 "Who is Kush Desai, the Indian-American appointed as Trump’s new Deputy Press Secretary?")
The White House announced on Friday that Indian-American former journalist Kush Desai has been named US President Donald Trump’s new Deputy Press Secretary.
Desai will report to the White House Office of Communications in his new role, which will be supervised by Cabinet Secretary and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich.
Here’s all we know about him.
About Kush Desai
According to his LinkedIn page, Desai is a former journalist who graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) from Dartmouth College, an Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, the United States.
According to Indian Express, he received the esteemed James O. Freedman Presidential Research Scholarship while he was a student at Dartmouth. This award enables students to engage with Dartmouth faculty members to obtain research experience.
He started his career as a reporter for The Daily Caller, a local news outlet in Washington, DC, where he worked for 10 months from July 2017 to March 2018.
Desai began working as a research analyst for the Republican National Committee (RNC) in April 2018 and remained there until February 2019.
He proceeded to advance within the RNC, rising to the position of Director of Vetting in March 2019.
He was eventually elevated to the position of Iowa Communications Director after serving in that capacity for two and a half years. He held the position through January 2024.
Desai served as the 2024 Republican National Convention’s Deputy Communications Director in the months preceding his nomination as the Deputy Press Secretary.
His LinkedIn page states that he was appointed Deputy Battleground States and Pennsylvania Communications Director in July 2024 and remains in that role to this day. In this capacity, he was essential in developing narratives and messaging in pivotal battleground states, such as Pennsylvania, where Trump won the 2024 election.
Desai is fluent in English and Gujarati, his native language, making him a suitable candidate to provide cultural perspective and communication skills to advance in his new position.
Also read: Maximising pressure, fostering ties: How Trump 2.0 will influence West Asian diplomacy
Other Indian-Americans joining Trump team
Along with Desai, Donald Trump has brought on board two other Indian Americans for key roles in his second term.
International relations expert Ricky Gill has rejoined the National Security Council (NSC), where he was Director for European Energy Security and Russia during Trump’s first term.
He was a Senior Advisor in the State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations in addition to his duties at the NSC.
Following his departure from the administration, Gill served as the principal and general counsel of Gill Capital Group and as an advisor to TC Energy, the firm that developed the Keystone XL Pipeline, on European and Asian energy.
Joe Biden put a stop to this project, which Trump had largely approved.
Gill was born in Lodi, New Jersey, and graduated with a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Saurabh Sharma, who was born in Bengaluru, is to join the Presidential personnel office. He is the president and co-founder of American Moment, a conservative group based in Washington, DC.
He was the youngest state chairman of Young Conservatives of Texas when he received his Biochemistry degree from the University of Texas in Austin in 2019.
In the same year that President Trump signed an executive order addressing free speech on college campuses, Sharma was one of 10 student activists invited to the White House during his first term.
Several other Indian-Americans in Trump’s 2.0 administration include Kash Patel as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Sriram Krishnan as Senior White House policy advisor on artificial intelligence (AI), Harmeet Dhillon as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice, and Jay Bhattacharya as Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
A busy week back in office
Trump’s first day back in the White House began with a veritable flood of executive orders.
There were reports that Trump signed as many as 100 executive orders, such as cracking down on immigration, delaying the ban on TikTok, doing away with birthright citizenship, ending Work from Home (WFH) for government employees, ordering the US to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris Climate Accords, and more.
He also announced a “national emergency” on migration, with the troops being deployed to the southern border with Mexico.
Under his instructions, as per USA Today, the Department of Homeland Security has begun deputising thousands of additional federal law enforcement officers to begin arresting immigrants.
And his cabinet is taking shape with Kristi Noem in charge of Homeland Security, and Pete Hegseth heading up the Department of Defense.
With inputs from agencies
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