By Gabriella Garcia and Sabrina Williams
Secretary of State
Trump Administration
Mike Pompeo is the current Secretary of State, sworn in April of 2018 by President Donald Trump. Originally from Orange County, California, Pompeo served in the military for five years before officially leaving and obtaining a law degree from Harvard. With his new degree, he found himself working at the Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly as a tax litigator, before settling in Kansas.
In Kansas, he co-founded an aerospace manufacturing company, spent some time in this industry, and eventually ran for office. In 2011, he won a seat as a representative for Kansas’s 4th congressional district, serving three terms before being appointed as the House Select Committee to investigate the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi.
Not long after he was elected, Donald Trump nominated Rep. Pompeo as head of the CIA in Nov. 2016 and Pompeo was sworn in the following January. Just over a year later, Pompeo was nominated Secretary of State, set to replace Rex Tillerson, and was confirmed in April of 2018.
Pompeo is found amidst every controversial foreign affair of the Trump Administration and was especially involved in Trump’s Ukrainian scandal that ultimately led to the President’s impeachment hearings.
Biden Administration
Susan Rice served as Assistant Secretary of State for Africans Affairs from 1997 to 2001 for the Clinton Administration. Then in 2009, she was the United States Ambassador to the United States as the first African American woman for the Obama administration including being his United National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2017. She is now a candidate for Secretary of State for the Biden Administration.
Rice was born in Washington D.C and grew up in an educational and politically enriched background with two parents that were academic scholars.
Rice attended Stanford University where she got her Bachelor’s degree in History and graduated in 1986. She attended New College, Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship where she got her Master’s degree in Philosophy in 1988 and a Doctorate of Philosophy in 1990 both in International Relations through her doctoral dissertation titled Commonwealth Initiative in Zimbabwe, 1979-1980: Implication for international peacekeeping. Rice was honored with the Chatham House, the Royal Institute of international affairs as the highest most distinguished in international relations.
After retiring from her role as the national security advisor in 2017, Rice was brought back up by President Donald Trump, who accused her of leaking identities of Americans who were caught in the electronic surveillance of foreign officials. Rice denied these claims and stated in an MSNBC interview that “the allegation is that somehow the Obama administration official utilized intelligence for political purposes”. She continued to say that “the accusation is absolutely false.”
Even though Rice may be qualified for the Secretary of State position some people think her association with the Benghazi scandal can hurt her confirmation. In 2012, when Rice was serving as the US Ambassador under the Obama administration she called the death of the four Americans in Benghazi in September of that year “spontaneous.” This sparked controversy with congressional committees saying that Rice lied about Benghazi. She responded that “not one of the eight congressional committees that investigated Benghazi determined she had done anything wrong”.
Rice continued to say that, “Not one of them found that I deliberately misled the American people, but I don’t doubt that Republicans will use this, and they’ll attack whoever is Joe Biden’s choice to be his vice president. This is dishonest, and it’s a distraction.” At the time she was supposed to be Biden running mate.
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Senior Advisor
Trump Administration
Stephen Miller is President Donald Trump’s longest-serving senior adviser, dating back to his 2016 campaign. Miller has been behind Trump’s most controversial — and arguably inhumane — immigration and immigration-related policies and reforms.
Miller encouraged the President to fund a five billion dollar wall along the US-Mexico border and was the mind behind Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, which separated thousands of migrant children from their families.
Originally from California, Miller began his conservative political career early on. As a teen, Miller proudly expressed his support for right-wing ideologies, and passion for “Americanism,” on his liberal-leaning campus. He became a frequent guest on a conservative talk radio, the Larry Elder Show, and at the age of sixteen wrote a letter to the editor of Santa Monica Outlook, titling it “Political Correctness [Is] Out of Control.”
In an interview with former editor of the school’s newspaper, Ari Rosmarin, the LA Times reports Miller “loved drawing people’s outrage,” in relation to his blatant proclamations hispanic students “inadequacies” as a result of their difficulties with the English language. He firmly and proudly believed Latino students should “work on their English skills rather than spend their time forming clubs based on ethnicity.”
Miller obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Duke University, where he was heavily involved with conservative activism. He would go on to become a prominent protégé of David Horowitz, founder of the think-tank David Horowitz Freedom Center.
One notable experience being his collaboration with the Duke Conservative Union to help the infamous white supremacist, Richard Spencer, fundraise for an immigration policy debate in 2007.
Spencer reports he mentored Miller, but Miller has since diminished their interactions to this fundraising event.
His first political gig was as a spokesman for the Tea Party republican, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Having served as president for Horowitz Students for Academic Freedom program during his time at Duke, Miller was introduced to Bachmann by Horowitz. .
After working with Senator Session for some time, Miller eventually obtained the position of Sessions’s communications director, developing a mentorship relationship with the senator as they both agreed on “the social cost” of immigration. His time with Sessions reinforced his conservative beliefs on immigration and it became apparent that this was Miller’s most passionate topic.
Miller and Sessions developed what Miller describes as “nation-state populism” which ultimately influenced Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Once he began working as senior policy advisor for Trump in 2016, it was clear he felt a personal connection to the President’s campaign. An opinion article from the Washington Post wrote Miller “experienced a ‘jolt of electricity to [his] soul’” upon hearing Trump would be running for president, and felt ‘as though everything that [he] felt at the deepest levels of [his] heart were now being expressed by a candidate for our nation’s highest office before a watching world.’”
He has written multiple speeches for Trump, including his inaugural speech and State of the Union address.
In January 2017, Miller was formally appointed to Trump’s policy team and eventually became the head of Domestic Policy Council. The Business Insider writes this position kept him away from “legal scrutiny.”
Miller participated in the implementation of the travel ban and in attacking sanctuary cities.
Much to the surprise of many, having developed and pushed the “zero tolerance” policy, Miller received no direct backlash, instead successfully reverting blame onto Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
In November 2019, emails showing Miller promoting articles for white-nationalist websites with a Breitbart editor, which prompted congressional lawmakers to issue a joint statement urging Miller to resign. Instead, actions were taken to attack the Southern Poverty Law Center, who leaked the emails.
Biden Administration
Mike Donilon is an American attorney and campaign consultant who will serve as the Senior Advisor to president-elect Joe Biden. In November, Biden announces Donilon as his new advisor, who is also from Rhode Island.
Donilon has been a confidant for Biden over the last 40 years as his counselor when Biden was vice president between 2009 and 2013.
Donilon was also a chief strategist for the Biden-Harris campaign. He was responsible for messaging, advertising, speechwriting and polling.
During an interview with the New York Times, he stated, “Only Biden could restore the nation and that the threatened middle class was the backbone of the nation, that was the most needed”.
He continued to say, “This is really input character and values as opposed to issue and ideology”.
Donilon graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from La Salle Academy and earned his JD degree from Georgetown University.
He advised and worked with candidates on their campaign like Douglas Wilder’s historic campaign for the governorship of Virginia. Then he supported Dick Thonbursgh, who became Senator of Pennsylvania and Bill Clinton successfully ran for president in 1992 under Donilon’s support. Donilion also worked on other many campaigns during his time.
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Susan Rice will forever be remembered for her lies she told about Benghazi. She will never live that down.