“The American people gave President Trump a mandate… President Trump isn’t a choirboy either… they’re not asking President Trump to lead their Bible study.”

— Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ), discussing Defense Secetary-designate Pete Hegseth.

New York Times: “Mr. Trump’s alliance with Mr. Kennedy during the presidential campaign was the ultimate marriage of convenience, uniting a right-wing populist presidential candidate with a scion of the nation’s most famous Democratic family, whose appeal to would-be Trump voters rested mainly with his conspiracy theories on Covid-19 and vaccines. Mr. Kennedy said at the time that Mr. Trump had promised him control of the nation’s public health agencies.”

“Mr. Kennedy’s other track record — on environmental protection and an abiding hatred of America’s unhealthy diet — may have been less of a draw to the fast-food-loving, regulation-hating Mr. Trump, but the former and future president said he would keep Mr. Kennedy’s environmentalism in check while letting him ‘go wild’ on health.”

“Then Mr. Trump nominated him to head the sprawling Department of Health and Human Services, which has partial purview over America’s diet through a powerful subsidiary, the Food and Drug Administration, and enormous influence on health through its control of Medicare and Medicaid.”

“Now a brewing battle over corn syrup and vegetable oils is raising the prospect of a fight between Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Trump’s own voters in farm country.”

New York Times: “These deals are putting India even more squarely in the Trump Organization’s sights. And with Mr. Trump on his way back to the White House, the country is emerging as center stage for potential conflicts of interest.”

“In Mr. Trump’s first term, it was uncharted territory for a sitting U.S. president to have extensive business interests in foreign countries. During his second term, the Trump Organization aims to issue a more limited ethics plan that is unlikely to significantly curb its growth.”

“The Cabinet confirmation drama around Donald Trump’s most provocative picks isn’t only about Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard or Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” CNN reports.

“It’s mostly about Trump himself, and the kind of presidency he wants, the one he will end up getting, and the hopes of his MAGA movement that he’ll stand firm on his vow to shake the federal administrative state to its core and enact his and their revenge.”

“The stakes were laid bare in recent days by a fierce pressure campaign on social and conservative media targeting Sen. Joni Ernst over her reservations about Trump’s Pentagon pick, Hegseth.”

“Donald Trump has announced two of the highest-profile ambassador jobs — but many of the most significant ones are still to come,” Politico reports.

“While several foreign posts are important in any administration because the country is a close U.S. ally or a neighbor to an adversary, some ambassadorial jobs will take on heightened significance in Trump’s second term because of the incoming president’s existing relationship with — or comments about — the country.”

Peter Baker: “Mr. Trump has made some of the most expansive, some would say outlandish, campaign promises that any president has ever made, promises that policymakers across the spectrum take seriously in their intent but not in their specifics. While he may make substantial progress on his priorities, few other than committed Trump allies think he will be able to meet his maximalist goals on immigration, federal spending and foreign policy.”

“He has vowed to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours and to do so before his inauguration next month, without giving any indication of how. He has said he would deport all 11 million people living in the country illegally, which would be about 12 times the number of people he deported in his first term. He has assigned his multibillionaire patron Elon Musk to cut $2 trillion a year out of the $6.8 trillion federal budget, though past budget cutters struggled to trim a fraction of that.”

Kari Lake is a leading contender for the nomination as Donald Trump’s ambassador to Mexico, Semafor reports.

“More than 75 Nobel Prize winners have signed a letter urging senators not to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services,” the New York Times reports.

“The letter marks the first time in recent memory that Nobel laureates have banded together against a Cabinet choice.”

“Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Donald Trump, on Monday sought to walk back the president-elect’s recent statement that he believes the members of the House’s Jan. 6 committee who investigated him should be jailed,” Politico reports.

Said Miller: “What President Trump said, if you listen to the entire ‘Meet the Press’ interview, is he wants everyone who he puts into key positions of leadership … to apply the law equally to everybody… As far as the politics aspect, if you listen to the entire interview with President Trump, he said he’s going to leave that up to the law enforcement agents in charge, including Pam Bondi and Kash Patel.”

Jonathan Chait: “A very strange disjuncture has opened up in Washington between the serene mood and the alarming developments that are under way. The surface is calm because the Republican presidential candidate won the election, and Democrats, the only one of the two major parties committed on principle to upholding the legitimacy of election results, conceded defeat and are cooperating in the peaceful transition of power. Whatever energy the chastened Democrats can muster at the moment is aimed inward, at factional struggles over their future direction.”

“Meanwhile, what is actually happening in the capital is, by any rational standard, disturbing. Donald Trump is filling his administration with ‘loyalists,’ a prerogative his opponents have grudgingly accepted as his due. Yet he is defining loyalist in maximal terms, including the belief that Trump legitimately won the 2020 election and was justified in his attempt to seize power. The winners are rewriting the history of the insurrection, and their version of history is about to acquire the force of law.”

The Guardian: “As Donald Trump gathered his supporters, family and friends at Mar-a-Lago on U.S. election day last month to wait for the results to trickle in, a small group of far-right Germans went largely unnoticed.”

“Among them was the purported semi-professional, one-time porn actor, self-confessed former cocaine user, convicted thief and hard-right candidate for the German parliament Phillipp-Anders Rau. Together with a compact delegation of young political activists and influencers, Rau posed for the cameras with the American president-elect at his invitation, chanting ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ in English and German.”

Wall Street Journal: “Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, Trump’s pick for surgeon general, sells her own line of vitamins. Kash Patel, Trump’s choice to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation, recommended pills on Truth Social in February that he said could ‘rid your body of the harms’ from Covid-19 vaccines.”

“Mehmet Oz, the TV personality whom Trump named to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, promotes supplements sold by online retailer iHerb. He has advertised multivitamins, supplements for “brain power” and fish-oil pills that he said “probably slowed” the progression of his mother’s Alzheimer’s disease.”

“Doctors and public-health experts said close ties between Trump’s nominees and supplement makers could give more leeway to an industry that is lightly regulated and sells products that are largely unproven.”

“Pete Hegseth’s attorney has threatened legal action against a woman who accused President-elect Donald Trump’s selection for defense secretary of sexual assault — if she repeats what he calls ‘false’ claims and his client ultimately fails to get confirmed,” ABC News reports.

Tulsi Gabbard, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, will begin her meetings with senators today, just as she faces renewed scrutiny for expressing sympathy for ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in the past, Politico reports.

“As President-elect Donald Trump’s transition teams move into federal agencies, thousands of civil servants — and some of the Biden appointees they work for — are scrambling to insulate themselves from the new administration’s promised purge,” the Washington Post reports.

“Federal employees are scrubbing their Facebook and X accounts for any negative posts about Trump. Some, including at least one prominent official who testified in Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, are weighing putting in retirement papers, while others maneuver to transfer to seemingly safer agencies. D.C. recruiting firms are seeing booming business from those looking for private-sector work.”

Donald Trump is hawking perfume and cologne now.