US special Trump puts Romney in frame for top job as team takes shape

that US needed to develop “a new set of 21st-century alliances”.

Mr Flynn was reported this week to have expressed exasperation at President Obama’s “strategic patience” with North Korea’s nuclear build-up.

Shortly after meeting with Mr Flynn, Cho Tae-yong, South Korea’s deputy presidential national security adviser, was quoted as saying the former general had promised the new administration would give “high priority” to the nuclear programme.

Mr Flynn once wrote a column describing America as being in a “global war” against an “enemy alliance that runs from Pyongyang, North Korea to Cuba and Caracas”.

He has also caused widespread alarm for his apparent failure to distinguish between radical Islamic extremism and the religion itself. He has tweeted: “Fear of Muslims is rational.”

Mr Trump has also appointed officials who have expressed far-Right views on social issues such as abortion and homosexuality.

Ken Blackwell, who was asked to lead the domestic policy section of the transition team, has been criticised for making anti-LGBT statements. The former secretary of state for Ohio has said he believes homosexuality is a “transgression against God’s law” and that gay people can be rehabilitated.

Mr Trump last week nominated Jeff Sessions, a senator from Alabama, to the role of attorney general. Mr Sessions is known for opposing immigration and being only the second ever candidate for federal judge rejected by the approval committee – for racism.

The appointments are a sign that Mr Trump does not intend to make conciliatory gestures to minority groups including Muslims, Hispanics, and African Americans whom he alienated during his campaign.

Foreign diplomats have been seeking to gain influence with a Trump administration by spending time in the mogul’s hotels. As many as 100 foreign diplomats from Turkey to Brazil gathered in the new Trump International Hotel this week to attend an event, and told the that spending money at Mr Trump’s hotel was an easy, friendly gesture to the new president.