Trump adds to Cabinet, softens immigrants tone
NEW YORK — Donald Trump moved Wednesday toward expanding his Cabinet, choosing retired Gen. John Kelly to head his Homeland Security Department, according to people close to the transition.
Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a climate-change denier whose policies have helped fossil-fuel companies, is to be announced as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
The president-elect formally announced his selection of Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad as the new U.S. ambassador to China. Trump and Branstad are expected to appear together today in Iowa.
Meanwhile, Trump, whose presidential campaign was in large part defined by searing rhetoric about building an impenetrable wall on the border with Mexico and cracking down on illegal aliens
living in the U.S., struck a softer tone in an interview published Wednesday after he was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year.”
“We’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud,” Trump said. “They got brought here at a very young age; they’ve worked here, they’ve gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they’re in never-never land because they don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Speaking about crimes committed by foreign-born assailants, Trump told the magazine: “They come from Central America. They’re tougher than any people you’ve ever met. They’re killing and raping everybody out there. They’re illegal.” He also seemed to preview the proposed crackdown on illegal aliens that was a central part of his campaign, saying that those who commit crimes are “finished.”
During the campaign, Trump’s tough comments — including a vow to overturn President Barack Obama’s executive orders on immigration — have led to fears among immigration advocates that he will end Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Hundreds of thousands of young aliens have gained work permits and temporary protection from deportation under the 2012 program, which aides to Trump have said would be revisited.
Others continue to press the immigrants’ case. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel presented Trump a letter Wednesday from 14 big-city mayors urging him to keep the program intact.
“They were working hard toward the American dream,” Emmanuel told reporters in the lobby of Trump’s skyscraper. “It’s no fault of their own their parents came here. They are something we should hold up and embrace.”
Though some immigrant advocates hope Trump’s words are an olive branch, others are skeptical.
“We’ve seen this movie before,” Frank Sharry of the im- migrant-rights group America’s Voice said in a statement. “Unfortunately we expect no pivot and no softening.”
Earlier in the day, during an interview with NBC’s Today show, Trump said he liked Obama, and they had “good chemistry.”
The Today show interview focused on Trump’s selection as “Person of the Year.” But he took aim at Time for also labeling him “President of the Divided States of America.” He told Today host Matt Lauer that the term was “snarky” and that his campaign, often criticized for its heated and partisan tone, was not responsible for the division.
“When you say divided states of America, I didn’t divide them. They’re divided now,” Trump said. “I’m not president yet. So I didn’t do anything to divide.”
Trump said he is “very restrained” on the social media site — and then took aim at the news media, a frequent target of his tweets. “Frankly, it’s a modern-day form of communication,” Trump said. “I get it out much faster than a news release. I get it out much more honestly than dealing with these dishonest reporters.”
Trump also sought to
clarify Tuesday’s surprising news that he had sold all of his shares in companies in June, a move that could have created a cash windfall as he ramped up to begin a costly general-election presidential campaign.
“I was never a big stockholder, but I bought a lot of different stocks,” Trump told NBC. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to be owning stocks when I’m making deals for this country that maybe will affect one company positively and one company negatively. So I just felt it was a conflict.”
AMBASSADOR TO CHINA
In naming his pick for ambassador to China, Trump sounded a softer note alongside his criticism of China’s economic relationship with the United States.
At an event Wednesday morning at the Cipriani restaurant in Manhattan to raise money for his inauguration, Trump told the audience that Branstad was a great choice. “He knows them all,” Trump said three separate times, according to an attendee. The selection was first reported by Bloomberg News.
Branstad, 70, is the longest-serving governor in U.S. history and likes to describe President Xi Jinping of China as an “old friend.”
China was quick to embrace Trump’s choice. At a regular news briefing Wednesday in Beijing, Lu Kang, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, described Branstad as “an old friend of the Chinese people,” a phrase used to describe politicians trusted by Beijing. “We would welcome him playing a bigger role in promoting Sino-American relations,” Lu said of Branstad.
Trump campaigned against China, repeatedly describing Chinese imports to the United States as a form of theft. He has proposed a steep tariff on those imports and promised to seek vigorous enforcement of trade rules, such as restrictions on state support for private companies.
The selection also comes just days after Trump spoke by phone with Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, prompting criticism from Beijing, which regards Taiwan as a breakaway province. Trump then defended the call in a pair of Twitter messages criticizing China for its trade practices and provocative moves in the South China Sea.
According to disclosure documents filed last week with the Justice Department, former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole worked behind the scenes over the past six months to establish high-level contact between Taiwanese officials and Trump’s staff.
Dole, a lobbyist with the Washington law firm Alston & Bird, coordinated with Trump’s campaign and the transition team to set up a series of meetings between Trump’s advisers and officials in Taiwan. Dole also assisted in successful efforts by Taiwan to include language favorable to it in the Republican Party platform, according to the documents.
Dole’s firm received $140,000 from May to October for the work, the forms said.
“They’re very optimistic,” Dole said of the Taiwanese in an interview Tuesday. “They see a new president, a Republican, and they’d like to develop a closer relationship.”
The United States’ “one China” policy is nearly four decades old, Dole said, referring to the policy established in 1979 that denies Taiwan official diplomatic recognition but maintains close contacts, promoting Taiwan’s democracy and selling it advanced military equipment.
The disclosure documents were submitted before the call took place and made no mention of it. But Dole, 93, a former Senate majority leader from Kansas, said he had worked with transition officials to facilitate the conversation.
“It’s fair to say that we had some influence,” he said. “When you represent a client, and they make requests, you’re supposed to respond.”
Officials on Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment.
TRUMP CHOICES
Kelly, one of a handful of generals in Trump’s Cabinet, joined the Marine Corps in 1970 and retired this year after a final command that included oversight of the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba.
He has a reputation as a border hawk after a time in the Southern Command, which is based in south Florida and regularly works with Homeland Security on missions to identify and dismantle immigrant smuggling networks.
Trump also picked Pruitt, a longtime critic of the EPA, to head that agency, according to a person close to Pruitt who was not authorized to speak publicly about the choice before it was announced. The move comes just after Trump met with former Vice President Al Gore, who is an environmental activist, and said he had “an open mind” about honoring the Paris climate accords.
That gave hope to some environmentalists, but on Wednesday Trump’s apparent decision was denounced by
political opponents.
“Mr. Pruitt’s record is not only that of being a climate change denier, but also someone who has worked closely with the fossil fuel industry to make this country more dependent, not less, on fossil fuels,” said U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
But Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, a Republican, said Pruitt “has proven that being a good steward of the environment does not mean burdening taxpayers and businesses with red tape.”
Separately, Trump named the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, Linda McMahon, to head the Small Business Administration.
Also Wednesday, Trump said he planned to name his secretary of state next week and insisted that former rival Mitt Romney still has a chance. Trump, who has met twice with the 2012 GOP nominee, denied that he was stringing Romney along to make him pay for saying that the former reality show star was unfit to be president.
“I’ve spoken to him a lot,
and we’ve come a long way together. We had some tremendous difficulty together, and now I think we’ve come a long way,” Trump said in the NBC interview. “It’s not about revenge. It’s about what’s good for the country. And I’m able to put this stuff behind us — and I hit him very hard also.”
Those close to the selection process have said Trump has begun moving away from Romney and another former front-runner, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker and former CIA Director David Petraeus also had been previously identified by transition aides as part of the final four, though Trump has now expanded the pool.