During the 2024 presidential campaign, Pennsylvania was the center of the political universe.
After winning the battleground state and assuming the presidency, President-elect Donald Trump retained parts of Pennsylvania in his Cabinet and other high-level nominations.
From selecting Commerce Secretary from Haverford College to Commissioner of Food and Drugs from Bucknell and Thomas Jefferson Universities, Trump has selected people with roots in local colleges. Their nominations await confirmation by the US Senate.
While campaigning in the Keystone State, Trump often tried to highlight his ties to Pennsylvania, including his time at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
If the nominees are confirmed, the universities of Pennsylvania and New Jersey will play a key role in shaping individuals who can shape national policy. Their campuses served as fertile ground in which they developed their future selves, cultivated their conservative brand, and developed their entrepreneurial spirit.
Here’s how local universities influenced potential future Cabinet members and other essential figures close to Trump.
Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host who was Trump’s pick for defense secretary, earned a bachelor’s degree in politics from Princeton University in 2003 and went on to earn a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University.
He was an ROTC company commander at Princeton and played college basketball, although he was considered an “afterthought recruit.” However, he made two game-winning three-point shots that allowed the university to defeat Columbia. according to the Princeton Alumni Weekly..
Hegseth belonged to the Princeton Dueling Society, a short-lived club that offered a way to settle various disputes – including those involving “personal honor”, “lady’s honor” and “public slander” – using paintball guns. In one instance, Hegseth and a schoolmate, a Democrat, used silver paintball guns to engage in what was called an “ideological battle” by club leaders..
He wrote and was the editor of the Princeton Tory, a conservative political magazine, where he regularly touted the importance of conservative valuesincluding the “traditional family unit”. As editor, Hegseth was critical of the Organization of Women Leaders group on campus, and under his leadership, Tory editors published a memo mocking LGBTQ events on campus.
Hegseth now comes face to face assault charges from a woman who says she suffered sexual assault in California in 2017 after he took her phone, locked her hotel room door and wouldn’t let her out, according to a police report released in November, the Associated Press reported. On November 21, Hegseth told reporters that the matter had been investigated and that he had been “completely cleared.”
Howard Lutnick, a close Trump ally and co-chair of his transition team, will be the president-elect’s pick for Commerce secretary. He is also a graduate of Haverford College, where he studied economics, and the school’s largest donor. Lutnick is the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street financial services firm.
Lutnick’s financial influence on Haverford is evident across campus: the library is named after him; Integrated Athletics Center Douglas B. Gardner is named after his best friend; and art exhibitions can be found at the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery.
He joined the Main Line as a Division III tennis recruit after his mother died of breast cancer about a year earlier and his father battled lung cancer. The hospital caring for my father accidentally gave him a gigantic dose of chemotherapy drug intended for another patient, which turned out to be fatal. Lutnick’s time at Haverford almost came to an end within days of the start of his freshman year.
That was until President Haverford called and told Lutnick the college would pay his tuition, Lutnick told The Inquirer in October. The 63-year-old principal credits his time at Haverford with leading him to where he is today.
Even after graduating in 1983, Lutnick remained in Haverford’s circle. He was a member and eventually president of the school board. His donations and commitment to Haverford were praised by former Haverford President Dan Weiss, who highlighted Lutnick’s “unwavering commitment to Haverford, his passion for supporting the college’s well-deserved reputation for excellence in many respects, and his spectacular generosity.”
He recently spoke out about Haverford’s response to campus demonstrations protesting the Israel-Hamas war. Lutnick, a staunch supporter of Israel, believes the university could have done more to address the protests on campus.
Before he became the richest man in the world, a close Trump ally and co-chair of the proposed nongovernmental commission “Department of Government Effectiveness,” Elon Musk graduated from Penn in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in economics and physics.
He was a teaching assistant in a computer science class and a relatively casual resident advisor, where he met his girlfriend of two years (she eventually auctioned off various items related to Musk and their relationship), The case was reported by the Daily Pennsylvanian..
Musk he was an introverthanding out card tricks, fiddling with the computer, playing video games, or observing instances of rampant enthusiasm on campus – such as when Penn beat the University of Michigan in basketball – rather than participating in it. His classmates are not shocked by his extensive international fame, citing that Musk has already thought about electric cars and expressed his ambitions to join the West Coast tech industry.
In recent months, Musk has tried to burnish his Pennsylvania bona fides by campaigning for Trump in an effort to meet the needs of battleground voters. He posted a photo of himself from his days at Penn on X: “Yes, I lived in Pennsylvania for 3 years. This country is no stranger to me,” he wrote.
In October, at a town hall in Delaware County sponsored by his pro-Trump America PAC, Musk said: “I lived in this city for three years, I went to school here, I know this state – I’m not some just-situation here.”
Marta Makary from Bucknell University and Thomas Jefferson University
Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon and researcher, was Trump’s pick to head the FDA. He graduated from Danville Area High School in Danville, Pennsylvania.AND from Bucknell and Thomas Jefferson universities.
There is little information about Makary’s time at Bucknell or Jefferson.
However, his election was applauded by conservatives and key players in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Makary gained notoriety for his controversial views on the Covid-19 pandemic. He questionable masking and was not against the Covid-19 vaccine, but had concerns about booster shots in young children. He promoted the idea that mass infection with the virus would lead to more widespread protection against Covid-19.
Mehmet Oz, a celebrity TV doctor and unsuccessful 2022 Republican candidate for the Pennsylvania Senate, was Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Oz received his MD from Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and his MBA from the Wharton School in 1986, and graduated from Harvard. However, he rarely mentioned his ties to the Pennsylvania Ivy League during his 2022 U.S. Senate campaign, The case was reported by the Daily Pennsylvanian.except he used his time in West Philly as a student to comment on Philadelphia’s crime rates.
Oz’s former classmates said he was generally well-liked at Penn and was hard-working and intelligent. But these classmates also expressed skepticism about some of his controversial and often unfounded positions on medicine. This includes Oz’s support for hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19, which: According to Mayo Clinicis an ineffective antidote.
Before the Senate campaign, approx maintained a relationship with Pennreturning to speak at graduation ceremonies or talk to students about wellness.
