CAMP DAVID, AND JOSH AND BRAD

Meet the 'A-Gays' of Trump's administration

- SHAWN MCCREESH

It was the last Wednesday in July, and many of Washington’s top players were hanging out at the Ned, a private club around the corner from the White House.

The Secretary of the Navy, John Phelan, was waiting for an elevator in the lobby. Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, was bouncing around the Library bar upstairs. Scott Bessent, the secretary of the Treasury, was wandering around up there too.

Sitting in a brown leather armchair in the centre of this social whirl was a high-ranking official at the Department of Energy named Charles Moran. His abstruse-sounding title is associate administrator for external affairs for the National Nuclear Security Administration. What this means is that he works in the part of the Energy Department that develops, tests and keeps safe America’s nuclear weapons stockpile.

But that’s not why administration officials kept approaching his armchair to schmooze.

Moran, 44, is the pasha of a new power tribe in the capital — the gay men of the Trump administration.

These are the A-Gays. They're (mostly) out, they're proud (to work for President Donald Trump) and they have big jobs inside (or alongside) this administration. They wield influence all over town, from the Pentagon to the State Department to the White House to the Kennedy Center.

“We're like Visa,’ Moran said. “Everywhere you want to be.”

The most powerful out gay man in the Trump administration is Bessent. There are a handful of others in the Treasury Department. Other A-Gays include Tony Fabrizio, the president's longtime pollster; Trent Morse, a departing deputy assistant to the president; Richard Grenell, who was put in charge of the Kennedy Center; and Jacob Helberg, an undersecretary of state. These are just some. There are lots of other lesser-known men who make up the tribe.