Vice President-elect Mike Pence has ordered all lobbyists be removed from Donald Trump’s White House transition team, NBC News has learned.
Advertisement
The President-elect criticised a report in The New York Times about his early telephone contacts with foreign leaders.
A short time later a tweet appeared on Trump’s account: “Very organized process taking place as I decide on Cabinet and many other positions”.
“It is going so smoothly”, Trump wrote Wednesday. Jamal Simmons, a a political analyst and television commentator, said he is “concerned with reasserting the more of white people in the United States”.
The source said some Washington Republicans who joined the transition pre-election were making sort of “back-door bets” to “hedge” their future, meaning they could work on the plans for the Trump administration without tying their career to his campaign.
With an all-Republican government led by Donald Trump, the GOP intends to dismantle much of President Barack Obama’s record, from his health care law to environmental rules to cuts in domestic programs. The report also said the Trump team was looking at how Homeland Security “could move rapidly on border wall construction without approval from Congress by reappropriating existing funds in the current budget”.
Trump, whose aggressive use of Twitter reportedly led to a Twitter ban being imposed on him in the final days of the campaign, said in a CBS 60 Minutes interview broadcast on Sunday that he would be “very restrained” on Twitter as president, if he used it at all.
President-elect Donald Trump has vented online again, this time mentioning NZ as he lashed out against the New York Times. Cruz tells Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends” that he and the billionaire businessman who was his bitter campaign rival had “a far-reaching conversation” at Trump Tower.
Two members of the transition team quit, reportedly pushed out by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner in what was described as a purge of associates of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
The transition team’s stated goal is a stark one: “To dismantle the Dodd-Frank Act and replace it with new policies to encourage economic growth and job creation”.
Rogers, a widely respected former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who headed the House Intelligence Committee, had been seen as a figure of stability and continuity in intelligence matters.
As a U.S. attorney, Christie prosecuted Kushner’s real estate developer father in 2004, sending him to jail for two years. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a possible attorney general or defense secretary; retired Gen. Michael Flynn, being discussed for the Pentagon as well as national security adviser; and Sen.
Eliot A. Cohen, a former State Department official who had criticized Mr. Trump during the campaign but said after his election that he would keep an open mind about advising him, said Tuesday on Twitter that he had changed his opinion.
Two officials who had been handling national security for the transition, former Representative Mike Rogers of MI and Matthew Freedman, a lobbyist who consults with corporations and foreign governments, were fired.
The president-elect held his first face-to-face meeting with a world leader since winning the presidential election, huddling privately Thursday with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Speculation is that he could be under consideration for attorney general.
Eric Trump, one of the president-elect’s sons, raised expectations of imminent progress Wednesday, telling reporters in the morning that appointments were “likely” to come during the day.
He also hit out at suggestions he would be seeking security clearance for his children.
The president-elect dined with family at the 21 Club. Hicks said she was unaware that Trump planned to leave his home and had not meant to leave the press in the dark.
So it is that in assembling his White House in meetings at Trump Tower in Manhattan, Trump announced that his chief of staff, Priebus, and chief strategist and senior counselor, Bannon, would be “equal partners” – a departure from President Obama’s West Wing, where Chief of Staff Denis R. McDonough stands alone atop the pyramid.
A Trump official said John Bolton, a former USA ambassador to the United Nations, also was in contention for the top diplomatic job.
Advertisement
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who arrived on Wednesday afternoon, has been angling for secretary of state, though his consulting work for foreign governments has emerged as a potential roadblock.
