“Has my name been in the mix? I’m pretty sure, yeah. Have I been having intimate conversations? No. Do I understand that it’s likely that people who’ve been involved in the center of this for some time, and have been surrogating on television, are likely front-runners? I would say that’s likely, yes.”
— Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), quoted by the Washington Post, saying it’s unlikely he’ll be tapped as the next Secretary of State.
A Democratic source tells the Huffington Post that Trump transition officials “had been informally asking Obama political appointees to recommend Republicans to take over their jobs.”
“Well, I can tell you this, the pressure that has got to be on President-elect Trump is immense. The enormity of the job ahead of him, and so I would have to say if this is his way of relaxing, God bless him.”
— Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY), quoted by The Week, saying that Donald Trump uses Twitter to relax.
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Fox News announced that it will air a new one-hour special in which Donald Trump gives a tour of his famously ostentatious residence and shows off his material possessions for viewers, the Daily Beast reports.
President-elect Donald J. Trump “denied that his transition was in disarray, assailing news media reports about firings and infighting,” the New York Times reports.
Said Trump: “It is going so smoothly.”
“But legal and procedural delays by Mr. Trump’s transition team continued on Wednesday, all but freezing the traditional handoff of critical information from the current administration more than a week after Mr. Trump won the presidential election.”
“The overwhelming majority of House Democrats have signed a letter urging Donald Trump to rescind his appointment of Stephen Bannon to a senior White House post, calling the Breitbart boss a purveyor of anti-Semitism, misogyny and racism,” Politico reports.
From the letter: “Millions of Americans have expressed fear and concern about how they will be treated by the Trump Administration and your appointment of Mr. Bannon only exacerbates and validates their concerns.”
President-elect Donald Trump is considering nominating Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to serve as U.S. attorney general, Bloomberg reports.
“Cruz was at Trump Tower in New York on Tuesday. When approached by reporters on his way out, Cruz said the election was a mandate for change but didn’t say he was under consideration for a job.”
Rick Klein: “It’s fair to say that there has been no presidential transition in history where we’ve seen so little of the president-elect, yet so much of the people who want to populate his Cabinet. In other words, President-elect Donald Trump is overseeing his transition much like he ran his campaign – as a freewheeling series of conversations among interconnected circles of advisers who are jealous of each other’s influence.”
“That means Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton and company are incentivized to lobby for top jobs on cable news shows, knowing that the intended audience of one is probably watching – unless he slipped away for dinner, or decided to Tweet about the suddenly discovered genius of the Electoral College. Trump’s calculation, if that’s what it is, is that the messy process won’t matter when it delivers results. It’s time to get used to this, folks.”
“In a highly unusual move, President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday night left his Manhattan residence without notifying the reporters covering him or giving any indication of where he was going,” NBC News reports.
“The maneuver seemed to deliberately limit access to the media… This came after Hicks had told his press pool the day had ended, and the only indication of his departure was an unannounced motorcade. Trump’s communications team did not respond to emails from the pooler requesting guidance.”
First Read: “Okay, we get it: It’s hard to get fired up about a man deciding to have dinner with his family without a bevy of reporters in tow. But the most fundamental purpose of the protective pool is to be present to document an unexpected emergency or catastrophic event that could involve the president of the United States. (Remember the outcry about the Clinton team’s media blackout during the Democratic nominee’s health scare this fall?) Trump’s not the president yet, and his team acknowledges that it is still working out the kinks in how it handles reporters. But if they continue to ignore the traditions of press access, it’ll mean further additions to a list of norms Trump has dismissed. And that list has been getting very long already.”
“As the president-elect conducts a chaotic search for his government’s top officials, one person — Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama — is wielding outsize influence, according to those familiar with deliberations on the 26th floor of Trump Tower,” the New York Times reports.
“Not only is Mr. Sessions a candidate to become secretary of defense or attorney general, having been one of Mr. Trump’s most ferocious allies on the campaign trail, but his top aides are in key positions of influence.”
“It is unclear whether Mr. Sessions will be tapped for the Trump cabinet, a move that could cause years-old accusations that he made racist remarks — which he denies — to resurface. But at least one influential Republican colleague in the Senate says such a nomination could happen.”
“Vice President-elect Mike Pence formally signed documents that put him in charge of the transition team, and officials insisted the 10-week effort to build an administration is on schedule. In one of his first moves, Mr. Pence ordered the removal of all lobbyists from the transition team, said one transition team member with knowledge of the decisions,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Two sources close to Mike Rogers, who was ousted from the Trump transition team, told NBC News that he had been the victim of what one called a “Stalinesque purge,” from the transition of people close to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who left Friday. It was unclear which other aides close to Christie had also been forced out.
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition operation “plunged into disarray on Tuesday with the abrupt resignation of Mike Rogers, who had handled national security matters, the second shake-up in a week on a team that has not yet begun to execute the daunting task of taking over the government,” the New York Times reports.
“Gov. Mike Pence took the helm of the effort on Friday after Mr. Trump unceremoniously removed Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who had been preparing with Obama administration officials for months to put the complex transition process into motion. Now the effort is frozen, senior White House officials say, because Mr. Pence has yet to sign legally required paperwork to allow his team to begin collaborating with President Obama’s aides on the handover.”
Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) abruptly left President-elect Donald Trump’s transition planning committee at the request of team officials, Bloomberg reports.
Rogers had been tapped to help guide new administration on national security matters.
Former Goldman Sachs partner Steven Mnuchin “has been recommended by Donald Trump’s transition team to serve as Treasury secretary, according to two people familiar with the process, and the choice is awaiting the president-elect’s final decision,” Bloomberg reports.
“Mnuchin, the campaign’s national finance chairman, has been considered the leading candidate for the job. Trump has displayed a pattern of loyalty to his closest campaign allies in early administration selections, and Mnuchin, 53, had signed on at a time when many from Wall Street stayed away.”
Playbook: “Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s controversial senior adviser, has been making calls to senior Republicans on Capitol Hill in an attempt to build relationships with aides and lawmakers. The message taken away from the calls — which have come over the last few days — is that Bannon’s days as chief provocateur toward Republicans are over, and he and Trump expect an extremely close relationship with Capitol Hill Republicans, according to those who have received the calls or have been briefed on them. The calls have been not only to figures in and around the leadership, but to the rank and file as well.”
“In naming Stephen K. Bannon to a senior White House post, President-elect Donald J. Trump has elevated the hard-right nationalist movement that Mr. Bannon has nurtured for years from the fringes of American politics to its very heart, a remarkable shift that has further intensified concern about the new administration’s direction,” the New York Times reports.
“Aides to President-elect Donald Trump are focusing on former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton as the leading candidates to be the next secretary of state,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The choice between the two would force Mr. Trump to choose between Mr. Giuliani, a longtime friend and ally in New York, and Mr. Bolton, a hawkish conservative diplomat who called last year for the U.S. to bomb Iran.”
“A final decision could be several weeks away.”
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Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.