out against the incumbent parties, whether they were on the left or on the right,” Wikler added. “Now, that said, clearly we came up short, and we’ve got to figure out how to reach more voters in more places, people that maybe we aren’t talking to yet.”
Trump’s campaign focused in the final weeks on podcasts targeting male voters and less on traditional media sources.
“If you look at the big picture, showing up in more places for years would have absolutely made a difference,” Wikler said when asked if Harris should have appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast like Trump did. “The question of would that have flipped an election that shifted six points to the right? Hard to say that, you would have to get 125,000 people to switch from Trump to Harris across the blue wall states.
“And I’m sure the debate will begin now about all the things that could have been done differently along the way, and the small picture and big picture. That’s a really important debate. In the context of a campaign, you’re working with the information you have. I think going forward Democrats should find ways to show up and speak to voters where they are, where they’re getting information and build ways to get information out to people and to connect with them.”
After Trump’s win, Republican strategist Bill McCoshen issued a warning to Republicans.
“Here’s what I would caution Republicans,” he told “UpFront.” “This wasn’t necessarily a red wave. It was a Trump wave. So if you ran this cycle as a Senate candidate and won, or you ran for reelection as a congressional candidate or as a new candidate, in Tony Wied’s case, you ran on Donald Trump’s agenda. Now it’s up to you to deliver on that agenda. If you want this to be a durable majority going forward, you have to deliver the agenda over the next two years.
“Listen, they’re way far ahead of where most new administrations are,” McCoshen said looking ahead to the first 100 days. “He’s already been president once. They’ve been working on the transition since they left here in Milwaukee from the RNC in July. So I expect them to have a full complement of appointments ready to go on day one, and I think he will have a stronger team that understands this is a one-and-done term, and he got elected to produce very specific results. And I think the entire cabinet, the entire administration will be focused on that in Congress.”
Meanwhile, Democratic strategist Joe Zepecki says Dems need to act immediately ahead of the inauguration.
“I think during the transition we need to confirm as many judges as we can,” he said. “There are probably some things the Biden administration can do to try to make it a little tougher for a Trump administration to unwind some of the progress we’ve made. That may well happen, and I think some of it should. The open question is still who is going to control the House of Representatives? It’s probably going to be Republicans, but there is a path where it is Democrats. And if that’s the case, and if you have divided government, it’s going to be a lot harder for Donald Trump to implement that fast and furious 100 day agenda.”
Zepecki says Democrats can also look to several key wins including U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
“Tammy Baldwin is an incredible United States senator,” he said. ‘She’s a first ballot hall of famer, put her on Mount Rushmore of Wisconsin politicians. As far as I’m concerned, because against those economic headwinds, she got over the top. How? Because she’s a really good United States senator.”See more from the show.
