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. 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 Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Trump later announced that he would not pursue further investigations into Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, and disavowed far-right activists.
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 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.”
“Let’s dispense with a couple of red herrings,” said Rupert Cornwell in The Independent.
“Contrary to many reports, this hasn’t been an especially chaotic transition.” While some of
Trump’s procedures have certainly been unorthodox, he’s well ahead of where Bill Clinton was at this stage: Clinton “didn’t manage to nominate his (third) choice of attorney general until three weeks after his inauguration”. Nor is it especially shocking that Trump’s children and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, might play some role in the White House. They seem more “presidential” than him, and it wouldn’t be the first time a US leader relied on family advice.
Trump is grappling with “a task that even he and some of his closest advisers had thought he would never have to face”, said Toby Harnden in The Sunday Times. He appears to be approaching it in a similar way to The Apprentice, the reality TV show he used to host. Potential appointees are referred to as “finalists”. “Names are floated, then withdrawn, as if to build up the drama before the finale.” The three most important members of Trump’s team, said David Smith in The Guardian, look set to be Priebus, Bannon and Kushner. They’re all very different, which is sure to lead to some creative tensions, to say the least. But that won’t bother Trump. In the words of one insider, the president-elect “likes to manage with concentric circles of chaos… He likes the tension between the different sectors of influence.” One significant decision still being argued over is who should serve as Trump’s secretary of state, said Kathleen Parker in The Washington Post. Some, alarmingly, are pushing for the post to go to Rudy Giuliani, who was good as mayor of New York after 9/11 but who now comes across as a ranting reactionary. Let’s hope Trump instead picks Mitt Romney, with whom he held a meeting this week. The former Republican presidential candidate is calm, articulate and well informed, not to mention fluent in French – all things Trump is not. He also has a sound grasp of international politics. It was Romney, remember, who, during his final debate with President Obama in 2012, presciently pointed to Russia as the US’s greatest geopolitical foe.
Trump and his advisers need to fill some 4,000 posts, more than 1,000 of whose occupants will require confirmation from the Senate. Many of the appointees will be fresh faces who have never served in an administration and will therefore require full background checks. This will create a major headache for the security vetting system, which is already struggling with a big backlog. Trump says he would “like to do something” to separate his presidential role from his business empire. Although there is no legal requirement for him to liquidate his assets, past presidents have set aside their business dealings. Critics are calling on him to adopt blind trusts, or take other equivalent measures.