Donald Trump’s attempt to jawbone Microsoft into firing former Biden DOJ official Lisa Monaco as a top D.C. operative has put K Street on high alert about who they hire.
Much of the private sector is paralyzed by Trump’s broader efforts to leverage the might of the government to bend companies to his whims. But that pressure is magnified in government affairs shops across Washington, where corporations are desperate to curry Trump’s favor and avoid his wrath.
“Anything that comes across my desk now is like, ‘What Republican can we hire? And is the Republican MAGA?’” said Jeff Forbes, a founding partner at the lobbying firm Forbes Tate Partners. The job market is so precarious in the Trump era, he added, that it’s been tough for even moderate Republicans to get land a big influence job in Washington, let alone Democrats.
In a town where political connections to whomever is in power amount to currency, it’s not unusual for corporate lobbyists to cycle out of prominent roles when their party loses power.
But “to have a target on your back because of past political affiliation in what has traditionally been a very nonpartisan area is a totally new dynamic,” said one veteran Democratic consultant.
Facebook parent company Meta, for example, has gone all-in on Republicans, elevating the company’s longtime emissary to the right, Joel Kaplan, to head up its policy operations. Meta also added longtime Trump ally and Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White to its board, and teamed up with conservative anti-DEI crusader Robby Starbuck to root out ideological “bias” from its AI infrastructure….