The Trump team
What happened
Donald Trump began filling senior posts last week in preparation for taking office on 20 January. The president-elect offered an olive branch to the Washington establishment by appointing Reince Priebus, an insider close to the Republican leadership, as his chief of staff. More controversially, he picked Steve Bannon, the former head of the hard-right Breitbart News, as his chief White House adviser ( see page 21). Critics were also perturbed by his choice of Mike Flynn, Jeff Sessions and Mike Pompeo to serve, respectively, as national security adviser, attorney general and CIA director. All three are loyalists known for their hard-line views.
Trump has continued to use Twitter to attack media critics, and, in a breach of diplomatic convention, recommended this week that Nigel Farage be named UK ambassador to America. He also announced his early agenda via a short video posted on Youtube, in which he promised to torpedo the TransPacific Partnership trade deal. Trump later announced that he would not pursue further investigations into Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, and disavowed far-right activists.
What the editorials said
Trump’s first appointments are depressing, said the Los Angeles Times. His choice as national security adviser, Mike Flynn, has outdone even Trump himself when it comes to insulting Muslims. Flynn has reportedly referred to Islam as “a cancer”, and once tweeted that “fear of Muslims is RATIONAL”. As for Jeff Sessions, Trump’s choice of attorney general, he was once rejected for a judgeship because of alleged racism. Liberals always try to paint Southern Republicans as racists, said The Wall Street Journal. It’s not true of Sessions: as former US attorney of the Southern District of Alabama, he helped desegregate the state’s public schools, and won a death penalty conviction for the head of the local Ku Klux Klan.
As worrying as Trump’s appointments is his thin-skinned reaction to criticism, said The Washington Post. He complained that his vice-president, Mike Pence, had been “harassed” by the cast of a Broadway show ( see page 12) and demanded an apology after one actor implored Pence from the stage to work on behalf of all Americans. He tweeted angrily about a satirical sketch on NBC’S Saturday Night Live. It’s one thing to fire off cranky messages in the heat of a campaign but Trump will soon be president. “His words matter.”