Today in transition 2016
- Former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway Conway told the media pool at Trump tower that the president-elect is “really enjoying” the transition. “He’s just loving this role in transition, he’s a transactional guy, he’s used to delivering results and producing, and so at his desk every day, taking the counsel of many different people, taking many different phone calls, going through paperwork and discussing forming his cabinet and now [inaudible] his senior staff,” Conway said. “He’s really enjoying it.”
- Retired Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn has been offered the role of national security advisor by president-elect Donald Trump, according to the Associated Press, citing a senior Trump transition official. The official did not tell the Associated Press whether Flynn had accepted the role or not.
- Jason Miller, communications director for the Trump transition team, has released this statement in response to reports that the incoming administration has been considering a register for Muslims arriving in the US:
President-elect Trump has never advocated for any registry or system that tracks individuals based on their religion, and to imply otherwise is completely false.
The national registry of foreign visitors from countries with high terrorism activity that was in place during the Bush and Obama administrations gave intelligence and law enforcement communities additional tools to keep our country safe, but the president-elect plans on releasing his own vetting policies after he is sworn in.
- President-elect Donald Trump plans to launch a “victory tour” of the states that he won in last week’s presidential election in “the next couple of weeks,” according to a campaign aide - a sentence we never thought we’d be typing and yet here we are! “We’re working on a victory tour now; it will happen in the next couple of weeks,” George Gigicos, Trump’s advance team director, told pool reporters at Trump Tower this afternoon. The tour, while not fully planned at the moment, will ferry the president-elect “obviously to the states that we won and the swing states we flipped over.”
Donald Trump is taking credit for Ford Motor Company not moving a plant from Kentucky to Mexico:
Just got a call from my friend Bill Ford, Chairman of Ford, who advised me that he will be keeping the Lincoln plant in Kentucky - no Mexico
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2016
I worked hard with Bill Ford to keep the Lincoln plant in Kentucky. I owed it to the great State of Kentucky for their confidence in me!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2016
The plant, the Louisville Assembly Plant in Louisville, Kentucky, employs roughly 4,500 people and was never put suggested by Ford to be at risk of outsourcing in the first place.
In an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Carl Higbie, a spokesman for a pro-Trump Super PAC, defended comments he made during a Fox News interview in which he said WWII-era Japanese internment camps could serve as a precedent for a registry of Muslims in the United States.
“At no point did I ever even mention - it was actually Megyn Kelly, which I was actually talking about like immigration reform under Carter when he did the Iran thing, and then also under World War II with Japan and other many countries do,” Higbie said. “I wasn’t even talking about camps. Megyn brought it up and I was shocked.”
“She brought it up, but you did say, further to the New York Times, that it would be a precedent for a registry,” Burnett responded.
“It was precedent for - exactly,” Higbie continued. “Here’s thing. I don’t actually advocate for any of this. I didn’t bring it up. I was shocked when Megyn brought it up. I clarified to the New York Times today, I said, look, you know what, this is something that is a huge black mark on our society, and we would never want to do it again. But you have to say that ’63 Supreme Court decision upholding it was never overturned. Should we overturn it? We should take a look at it.”
Barack Obama on fake news: 'We have problems' if we can't tell the difference
President Barack Obama has spoken out about fake news on Facebook and other media platforms, suggesting that it helped undermine the US political process.
“If we are not serious about facts and what’s true and what’s not, if we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems,” he said during a press conference in Germany.
Since the surprise election of Donald Trump as president-elect, Facebook has battled accusations that it has failed to stem the flow of misinformation on its network and that its business model leads to users becoming divided into polarized political echo chambers.
Obama said that we live in an age with “so much active misinformation” that is “packaged very well” and looks the same whether it’s on Facebook or on TV.
“If everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect. We won’t know what to fight for. And we can lose so much of what we’ve gained in terms of the kind of democratic freedoms and market-based economies and prosperity that we’ve come to take for granted,” he said.
These comments come after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg rejected the “crazy idea” that fake news on the social network swayed voters in the US presidential election. That’s in spite of analysis by BuzzFeed that showed that fake news on the site outperformed real news in the run-up to polling day.
Video: President-elect Donald Trump’s team has declared that “President-elect Trump has never advocated for any registry or system that tracks individuals based on their religion.”
The problem is, there’s video from one year ago showing exactly that.
“There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases,” Trump told NBC, saying such policies would help America to crack down on illegal immigrants. Asked how he would implement such a system, Trump replied: “Good management.”
Updated
And just minutes after news broke that retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn has been offered the role of national security advisor in Donald Trump’s administration, Yahoo News reports that Flynn ran a private consulting firm that offered “all source intelligence support” to international clients while he was receiving classified national security briefings:
The full extent of Flynn’s overseas business is unclear. In the statement released by his lawyer, Flynn said only that his firm– which he described as a ‘private business intelligence company’ - has unnamed ‘international and domestic clients.’ In a brief telephone interview, Kelley, a former Capitol Hill staffer, declined to specify the issues that the firm was hired to lobby Congress about on behalf of Innova BV, a firm based in Holland and owned by the Turkish businessman, Ekim Alptekin. The lobbying disclosure statement filed with the Secretary of the Senate on Sept. 30 states only that Flynn’s firm ‘will advise client on U.S. domestic and foreign policy’ and congressional appropriations bills for the State Department.
AP: Retired general Michael Flynn offered national security advisor role
Retired Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn has been offered the role of national security advisor by president-elect Donald Trump, according to the Associated Press, citing a senior Trump transition official.
The official did not tell the Associated Press whether Flynn had accepted the role or not.
Flynn, 57, was the only national security figure of his rank to publicly align himself with Trump and remained loyal to the businessman throughout his campaign.
While other national security experts criticised and denounced the GOP nominee, Flynn took part in campaign rallies where he led chants against Hillary Clinton, including those that called for her to be locked up. “The enemy camp in this case is Hillary Rodham Clinton,” Flynn said in Florida during the summer.
The three-star general also delivered what was reported to be a “fiery” speech at the Republican national convention, where he lambasted Barack Obama’s “empty speeches and his misguided rhetoric”, which he said had “caused the world to have no respect for America’s word”, or might.
Flynn, who in 2015 declared himself a registered Democrat, held senior positions in the 18th Airborne Corps, at the joint chiefs of staff at the Pentagon and at US central command, which runs US military operations in the Middle East.
Flynn has since proven himself to be a controversial figure and public opponent of Obama’s foreign policy. In his 2016 book, The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies, co-authored with the historian and former Reagan administration official Michael Ledeen, he wrote that he is “not a devotee of so-called political correctness”.
He has come under fire for regularly appearing on Russian state-owned television station RT, and once attended a gala hosted by the channel, sitting two places away from the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. He later said his speaker’s bureau had arranged his trip to Russia and that he saw no distinction between RT and other news outlets such as CNN and MSNBC.
Flynn was once opposed to waterboarding and other banned extreme interrogation techniques, but, according to the Washington Post, in reference to Trump’s previously stated openness to reinstating such techniques, he said he “would be reluctant to take options off the table”. Asked by al-Jazeera if he would support Trump’s threat to kill the families of suspected terrorists, he said: “I would have to see the circumstances of that situation.”
In July, Flynn retweeted an antisemitic post by a Trump supporter who mocked the Clinton campaign’s blaming of Russian hackers for leaked emails. The tweet, by a pseudonymous user, read: “CNN implicated. ‘The USSR is to blame!’ Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore.” Flynn later deleted his retweet and apologised, saying it was a mistake and that he had meant to link to an article on Clinton and the DNC emails.
Flynn also tweeted in February that “fear of Muslims is RATIONAL,” a tweet which was never deleted.
Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL: please forward this to others: the truth fears no questions... https://t.co/NLIfKFD9lU
— General Flynn (@GenFlynn) February 27, 2016
Muslims in Trump's America: realities of Islamophobic presidency begin to sink in
Fariha Nizam was sleepy and stressed last Thursday morning when she boarded the Q43 bus, which cuts through the affluent Queens neighborhood where Donald Trump was raised.
As a Muslim, she was concerned about the newly minted president-elect and his campaign promises that targeted Muslims, immigrants and women. But it wasn’t until an older white couple began yelling at her, 10 minutes into her weekly commute to her internship, that the reality of Trump’s America set in.
“Most of what they were saying was telling me I can’t wear it [the hijab] anymore and telling me to take it off,” Nizam, a Bengali American, said.
The 19-year-old student had heard some Islamophobic comments before, but hadn’t experienced such aggressive harassment in New York City, where she, like Trump, was born and raised. But the stream of verbal abuse forced her to confront a reality she had been trying to avoid – that Trump had actually won.
“I didn’t believe it until the moment this incident occurred,” she said of Trump’s victory. “I don’t think I absorbed it and felt the reality of it, I didn’t. I kept myself distracted all of Wednesday and then Thursday happened and then it hits me, this is actually what’s going on and it was not OK.”
Nizam is one of several Muslims around the country who have spoken to the Guardian about life since Trump’s victory. Trump won the keys to the White House following an incendiary campaign where he proposed a ban on Muslims, said Muslims “hate” Americans and promised a Muslim registry. Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, reportedly a key member of Trump’s transition team, said on Tuesday that the president-elect’s advisers are already considering the Muslim registry.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the amount of hate crimes reported since election night has been unusually high – as of Tuesday, the civil rights organization had tallied 437 incidents nationwide.
This is the case even in seemingly Muslim-friendly places like New York City, and in Michigan, which has one of the largest concentrations of Muslims in the US. Civil rights groups there have reported an uptick in harassment – with one calling for a hate crime investigation after a Muslim woman in Ann Arbor was allegedly forced to remove her hijab by an unknown white man who, according to police, threatened to set her on fire with a lighter.
In another reported incident, two men shoved an 18-year-old woman wearing a hooded sweatshirt, commented on religion and asked her: “Do you know you’re in America?”
In the traditionally liberal city of Ann Arbor, two alleged incidents of ethnic intimidation and religious bias in a week is unusual, said Detective Lt Matthew Lige of the Ann Arbor police department.
“Certainly Ann Arbor, as a community that prides itself on its diversity, in race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, all those type of things,” he said. “So, for us to have two incidents that fit in this category is unusual and certainly [with] the political climate that we’re in right now, it’s concerning.”
Michigan and New York are home to some of the largest concentrations of Muslims in the US. But it is impossible to say with certainty how many Muslims there are in the country as the Census Bureau does not ask questions about faith. Estimates vary from as few as 3 million to as many as 8 million. Within that overall demographic, there is huge diversity in terms of geography, religious identity and race-cum-ethnicity, which renders any generalizations about the “Muslim community” in America perilous.
Is it correct that Donald Trump has “never advocated for any registry or system that tracks individuals based on their religion”?
Here’s what he told NBC News in November last year:
Donald Trump “would certainly implement” a database system tracking Muslims in the United States, the Republican front-runner told NBC News on Thursday night.
“I would certainly implement that. Absolutely,” Trump said in Newton, Iowa, in between campaign town halls.
“There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases,” he added. “We should have a lot of systems.”
When asked whether Muslims would be legally obligated to sign into the database, Trump responded, “They have to be – they have to be.” Later, Trump was repeatedly asked to explain the difference between requiring Muslims to enter their information into a database and making Jewish people register in Nazi Germany. He responded four times by saying: “You tell me.”
Statement from Trump team on 'Muslim registry'
Jason Miller, communications director for the Trump transition team, has released this statement in response to reports that the incoming administration has been considering a register for Muslims arriving in the US:
President-elect Trump has never advocated for any registry or system that tracks individuals based on their religion, and to imply otherwise is completely false.
The national registry of foreign visitors from countries with high terrorism activity that was in place during the Bush and Obama administrations gave intelligence and law enforcement communities additional tools to keep our country safe, but the president-elect plans on releasing his own vetting policies after he is sworn in.
Barack Obama is the latest figure to speak out about fake news on Facebook and other media platforms, suggesting that it helped undermine the US political process, Olivia Solon reports:
“If we are not serious about facts and what’s true and what’s not, if we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems,” he said during a press conference in Germany.
Since the surprise election of Donald Trump as president-elect, Facebook has battled accusations that it has failed to stem the flow of misinformation on its network and that its business model leads to users becoming divided into polarized political echo chambers.
Obama said that we live in an age with “so much active misinformation” that is “packaged very well” and looks the same whether it’s on Facebook or on TV.
“If everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect. We won’t know what to fight for. And we can lose so much of what we’ve gained in terms of the kind of democratic freedoms and market-based economies and prosperity that we’ve come to take for granted,” he said.
The Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, became the first world leader to meet the president-elect. Their conversation lasted around 90 minutes.
Speaking through an interpreter, Abe told reporters:
We spent a substantial amount of time together for our very candid discussion and, as a matter of fact, the atmosphere of the meeting was really, really cordial.
I renewed my conviction that together with Mr Trump I will be able to establish a relationship of trust. Also, with regard to the content of the discussion, I’d first like to tell you that I conveyed my views on basic issues to Mr Trump.
Asked whether Japan faced pressure from Trump to increase its defence contribution, Abe replied:
I am not going to dive into details or specifics about today’s discussion with President-elect Trump. However, I do believe that without confidence between the two nations, alliance would never function in the future.
As the outcome of today’s discussion, I am convinced that Mr Trump is a leader who I can have great confidence in.
The meeting between the US president-elect and Japanese PM Shinzo Abe has finished, with the pair spending about 90 minutes together at Trump Tower.
In what was Trump’s first meeting with a foreign leader, Abe was expected to press him about the future and “build trust” after the Republican on the campaign trail made repeated references to shaking up the longstanding alliance on why Tokyo relies for its national security.
Speaking afterwards, Abe said the meeting was “very, very cordial”, but stressed the talks were “unofficial” as Trump is not yet in the White House.
He gave no specifics of what was discussed, but described Trump as “a reliable leader” whom Japan could count on.
Donald Trump appears with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe
Watch it live here:
Young migrant children held in one of the most controversial privatised detention centres in the US have been banned from playing with crayons after staff members accused them of causing damage to property.
The move has been branded as unnecessarily punitive by lawyers working on behalf of 600 mothers and children detained at the Karnes detention centre in Texas.
The centre at Karnes is one of three federal facilities that holds migrant mothers and children. These family centres are one of the most controversial elements of the Obama administration’s border protection program, which looks set to rapidly expand under the incoming Trump presidency.
A spokeswoman for the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (Raices), which provides pro bono legal support to detainees at Karnes, said detention centre staff enforced the ban after accusing children of damaging a table as they drew inside the prison’s visitation centre last week. The damage is said to have occurred as some mothers were taking legal advice.
In email correspondence seen by the Guardian, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) staff state the punishment was “an action resulting from crayons which RAICES staff/volunteers have given children which has caused property damage to the contractor”.
The GEO group, the $2bn global security company that operates the centre, has made over $57m from it since November last year, according to local media reports.
The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Hotel heiress and vapid gadabout Paris Hilton has revealed that she cast her vote last week for president-elect Donald Trump, in part because “I’ve known him since I’m a little girl.”
Hilton was asked about Trump during an interview on an Australian television network.
Trump, too, remembered his old friendship with Hilton, telling radio host Howard Stern in 2003 that he found the then-12-year-old girl attractive.
“Somebody who a lot of people don’t give credit to, but in actuality is really beautiful is Paris Hilton,” Trump said at the time. “I’ve known Paris from the time she was 12.”
The Jerusalem Post reports that Donald Trump will name Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel:
Exclusive: Heard from good source who spoke 2 multiple people on Trump transition team that next US ambassador 2 Israel = @GovMikeHuckabee.
— Gil Hoffman (@Gil_Hoffman) November 17, 2016
Mexico’s central bank raised interest rates on Thursday in an attempt to shore up the country’s currency, which has collapsed following Donald Trump’s election as US president.
The Banco de México raised its key interest rate by 0.5% to 5.25% as it warned that the global economy had become “more complex” as a “consequence of the electoral process carried out in the United States and its result”. The increase in the rate from 4.75-5.25% takes it to its highest since 2009.
It is the third time this year that Mexico has raised interest rates, including a hike in September in response to Trump’s surge in the polls ahead of the election.
The peso plunged 13% against the dollar in the days following the US election, as traders feared the implications of a Trump presidency. The currency, which had recovered to 10% down, fell about 1% on Thursday following the central bank’s announcement. The peso is the second-worst performing currency in the world, after the pound which collapsed following Britain’s vote in June to leave the European Union.
Trump has threatened to deport millions of “illegal” Mexican immigrants from the US, build a wall along the frontier and pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). More than 80% of Mexico’s exports head north of the border to the US or Canada.
A group of open-government watchdog groups have come together to call on president-elect Donald Trump to place his considerable personal financial and business holdings in a “true blind trust” to combat what the groups characterized as the innumerable conflicts of interest between his role as the head of the Trump Organization and that of the leader of the free world.
“We are writing to urge you to place all of your business assets and investments into a genuine blind trust or the equivalent,” the organizations wrote in a letter addressed to the president-elect. “This means that control of these assets would be transferred to an independent trustee who would sell the assets and place the proceeds in investments which do not create conflicts of interest and which are not disclosed to you.”
Trump has vowed in the past to put his holdings in a “blind trust” controlled by his children, which would actually be almost the opposite of a blind trust, in particular after it came to light that the transition team had requested security clearances for Trump’s three adult children, all of whom are employed by the Trump Organization.
“We understand that this arrangement would require you to sever your relationship with the businesses that bear your name and with which you have invested a life’s work,” the letter’s authors stated, “but whatever the personal discomfort caused, there is no acceptable alternative – and your duties to the American people now must prevail over your personal ties to the Trump Organization businesses.”
Failure to do so, the organizations warned, “will create conflicts of interest of unprecedented magnitude,” touching on issues including “tax policy, standards for government contractors, consumer protection, the functioning of the civil justice system, financial regulation, labor rights and workplace safety and health standards, and bankruptcy law.”
The letter’s signatories include the Campaign for Accountability, the Campaign Legal Center, the Center for American Progress, the Center for Media and Democracy, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Common Cause, Democracy 21, former chief White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen, Essential Information, Issue One, Thomas E. Mann, OpentheGovernment.Org, Norman Ornstein, former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter, the People for the American Way, the Project on Government Oversight, Public Citizen and the Sunlight Foundation
Donald Trump to hold 'victory tour' of states won in election
President-elect Donald Trump plans to launch a “victory tour” of the states that he won in last week’s presidential election in “the next couple of weeks,” according to a campaign aide - a sentence we never thought we’d be typing and yet here we are!
“We’re working on a victory tour now; it will happen in the next couple of weeks,” George Gigicos, Trump’s advance team director, told pool reporters at Trump Tower this afternoon. The tour, while not fully planned at the moment, will ferry the president-elect “obviously to the states that we won and the swing states we flipped over.”
Trump carried 30 states, not including the as-yet unfinalized results from Michigan, in last week’s election.
At Trump Tower this afternoon, Alabama senator Jeff Sessions told members of president-elect Donald Trump’s transition pool that the controversial appointment of Breitbart chairman Steve Bannon as Trump’s chief strategist and senior counsel makes for “a good team.”
“Steve Bannon is a powerful, analytic and thoughtful leader, who consistently provides good advice, so it’s a good team,” Sessions said.
As for his own ambitions for serving in the Trump administration, Sessions was coy.
“I’d be honored to be considered, but Mr. Trump will make those decisions,” Sessions said. “If he asked me, I’ll share with him but I’m not talking about my agenda at this point. I’d be pleased to continue to serve in the Senate. I’ve got a lot of work to do there but I do feel from my conversations that the House and the Senate are charged up. They believe they’ve got a new leader, that the president will be the one that sets the agenda and the whole Congress will be supported.”
Sessions called rumors that Trump will meet with former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney “good,” telling the press that “there are a lot of talented people that he needs good relationships with, and I think Mr. Romney would be quite capable of doing a number of things. But he will be one of those, I am sure, that’s reviewed. Donald Trump will make that decision.”
Updated
Robert thought hard about the exact number of Syrian refugees he wanted to place in Native American reservations.
He originally had decided on 50,000 but thought that sounded too believable. It needed to be more ridiculous. So he wrote his headline:
US to House 250,000 Syrian Refugees at Navajo, Standing Rock Indian Reservations
Of course, that isn’t true in the slightest. But on Facebook, a lie can go around the world before the truth has even been posted.
Robert – who asked that his last name not be used – considers himself a satirist. A glance through his site, Real News Right Now, indeed shows a light, if perhaps too subtle, touch of humor.
Of course, that means not everyone got the joke. Fox News’s Sean Hannity was soon parroting the 250,000 refugees claim. Soon, so was Donald Trump.
Robert was shocked. “That was very unsettling,” he said. “I was, like, this is incredible.”
Robert is 34 and works in hospitality in Washington. “I make a little bit of money each month through ad revenue, but it all goes toward the site’s upkeep and promoting my articles through various social media platforms,” he said. “This is more of a labor of love for me than a profitable enterprise.”
He said he counts his site as satire, like the better-known the Onion.
But the boundary between satire and real news is a vast grey area. Distributed – largely on Facebook – alongside deliberately false stories and partisan coverage, whether pumped out to suck up advertising revenue or for ideological reasons, it might not be immediately obvious to some that Real News Right Now is satire.
The signs are subtle: the fictional journalist behind the site, R Hobbus, is listed as having won the 2011 Stephen Glass Distinction in Journalistic Integrity award – mocking a journalist who was revealed to have falsified sources and information for stories – for one thing. But there is no full disclaimer.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch blasts rhetoric of the election (read: Trump) campaign in speech to new US citizens https://t.co/GphBme4LoA pic.twitter.com/55HAWPjrfD
— Jon Swaine (@jonswaine) November 17, 2016
From the long-suffering transition pool:
Shortly before 3:30pm, the Israeli ambassador to the US gave a statement to the cameras, with Kellyanne Conway on the side.
“Israel has no doubt that president-elect Trump is a true friend of Israel,” said Ron Dermer, Israeli ambassador to the United States. “We have no doubt that vice president-elect Mike Pence is a true friend of Israel, he was one of Israel’s greatest friends in the Congress, one of the most pro-Israel governors in the country, and we look forward to working with the Trump administration, with all of the members of the Trump administration, including Steve Bannon, and making the US-Israel alliance stronger than ever.”
Asked why he mentioned specifically Steve Bannon, Dermer did not respond. Kellyanne Conway then led him to the Trump Bar.
Ohio congressman to challenge Nancy Pelosi for House Democratic leadership
Eight-term Ohio congressman Tim Ryan has declared that he will run for House minority leader Nancy Pelosi’s position as the top figure in House Democratic leadership, writing in a letter to fellow lawmakers that the results of last week’s election calls for “a new voice into leadership.”
“Last Tuesday’s election will forever be remembered as a major turning point for the United States of America,” Ryan said in a statement announcing his candidacy. “Like many Americans, I was disheartened by the results, but I also realized that Democrats must not let this opportunity for change pass by without a fight.”
“While having a position in Democratic leadership has never been my life’s ambition, after this election I believe we all need to re-evaluate our roles within the Caucus, the Democratic Party, and our country,” Ryan, who was the youngest member of the House when first elected in 2002, continued. “That is why I am announcing my run for minority leader of the Democratic caucus and humbly request your support.”
The official vote for the role will not take place until the last day of November, but Pelosi, who served as House speaker when the Democrats controlled the chamber, is seen as a near-sure bet.
David Petraeus – the former US army general and CIA director who was prosecuted for mishandling classified information – has entered the race to become Donald Trump’s secretary of state, diplomatic sources said on Thursday. Julian Borger and David Smith in Washington have more:
Petraeus resigned in November 2012 after the FBI discovered he had had an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, and had shared classified information with her. He eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for mishandling the information. People who have seen him recently say he is anxious to return to public life and has privately refused to rule out serving in a Trump administration.
Petraeus, who was also a US commander in Afghanistan and Iraq, has made flattering remarks about Trump since the election. “He’s right to criticise Washington over its partisanship and its inability to forge compromises,” he told the German cable news channel Deutsche Welle this week. “He’s a dealmaker. Let’s see if he can make some deals in Washington.”
He added: “This is an individual who is a political outsider. Perhaps he can do something in Washington that the political insiders, who he rightly criticises, have been unable to do, which is to come together to give a little, to gain a lot for our country.”
Read the full piece:
Updated
Gingrich says he won't be in cabinet
McClatchy has a scoop: “Mentioned as a possible pick to head the departments of State or Defense, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich won’t serve in the Trump administration, he confirmed to McClatchy on Thursday”:
“I will not be in the Cabinet,” Gingrich said, adding that “I intend to be focused on strategic planning.”
Gingrich did not say whether the decision was his or whether his long ties to official Washington effectively disqualified him from joining President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.
Pelosi asked Pence to ask Trump to reconsider the appointment of “Bill Kristol: Renegade Jew” publisher Steve Bannon as senior White House adviser, the Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui reports:
Aide says Nancy Pelosi told Mike Pence in meeting today to urge Trump to reconsider Steve Bannon appointment.
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) November 17, 2016
Trump is planning 'victory tour,' aide says
George Gigicos, the campaign’s advance team director, briefly talked about Trump’s first trip with the press pool at Trump tower.
“We’re working on a victory tour now, it will happen in the next couple of weeks,” Gigicos said. “After Thanksgiving.”
Gigicos said the tour would go “obviously to the states that we won and the swing states we flipped over.”
Here’s some Pelosi-Pence footage, via Politico:
.@NancyPelosi welcomes Vice President-elect @mike_pence: "We had a respectful conversation." pic.twitter.com/7yXeOoknhv
— POLITICO (@politico) November 17, 2016
CSPAN is periscoping from Trump tower:
LIVE on #Periscope: WATCH: #Trump Tower Live Stream https://t.co/olwCO5h34K
— CSPAN (@cspan) November 17, 2016
Cheese.
Pelosi and Pence meeting pic.twitter.com/WBq1YDkFib
— Karoun Demirjian (@karoun) November 17, 2016
Trump 'unbelievably impressed' with senator Sessions
Team Trump releases a statement saying the president-elect is “unbelievably impressed” with senator Jeff Sessions, who endorsed Trump back in February (the first senator and nearly the first member of congress to do so) and has spent much of the last nine months campaigning with him.
"Unbelievably impressed" and "phenomenal" - hint hint? pic.twitter.com/pFghmAfUuV
— Hallie Jackson (@HallieJackson) November 17, 2016
Sessions may be up for a cabinet post. Let’s call it: after all that work, Sessions is up for something juicy.
Past accusations of racism against Sessions, who’s from Alabama, could potentially complicate any senate confirmation hearing, but on the other had Jeff Sessions has a lot of friends in the senate and he would seem to be quite confirmable.
Read more about Sessions’ skeletons:
Jeff Sessions is known as one of most anti-immigration members of the Senate.
In a rare move, his nomination by Ronald Reagan to be a federal judge was rejected by Congress in 1986 after several attorneys testified that he had made racist comments.
Justice department official Gerald Hebert claimed Sessions had described the respected civil rights campaigns as “un-American”. Hebert also said Sessions had described the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union as “Communist inspired”. [...]
A prosecutor, Thomas H Figures, told congress Sessions had thought the Ku Klux Klan was “OK until I found they smoked pot”. Sessions said he had been joking and that the comment was so ludicrous he could not think anyone would take him seriously.
Figures, an African-American, also testified that Sessions had called him “boy”. Sessions denied the claim.
Read further:
Texas congressman Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the House financial services committee, which could assist in the dismantling of Dodd-Frank financial regulations – or not – has just spoken with president-elect Trump about financial reform, he tells the transition pool:
Hensarling exited the elevators shortly after 1pm and briefly addressed the press.
Question: how was the meeting? Did you talk about financial reform?
Jeb Hensarling: “Obviously we talked about financial reform. I just wanted to tell the President-elect I’m on his team. Very excited to help drain the swamp, very excited to help get this economy working for working Americans again. We were talking tax policy, we were talking Dodd Frank, we were talking trade, this was a wonderful conversation, and I stand ready to help the President in any capacity possible. I’ve got a great position in public policy today, if he wants to talk to me obviously, about serving somewhere else, we’ll look at serving somewhere else. But regardless, I’m on his team, I’m excited for what he can do for America, it was just a real honor to be here.
Updated
After a meeting just then with Henry Kissinger, Trump releases a statement saying he appreciates “him sharing his thoughts with me.” Via BuzzFeed’s Rosie Gray:
transition team readout of Trump-Kissinger meeting: pic.twitter.com/ubK29IMVEg
— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) November 17, 2016
Read further on potential Trump cabinet picks:
On that Telegraph story we linked to in the intro quoting Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski as saying that Comey called him to tell him about the new email inquiry: the quote has disappeared from the story:
Update: The Telegraph has changed this story without explanation and removed he quote. I don't know why. https://t.co/jAtzHKTeh8
— digby (@digby56) November 17, 2016
Obama says presidency will make Trump a fit president
Obama: “Although history does not travel in a straight line, it moves in the direction of justice and freedom... but we have to fight for it.”
Then he argues that the presidency itself will make Trump a fit president:
What makes me cautiously optimistic about my successor and the shift from campaign to governance is there is something about the solemn responsibilities of that office, the extraordinary demands that are placed on the United States not just by its own people but by people around the world, that forces you to focus. That demands seriousness. And if you’re not serious about the job, then you probably won’t be there very long because it will expose problems, even when you’re doing a good job, even when you are attentive, there’s so many things that come across your desk... you figure that out... and I think the president-elect is going to see fairly quickly that the demands and responsibilities of a US president are not ones that you can treat casually. In such a big and diverse country, the only way that you can be successful is by listening and reaching out and working with a wide variety of people.
On Merkel: “I wish I should be there to lighten her burdens somewhat, but she’s tough.”
Obama on Trump:
He ran an extraordinarily unconventional campaign, and it resulted in perhaps the biggest political upset in modern American political history. He now has to transition...
I said to him that what may work in generating enthusiasm and passions... may be different than what will work in terms of unifying the country. He’s indicated his understanding of that... my hope is that that’s something that he is thinking about, because not only is the president of the United States somebody that the entire country looks to for direction, but sets the agenda internationally, in a lot of ways.
Obama says sometimes when he listens to the rhetoric in Europe, there’s sometimes a failure to make distinction between the USA and what it stands for and oppressive regimes elsewhere. He says “The United States has been good for Germany.” Across Europe, he says, “many principles that have been taken for granted here, free speech.... fighting corruption” – USA stood up for those. “And that should be remembered,” Obama says.
Obama warns not to take democracy for granted
Obama:
“One of the great things about our democracy is it expresses itself in all sorts of ways, and that includes people protesting... I would not advise people who feel strongly or are concerned about some of the issues... I wouldn’t advise them to be silent. What I would advise... is that elections matter, voting matters, organizing matters, being informed on the issues matters...
“Do not take for granted our systems of government and our way of life. I think there’s a tendency, because we live in an era that’s been largely stable and peaceful... there’s a tendency to assume that that’s always the case. And it’s not. Democracy is hard work. In the United States, if 43% don’t vote, then democracy is weakened. If we are not concerned about facts, and what’s true and what’s not... if we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.”
The brilliant @darth fixes that Pence selfie (see earlier) with the House Republicans:
hey is that paul ryan@SeanMcElwee pic.twitter.com/wYCPJRql3s
— darth™ (@darth) November 17, 2016
Merkel tips her hat to the US transfer of power. Great and impressive job, America, Merkel says.
She says vis-à-vis Russia that territorial integrity must be respected, and “in view of European history, the reverse would be the start of a very bitter road down a slippery slope and we have to nip this in the bud.”
That’s an impressive mix of metaphors there! How did it sound in the original German we wonder.
Obama:
“Tonight I remain optimistic about not just about America’s future but the direction the world’s going in.” Because young people, he says. “They are much more comfortable with diversity.”
Obama says he talked with Putin and Russian cyberattacks are happened. “We are monitoring it carefully and we will respond if and when appropriately.”
Cyber is “something we have to work on, and we need to develop frameworks and international norms so that we don’t see a cyber arms race,” he says.
Obama on Trump on Russia: 'My hope is that he does not simply take a realpolitik approach'
Obama now on Russia. He says his approach has been constant.
“Russia is an important country. It is a military superpower. It has influence in the region and it has influence around the world. In order for us to solve many big problems... it is in our interest to work with Russia... we should all hope for a Russia that’s successful...
“I’ve sought a constructive relationship... but what I’ve also been is realistic in recognizing there are some significant differences in how Russia sees the world and how we view the world.”
He mentions free speech, rule of law, sovereignty and territorial integrity. “On issues like Ukraine, on issues like Syria, we’ve had very significant differences.’
Now on Trump:
My hope is that the president elect coming in takes a similarly constructive approah.. but that the president-elect is also willing to stand up to Russia where they are deviating from our values or international norms.
“My hope is that he does not simply take a realpolitik approach” of cutting deals “even if it violates international norms or leaves smaller countries vulnerable,” Obama says.
Obama says that “progress isn’t inevitable” but “what the history of postwar Germany shows is that strength... and adherence to the values that we care about will secure” a brighter future.
Question for Obama: will Trump hold up sanctions against Moscow? What have you told Putin about Russian influence on election? And should Merkel run for reelection?
Obama: “All I can say is that chancellor Merkel has been an outstanding partner, and chancellor Merkel is perhaps the only leader left among our closest allies that was there when I arrived. In some way we are the veterans of many challenges... in terms of our core values.”
“If I were here and I were German and I had a vote, I might support her. I don’t know whether that hurts or helps.”
Barack Obama is appearing with Angela Merkel at a news conference in Berlin. They discussed climate policy, Ukraine, Russia, the coalition against Isil, and more. Obama says “we need to build on the progress achieved at the UN refugee summit” on Syria.
“I want again to commend Angela and more importantly the German people for the extraordinary... compassion that you have shown in the face of what I know is a very difficult challenge,” at hosting refugees, Obama says.
Here’s the CSPAN link. Here’s a live video stream:
Trump's potential registry for immigrants tied to Japanese internment - by proponents
In a Fox News interview Thursday, Trump supporter Carl Higbie (the tweet below appears to overstate Higbie’s connection with Trump by calling him a “surrogate”) cited the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II as precedent for a potential Trump-era registry for immigrants from Muslim countries:
Trump surrogates are already citing Japanese internment camps from WW II as "precedent" for Muslim registry pic.twitter.com/DVnjtom0mc
— Brendan Karet (@bad_takes) November 17, 2016
On Wednesday, Trump transition team member Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State who helped write tough immigration laws in Arizona and elsewhere, said in an interview with Reuters that Trump’s policy advisers had also discussed drafting a proposal for his consideration to reinstate a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries.
“The internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War is an ugly stain on our nation’s history,” People For the American Way President Michael Keegan said in a statement. “Republicans at every level should rush to condemn any hint that we’d repeat that mistake by targeting Muslims or any other minority group.”
“To be clear: Donald Trump’s campaign promise to create a registry of Muslims is unconstitutional and un-American. Any elected official or public leader who purports to care about religious liberty has an obligation to speak out against this repugnant attack on the First Amendment. Politicians who brush these threats aside are complicit in the worst kind of bigotry.”
Trump 'really enjoying' transition, Conway says
Former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway Conway told the media pool at Trump tower that the president-elect is “really enjoying” the transition.
“He’s just loving this role in transition, he’s a transactional guy, he’s used to delivering results and producing, and so at his desk every day, taking the counsel of many different people, taking many different phone calls, going through paperwork and discussing forming his cabinet and now [inaudible] his senior staff,” Conway said. “He’s really enjoying it.”
Donald Trump Jr arrived on his own at Trump Tower at 9am. “We’ll see”, he replied when asked about nominations today.
Conway also confirmed that the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, would come to Trump Tower at 5pm to meet with Trump and Pence, the media pool reports.
“We are very sensitive to the fact that President Obama is still in office for the next two months, and we won’t be making diplomatic agreements today,” she said.
Cruz: 'it's time to put up or shut up'
Texas Senator Ted Cruz, whose name has been floated for a possible Trump cabinet post, or even *winces* the supreme court vacancy, spent several “very productive” hours in Trump Tower with the transition team yesterday, he told Fox News in an interview spent buttering up his former foe.
Cruz called the election “a powerful mandate for change” and said he was “eager and committed” to work with the new administration to deliver election promises, noting he was specifically excited to repeal Obamacare and elect conservative Supreme Court justices.
Asked if he’d discussed with Trump a specific role in his administration, Cruz deflected.
“I’m eager to work with the new president in whatever capacity I can have the greatest impact defending the principles that I was elected to defend - defending the principles of freedom, defending the constitution,” said Cruz in an interview with Fox and Friends.
He noted that with the Republicans controlling the White House, the Senate and Congress, the GOP had a chance to pass all its reforms.
“We’ve got to deliver. It is time to put up or shut up,” said Cruz.
“From my end, I am eager, I am excited for the opportunity we have to come together and get the job done,” said Cruz.
The Texas Senator criticized reports saying the president-elect’s transition is in disarray.
“Transition is like drinking from a fire hose,” quipped Cruz. “Nobody should be surprised there are media critics trying to throw rocks at the president-elect and the transition team. They don’t want the president to succeed.”
Vice-president-elect Mike Pence is on Capitol Hill and is to meet shortly with Paul Ryan, after meeting with the House Republican caucus, photographic evidence of which is below.
Great having @mike_pence visit today! I’m excited to work with him and @realDonaldTrump to shake up the status quo in Washington, D.C. #MAGA pic.twitter.com/2xQIGs2a9Z
— CathyMcMorrisRodgers (@cathymcmorris) November 17, 2016
We’ll pass on the results of the Pence-Ryan meeting as soon as we have them. Probably they’ll have productive talks and will look forward to getting down to the people’s business.
Hello, and welcome to our live-wire coverage of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition to the White House.
Trump appears to be drawing closer to making key cabinet appointments. Names in the mix include retired Lt Gen Michael Flynn, reportedly up for national security adviser; Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, Congressman Tom Price, Congressman Mike Pompeo and charter school activist Eva Moskowitz.
On a conference call with reporters Wednesday night, RNC strategist Sean Spicer and Trump senior communications advisor Jason Miller announced that “landing teams” will be deployed in the coming days to start the transition process and noted that all of those joining landing teams will sign a pledge that they will not serve as a lobbyist at the federal and state level for the next five years. It was unclear how such agreements would be enforced.
Spicer and Miller added that Trump was expected to meet Thursday with governors Nikki Haley and Rick Scott and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, among others.
Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s former campaign manager, has just given an interview with ABC News, saying that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, for whom Trump had reportedly sought security clearances, “has not applied for any formal role” in the White House.
As for Conway herself, her role is still under discussion, she said:
Conway joining WH staff? “I may… still discussing that with Donald Trump.” @GMA
— Rick Klein (@rickklein) November 17, 2016
"We have long short lists at Trump Tower in terms of transitions" @KellyannePolls on @CBSThisMorning #newsisback
— Norah O'Donnell (@NorahODonnell) November 17, 2016
Trump to May: if you’re ever in town, look me up
Trump told May in 1st convo: “If you travel to the US, you should let me know”. Eyebrows sky-high in Whitehall over casual open invite 1/2
— Lucy Fisher (@LOS_Fisher) November 17, 2016
Lewandowski says Comey called him about emails
So Lewandowski says Comey called him up to alert him that he was looking at the Abedin emails. https://t.co/BYrNeuD7pi pic.twitter.com/wcGGUQ9LDD
— digby (@digby56) November 17, 2016
The Clinton campaign found out from news reports coming from Hill GOP, but Trump world allegedly found out from Comey himself?! https://t.co/di477PPDY4
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) November 17, 2016
Clinton appears
Hillary Clinton has made her first public appearance since conceding the election to Donald Trump a week ago, challenging supporters to continue the fight for a country that is “hopeful, inclusive and big-hearted”.
“I will admit coming here tonight wasn’t the easiest thing for me,” Clinton told the audience in Washington DC. “There have been a few times this past week when all I’ve wanted to do was just to curl up with a good book or our dogs and never leave the house ever again.”
Thank you for reading and please join us in the comments.
