Megan Messerly and Diana Nerozzi:
At least 70 alumni of Claremont’s fellowships over the last decade serve in President Donald Trump’s administration, a POLITICO analysis found.
At least 70 participants in Claremont’s small suite of fellowships over the last decade hold or have held posts in President Donald Trump’s second administration, according to a POLITICO analysis of fellowship lists, LinkedIn profiles, and other public biographies.
Trump’s budget director Russ Vought, White House legislative director James Braid, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s adviser Michael Needham and CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis are all graduates of Claremont fellowships.
“It is no secret that the first Trump administration suffered from the lack of a prebuilt network,” Ryan Williams, Claremont Institute’s president, told POLITICO. “In our small way, we have been a reliable piece of that larger network which the president has now built over the last several years.”
Long viewed as an intellectual home for a strain of conservatism skeptical of globalism, hostile to the administrative state and rooted in a close reading of the Founding Fathers, Claremont for decades operated more at the margins of Washington’s governing mainstream.
That began to change with Trump’s ascent, with Claremont’s rise in Washington over the last decade closely tracking the president’s. Even before his first election, some Claremont conservatives — or “Claremonsters,” as they’re sometimes known — saw Trump as an unlikely but effective catalyst to transform Washington. Its leaders made an early bet that his disruption would create space for their ideas to take root in government — and it’s paid off.
In Trump’s Washington, Claremont occupies a niche that few other groups attempt — a hybrid of political philosophy, training and personnel cultivation.