Transition spectacle rolls on
US president-elect welcomes parade of aspirants eager for top Washington positions
President-elect Donald Trump has turned the vital, but normally inscrutable, process of forming a government into a Trump-branded, made-for-television spectacle, parading his finalists for top administration positions this weekend before reporters and the world.
The two days unfolded like a pageant, with the many would-be officials striding up the circular driveway at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, meeting Mr Trump below three glass chandeliers at the entrance and shaking hands while facing the cameras. To build suspense, Mr Trump offered teasing hints about coming announcements.
“I think so,” he said about whether he would make any appointments on Sunday (after press time yesterday). “I think so. It could very well happen.”
Among the contenders he met with was James Mattis, a hard-charging retired Marine Corps general. He appears — according to Mr Trump’s own words on Twitter — to be the leading candidate for defence secretary.
Outside the club’s three-storey farmhouse on Saturday, the president-elect poked a finger in Mr Mattis’ direction and called him “a great man”. The next morning, Mr Trump gushed again, this time on Twitter, calling him “very impressive” and saying he was “a true general’s general!”.
Perhaps by design, the roster of figures arriving at the club was difficult to pigeonhole: There were loyalists (Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor), former adversaries (Mitt Romney, who once called Trump a “phony”), Democrats (Michelle Rhee, the former schools chief in Washington) and scientists (Patrick Soonshiong, a billionaire cancer doctor).
But despite that appearance of diversity, Mr Trump’s choices so far for national security posts seem to show a preference for older white men with similar hard-line views on immigration, the military and terrorism. Most of the leading candidates for other jobs appear to be white men as well, including Mr Giuliani, whose own business activities have faced scrutiny.
If he is nominated as secretary of state, Mr Giuliani would face questions over his security firm’s ties to the government of Qatar and the speeches he gave to an Iranian exile opposition group that until 2012 was on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organisations.
Asked whether he was concerned about Mr Giuliani’s business dealings, Mr Trump said: “No, not at all.”
Mr Trump, as he used his own golf resort as the backdrop for his official activities, gave no indication that he was concerned about news reports over the weekend that he had held meetings last week with three Indian business partners even as he was starting to assemble his administration.
The very public process has borne few similarities to attempts by Mr Trump’s predecessors to project an image of careful, private vetting of Cabinet-level hopefuls.
Officials running President Barack Obama’s transition in late 2008 took pains to keep under wraps his plans to select Hillary Clinton for secretary of state, and they orchestrated a secret meeting at the firehouse at Reagan National Airport to discuss keeping Robert Gates as defence secretary.
But for Mr Trump and his aides, many of whom have long rejected the capital’s customs, such traditions are best discarded.
“This has been a year and election cycle where the normal conventions and past history has been challenged,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist whose longtime boss, Mr Romney, discussed the secretary of state post with Mr Trump.
“Why would the transition and the first few months of the administration be any different?” Mr Madden said. “Trump does things Trump’s way.”
After each interview, Mr Trump, dressed in a suit and tie, emerged from the club next to a US flag to see the candidates off to their sport utility vehicles and once again speak with reporters.
“Tremendous talent — we’re seeing tremendous talent,” Mr Trump said on Saturday. “People that, like I say, we will ‘make America great again’. These are really great people. These are really, really talented people.”
By the evening, however, Mr Trump had announced no appointments, leaving reporters waiting on the cold, gusty day to speculate about Mr Trump’s brief comments.
“We made a couple of deals,” he said mischievously as his weekend of interviews drew to a close.
Mr Giuliani is apparently in competition with several others for the secretary of state position, including David Petraeus, the retired four-star general who served as Mr Obama’s CIA director before leaving amid revelations that he had provided classified information to a woman with whom he was having an affair.
Mr Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and one of Mr Trump’s fiercest critics during the 2016 campaign, met with Mr Trump on Saturday. If he becomes secretary of state, he could be a moderating influence on the hard-liners Mr Trump has chosen for attorney general, national security adviser and CIA director.
“I can say that Governor Romney is under active and serious consideration to serve as secretary of state of the United States,” Vice President-elect Mike Pence said on Sunday on CBS’ Face the Nation programme.
As Mr Trump completes his national security team, he may turn his attention to domestic affairs. Aides have said members of the transition effort’s economic and domestic policy teams were set to meet with agency officials starting yesterday.
Mr Obama, asked on Sunday at a summit meeting in Peru, about stances Mr Trump has taken that align with the views of his nascent national security team, said: “I can’t guarantee that the president-elect won’t pursue some of the positions that he’s taken. But what I can guarantee is that reality will force him to adjust how he approaches many of these issues. That’s just the way this office works.”