Trump names former foe to Middle East team
Morgan Ortagus, who served in the first Trump administration but has also fought with Trump, called it a ‘dream job’ to serve as deputy to Steve Witkoff
Former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus on Jan. 17, 2020. Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
By Jacob Kornbluh January 5, 2025
President-elect Donald Trump named former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus as a deputy to Steve Witkoff, his special envoy to the Middle East. But in the Friday announcement, Trump struck a lukewarm tone about the decision, highlighting her past criticism of him and suggesting her appointment was influenced by other Republicans.
In a statement posted on his Truth Social platform, Trump said that Ortagus, 42, had “fought” him since he left the White House. “These things usually don’t work out, but she has strong Republican support, and I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for them. Let’s see what happens.”
Ortagus supported Trump’s 2024 presidential bid and served as a surrogate for national security forums and outreach to Jewish voters. But earlier on in the GOP primary she backed Trump’s rival, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and in 2016, she endorsed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. At the time, Ortagus described Trump, then a newcomer to politics, as a “disgusting” person with an “isolationist foreign policy approach.”
Ortagus’ foreign policy experience
Ortagus, a former evangelical Christian, converted to Judaism in 2007 while working in Iraq for the U.S. Agency for International Development under President George W. Bush. She brings extensive foreign policy expertise to her role as deputy to Witkoff, a real estate investor and Trump’s longtime friend and golfing partner, who does not have a background in diplomacy.
She joined the Trump administration in 2019 as a spokesperson for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Previously, Ortagus worked as a financial intelligence analyst in the Treasury Department under President Barack Obama and was also the deputy U.S. treasury attaché to Saudi Arabia.
Ortagus has been an active Navy Reserve officer since 2014 and a Fox News contributor on national security matters. A Florida native, she was crowned Miss Florida Citrus when she was 20.
During Trump’s first term, Ortagus was part of the team working on the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and four Arab nations. After leaving the State Department in 2021, Ortagus founded Polaris National Security, a nonprofit supporting defense-focused political candidates, and launched an unsuccessful 2022 run for Congress in Tennessee, a campaign Trump endorsed before ballot access issues derailed her candidacy.
Praise from pro-Israel Republicans
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Trump ally, welcomed the decision to tap Ortagus as part of Trump’s Middle East team amid the war in Gaza and hopes for regional peace. “She knows the region as well as anybody I’ve met,” Graham told Bloomberg News. “Everybody in the region knows her. Nobody has closer ties to Israel and understands the mischief of Iran.”
Fred Zeidman, a Houston-based Republican donor who was one of Haley’s advisers on Israel, said Ortagus is “one of the brightest, most articulate women I have met and she has great expertise in the Middle East.”
Laura Loomer, a Jewish right-wing provocateur and close ally of Trump during the campaign, actively lobbied against Ortagus. Loomer criticized Ortagus for having her 2013 wedding to businessman Jonathan Weinberger officiated by the late liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In social media posts, Loomer labeled Ortagus a “snake” and a “traitor.”
Writing on the social platform X, Ortagus said the appointment was a “dream come true.”
JTA contributed to this report.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
