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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
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Tom McCarthy

Trump drops threat of criminal investigation into Clinton – as it happened

Trump booed as he leaves the New York Times office

Summary

That’s it from the live blog for today. Here’s what happened:

  • Donald Trump gave a wide-ranging interview to the New York Times, after a bit of back and forth this morning about whether or not he was going to turn up for the interview.
  • He confirmed he did not favor prosecuting Hillary Clinton, although he did not explain what such a hypothetical prosecution might be for.
  • He said he had an “open mind” about whether or not to withdraw from the Paris climate change accords.
  • The president-elect disavowed the “alt-right”, the collection of far-right groups and individuals that have been emboldened by his victory. But he denied his key aide Steve Bannon was part of that movement.
  • Trump played down the prospect of conflicts of interest between his businesses and his presidency, saying: “The law’s totally on my side, the president can’t have a conflict of interest.” But he admitted he “might have” mentioned wind farms near his Scottish golf course to UK politician Nigel Farage.
  • The president-elect suggested he was reconsidering his vow to make the libel laws stricter.
  • He suggested his son-in-law Jared Kushner could help make peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
  • Trump said he was considering making former Republican rival Ben Carson secretary of housing and urban development.
  • He has now left Trump Tower and headed to Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Here’s more on some of those topics:

The Dude is rooting for the Donald – on the country’s behalf, it should be noted:

Priebus on Trump on the Clintons: 'he's moving on'

In an interview set to air Tuesday night on Fox News, incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus downplays any Trump desire to prosecute Hillary Clinton – for what, exactly, again? This entire conversation makes a tendentious assumption of criminal wrongdoing on Clinton’s part – saying that Trump is looking out the windshield not into the rear-view mirror.

Preibus:

First of all, we don’t know where all the evidence is going to lead but what President-elect Trump was saying was that he would rather look forward instead of backwards and that his eyes right now are looking through the windshield, not the rearview mirror. So, that was the point he was making – and that, look… he’s not going to spend his time sitting around thinking about how he’s going to prosecute Hillary Clinton, he’s gonna think about the future of America for all Americans that are out there. That’s where his focus is and that’s really what he’s saying. Now, I’m sure if something comes around, that if some kind of you know bomb that we don’t know about you know we’ll have to take a look at it but his point is he’s looking forward to leading this country. He’s not looking to you know further injure the Clinton’s but he’s got the right attitude about America.”

As far as he’s concerned, he’s moving on. Now, there are Congressional investigations going on that I assume will continue to go on, but he’s saying as far as he’s concerned, it’s time to move forward and heal America and lead.”

Trump tweeted he’s considering retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson as secretary of housing and urban development.

A week ago, Carson said he would not be joining Trump’s cabinet because he, Carson, has no government experience. Carson’s prescription for low-income communities has been a tough-love treatment which he says would foster self-reliance. He blames poverty in part on ingrained governmental dependence. He has been criticized for not accounting for the potential human costs of ending governmental assistance.

Trump en route to Florida

A Trump aide was observed leaving Trump tower holding a framed printing press plate of the New York Times’ post-Election issue “Trump Triumphant,” “presumably a gift,” the press pool reports.

Ivanka Trump and Reince Priebus have been observed leaving Trump tower, separately.

Trump himself was headed via motorcade to the airport for his trip to Mar-a-Lago.

Here’s a photo from inside Donald Trump’s meeting today at the New York Times. Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr is there on the right:

Donald Trump’s desire for Nigel Farage to be ambassador to the United States has not gone unnoticed by his fellow European parliamentarians, John Stevens of the Daily Mail reports:

The Wall Street Journal reports an internal battle in Trumpland over who will be the secretary of state nominee:

President-elect Donald Trump is leaning toward asking former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to be his secretary of state, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

The next U.S. president is also likely to name retired Marine Gen. James Mattis to serve as secretary of defense in his administration, and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is the leading candidate to be the next ambassador to the United Nations, the people said.

Delaying Mr. Trump’s decision about secretary of state is an internal tug of war between supporters of Mr. Romney, and those urging the selection of former New York MayorRudy Giuliani. A third group is pressing the president-elect to keep searching for candidates.

Read further:

North Carolina's Republican governor requests recount

“North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory announced on Tuesday he has officially requested a recount of votes from the 8 November election with official results showing him trailing his Democratic challenger, attorney general Roy Cooper, by one-tenth of a point,” Reuters reports:

The gubernatorial race in the ninth largest U.S. state remained undecided two weeks after Election Day. Officials with the State Board of Elections were continually updating results as they arrived from the state’s 100 counties.

A spokesman for the election board did not immediately respond to a Reuters query about when or whether McCrory’s request might be granted.

Trump won, Burr won, what about me? McCrory.
Trump won, Burr won, what about me? McCrory. Photograph: Jonathan Drake/Reuters

The election had been widely seen as a referendum on McCrory’s support for a state law denying transgender people the right to use the public bathroom matching their gender identities, instead forcing them to use those corresponding to the gender assigned at birth.

The law led to widespread boycotting of North Carolina by entertainers such as Bruce Springsteen and Itzhak Perlman while sports organizations such as the National Basketball Association and the National Collegiate Athletic Association moved major events out of state.

McCrory’s request came in a letter to the election board dated Friday and made public on Tuesday, citing a law entitling him to a recount as long as Cooper’s lead is less than 10,000 votes.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Cooper’s lead was 6,311 out of 4.7 million votes cast.

Cooper on election night, looking like a winner.
Cooper on election night, looking like a winner. Photograph: Chris Keane/Reuters

McCrory’s campaign has questioned the validity of the posted results, saying Cooper’s total may be inflated by votes from dead people or felons ineligible to cast a ballot.

“With serious concerns of potential voter fraud emerging across the state, it is becoming more apparent that a thorough recount is one way the people of North Carolina can have confidence in the results, process and system,” McCrory said.

Cooper, however, has already claimed victory.

“This is nothing but a last-ditch effort from Governor McCrory to delay and deny the results of this election,” Cooper campaign manager Trey Nix said in a statement. “Roy Cooper leads by 8,569 votes – a number that is growing daily as counties finalize election results. We are confident that a recount will do nothing to change the fact that Roy Cooper has won this election.”

The Cooper campaign came to its larger vote margin by citing election observers in each county who have tallied numbers not yet uploaded onto the election board site.

Obama is now speaking. It’s down the list of the recipients. On from Gates to Gehry to Hamilton. Read about the presidential medal of freedom recipients here.

Obama commutes sentences for 79 inmates

Barack Obama commuted the sentences of another 79 federal inmates Tuesday, bringing the total for his presidency to over 1,000, with the vast majority issued just this year.

The commutations, which come less than two months before Obama vacates the Oval Office, are part of the Department of Justice’s Clemency 2014 initiative aimed at reducing the sentences of nonviolent federal prisoners.

With 1,023 commutations over his two terms, Obama has issued clemency to more inmates than the last 11 president’s combined, including to nearly 350 individuals serving life sentences. He has issued an additional 70 pardons.

According to the White House, the president is “committed to continuing to exercise the clemency power with additional grants of commutations and pardons throughout the remainder of his presidency.”

Federal prisoners make up about 10% of those incarcerated nationwide, and are the only individuals the president has the authority to grant clemency to.

This is the first time the president has announced a round of commutations since the election of Donald Trump. Both president-elect Trump and his prospective attorney general, Jeff Sessions, have been critical of Obama’s use of executive power to grant clemency, even for long serving non-violent inmates.

In response to a clemency announcement in August, Sessions called Obama “reckless” and accused him of “playing a dangerous game to advance his political ideology.”

The impending presidential transition may be adding a level of urgency to the team of government lawyers tasked with vetting the tens of thousands of clemency applications that have been submitted since clemency 2014 was announced.

“There is a rising sense of uncertainty about the future of clemency under a Trump administration,” said Jessica Jackson-Sloan, the National Director of #cut50, which advocates clemency as part of an overall mission to cut the US prison population in half. “With less than 60 days left before President Obama leaves office, we hope he does everything in his power to overturn injustice and leave no deserving person behind.”

President to present medals of freedom

The president is about to present medals of freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to 21 individuals “who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

Watch live here:

The following individuals will be awarded the presidential medal of freedom, with thumbnail biographies as provided by the White House:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the National Basketball Association’s all-time leading scorer who helped lead the Los Angeles Lakers to five championships and the Milwaukee Bucks to another. During his career, Abdul-Jabbar was a six-time NBA Most Valuable Player and a 19-time NBA All-Star. Before joining the NBA, he was a star player at UCLA, leading the Bruins to three consecutive championships. In addition to his legendary basketball career, Abdul-Jabbar has been an outspoken advocate for social justice.

Elouise Cobell (posthumous)

Elouise Cobell was a Blackfeet Tribal community leader and an advocate for Native American self-determination and financial independence. She used her expertise in accounting to champion a lawsuit that resulted in a historic settlement, restoring tribal homelands to her beloved Blackfeet Nation and many other tribes, and in so doing, inspired a new generation of Native Americans to fight for the rights of others. Cobell helped found the Native American Bank, served as director of the Native American Community Development Corporation, and inspired Native American women to seek leadership roles in their communities.

Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen DeGeneres is an award-winning comedian who has hosted her popular daytime talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, since 2003 with her trademarked humor, humility, and optimism. In 2003 Ellen lent her voice to a forgetful but unforgettable little fish named Dory in Finding Nemo. She reprised her role again in 2016 with the hugely successful Finding Dory. Ellen also hosted the Academy Awards twice, in 2007 and 2014. In 1997, after coming out herself, DeGeneres made TV history when her character on Ellen revealed she was a lesbian. In her work and in her life, she has been a passionate advocate for equality and fairness.

Robert De Niro

Robert De Niro has brought to life some of the most memorable roles in American film during a career that spans five decades. His first major film roles were in the sports drama Bang the Drum Slowlyand Martin Scorsese’s crime film Mean Streets. He is a seven-time Academy Award nominee and two-time Oscar winner, and is also a Kennedy Center honoree.

Richard Garwin

Richard Garwin is a polymath physicist who earned a Ph.D. under Enrico Fermi at age 21 and subsequently made pioneering contributions to U.S. defense and intelligence technologies, low-temperature and nuclear physics, detection of gravitational radiation, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computer systems, laser printing, and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation. He directed Applied Research at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center and taught at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and Harvard University. The author of 500 technical papers and a winner of the National Medal of Science, Garwin holds 47 U.S. patents, and has advised numerous administrations.

Bill and Melinda Gates

Bill and Melinda Gates established the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, the foundation focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, the mission is to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. The Gates Foundation has provided more than $36 billion in grants since its inception.

Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry is one of the world’s leading architects, whose works have helped define contemporary architecture. His best-known buildings include the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Dancing House in Prague, and the Guggenheim Museum building in Bilbao, Spain.

Margaret H. Hamilton

Margaret H. Hamilton led the team that created the on-board flight software for NASA’s Apollo command modules and lunar modules. A mathematician and computer scientist who started her own software company, Hamilton contributed to concepts of asynchronous software, priority scheduling and priority displays, and human-in-the-loop decision capability, which set the foundation for modern, ultra-reliable software design and engineering.

Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks is one of the Nation’s finest actors and filmmakers. He has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role five times, and received the award for his work in Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. Those roles and countless others, including in Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, and Cast Away, have left an indelible mark on American film. Off screen, as an advocate, Hanks has advocated for social and environmental justice, and for our veterans and their families.

Grace Hopper (posthumous)

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, known as “Amazing Grace” and “the first lady of software,” was at the forefront of computers and programming development from the 1940s through the 1980s. Hopper’s work helped make coding languages more practical and accessible, and she created the first compiler, which translates source code from one language into another. She taught mathematics as an associate professor at Vassar College before joining the United States Naval Reserve as a lieutenant (junior grade) during World War II, where she became one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer and began her lifelong leadership role in the field of computer science.

Michael Jordan

Michael Jordan is one of the greatest athletes of all time. Jordan played 15 seasons in the NBA for the Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards; he is currently a principal owner and chairman of the Charlotte Hornets. During his career, he won six championships, five Most Valuable Player awards, and appeared in 14 All-Star games.

Maya Lin

Maya Lin is an artist and designer who is known for her work in sculpture and landscape art. She designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. and since then has pursued a celebrated career in both art and architecture. A committed environmentalist, Lin is currently working on a multi-sited artwork/memorial, What is Missing? bringing awareness to the planet’s loss of habitat and biodiversity.

Lorne Michaels

Lorne Michaels is a producer and screenwriter, best known for creating and producing Saturday Night Live, which has run continuously for more than 40 years. In addition, Michaels has also produced The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and 30 Rock, among other popular, award-winning shows. He has won 13 Emmy Awards over the course of his lengthy career.

Newt Minow

Newt Minow is an attorney with a long and distinguished career in public life. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, Minow served as a Supreme Court clerk and counsel to the Governor of Illinois. In 1961, President Kennedy selected Minow, then 34, to serve as Chairman of the Federal Communications Committee (FCC), where he helped shape the future of American television and was a vigorous advocate for broadcasting that promoted the public interest. In the five decades since leaving the FCC, Minow has maintained a prominent private law practice while devoting himself to numerous public and charitable causes.

Eduardo Padrón

Eduardo Padrón is the President of Miami Dade College (MDC), one of the largest institutions of higher education in the United States. During his more than four decade career, President Padrón has been a national voice for access and inclusion. He has worked to ensure all students have access to high quality, affordable education. He has championed innovative teaching and learning strategies making MDC a national model of excellence.

Robert Redford

Robert Redford is an actor, director, producer, businessman, and environmentalist. In 1981, he founded the Sundance Institute to advance the work of independent filmmakers and storytellers throughout the world, including through its annual Sundance Film Festival. He has received an Academy Award for Best Director and for Lifetime Achievement. Redford has directed or starred in numerous motion pictures, including The Candidate, All the President’s Men, Quiz Show, and A River Runs Through It.

Diana Ross

Diana Ross has had an iconic career spanning more than 50 years within the entertainment industry in music, film, television, theater, and fashion. Diana Ross is an Academy Award nominee, inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and recipient of the Grammy Awards highest honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award. Ross was a recipient of the 2007 Kennedy Center Honors. Diana Ross’s greatest legacy is her five wonderful children.

Vin Scully

Vin Scully is a broadcaster who, for 67 seasons, was the voice of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers. In Southern California, where generations of fans have grown up listening to Dodger baseball, Scully’s voice is known as the “soundtrack to summer.” In 1988, he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Scully’s signature voice brought to life key moments in baseball history, including perfect games by Sandy Koufax and Don Larsen, Kirk Gibson’s home run in the 1988 World Series, and Hank Aaron’s record-breaking 715th home run.

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen is a singer, songwriter, and bandleader. More than five decades ago, he bought a guitar and learned how to make it talk. Since then, the stories he has told, in lyrics and epic live concert performances, have helped shape American music and have challenged us to realize the American dream. Springsteen is a Kennedy Center honoree and he and the E Street Band he leads have each been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Cicely Tyson

Cicely Tyson has performed on the stage, on television, and on the silver screen. She has won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award, and is known for her performances in Sounder, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and The Help. In 2013, she returned to the stage with The Trip to the Bountiful, and was awarded the Tony Award for best leading actress. Tyson received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2015.

The Times interview complete, Trump has returned to Trump tower, across town, the press pool reports.

Audible booing as Trump leaves the Times:

Updated

Trump on opening up libel laws:

Trump on the first amendment:

“I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised”...

How to be an effective facilitator.
How to be an effective facilitator. Photograph: Google

Trump on the caliber of his son-in-law:

Attending the Trump meeting, according to the New York Times, are:

Trump on a conference at the weekend in Washington, DC, in which white supremacist Richard Spencer led a room in chants of “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” and some people in the audience gave the Nazi salute.

Read about the conference:

Trump on Steve Bannon, his chief strategist, who boasted in July that his website, Breitbart, was “the platform for the alt-right”:

Trump on potential conflicts of interest between his businesses and his presidency:

And specifically on mentioning wind farms near his Scottish golf course to UK politician Nigel Farage:

Trump on prosecuting the Clintons:

Trump on climate change:

Trump’s meeting with New York Times journalists has started, and the paper’s staff are live-tweeting it and collecting the tweets on their site.

Here are some highlights so far:

(And this one shows a Trump-ish eye for an unexpected detail:)

This is a good flag by the Times’ Jonathan Martin. The Remnick piece we linked to earlier features Trump telling members of the media that Mitt Romney, who crawled on his knees to New Jersey for a Saturday meeting with Trump, “desperately wants” to be secretary of state.

After the Romney meeting, a Trump statement said that those assembled had enjoyed an “extremely positive and productive conversation.”

But it’s possible that instead of wanting to be friends with Romney, Trump wishes to belittle or hurt him. Romney was an early and vocal critic of Trump among top Republicans, ridiculing Trump in a March 2016 speech.

Here are highlights from Romney’s speech. “A business genius he is not... His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump university”:

Romney launches extensive attack on Trump: ‘A genius he is not’

Newt Gingrich, a faithful Trump-backer who may be familiar with Trump’s thinking, said on Monday, two days after the Romney meeting, that Rudy Giuliani would be a better secretary of state:

Is Trump stringing Romney along for the pleasure of watching his former critic sweat? Would Trump ever do such a thing? Or does Trump in fact value Romney’s point of view and believe he could be a cabinet appointment?

Breitbart, the insurgent media site that also is an online clearinghouse for hate-speech including white-supremacist, anti-semitic and misogynist speech, has published a banner headline decrying Trump aide Kellyanne Conway’s announcement this morning that Trump no longer wishes to “lock her up”!

“Broken promise,” the headline says.

How much daylight is there between Breitbart and Trump? Steve Bannon, the former (?) governor of Breitbart, was chairman of Trump’s campaign and has been tapped to serve as chief White House strategist in the Trump administration.

Trump aide dodges question about use of office to advance business interests

Has Donald Trump already sought to use the presidency to advance his global business interests? Hanging behind the possibility is the question of whether, if a conflict arose between his personal business interests and US policy interests, Trump would favor his interests over US interests.

Exhibit A:

Local media reports in Argentina on Monday alleged that in his first phone call with president Mauricio Macri since being elected president, Trump asked for help over a stalled construction permit for a 35-storey project called Trump Office in downtown Buenos Aires. Ivanka Trump, a vice-president of the Trump organization, also spoke with Macri, both sides acknowledged.

A Macri spokesman later denied that the president discussed business with either Trump.

Exhibit B:

In a meeting with interim UKIP leader Nigel Farage after his election as president, Trump spoke at length in opposition to wind farms in Scotland, where the tranquility of one of his golf courses is potentially threatened by a wind farm development, the Daily Express reported:

Andy Wigmore, a communications officer for one of the groups campaigning to leave the EU who was at the meeting alongside Farage, told the Daily Express: “We covered a lot of ground during the hour-long meeting we had.

“But one thing Mr Trump kept returning to was the issue of wind farms. He is a complete Anglophile and also absolutely adores Scotland, which he thinks is one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

“But he is dismayed that his beloved Scotland has become over-run with ugly wind farms, which he believes are a blight on the stunning landscape.”

Trump aide sidesteps conflict-of-interest question

On a call with reporters Tuesday, Trump spokesman Jason Miller was asked whether Trump “had any conversations with any foreign leaders about his business operations.”

Miller did not answer directly but said the news “on the Argentina front” was “false.”

Uki Goñi reported on the Argentinian side from Buenos Aires:

But despite such setbacks, the relationship remains close enough that President Macri spoke with Ivanka Trump during last Monday’s phone conversation. “In the call, I also talked with his daughter,” Macri told the Japanese newspaper the Asahi Shimbun. “I have known her since her infant days.”

Macri’s spokesman said that the Argentinian president did not discuss Trump Office with Ivanka Trump either.

“He spoke with Ivanka only briefly to say hello because he met her when she was just a kid,” the spokesman said. “They did not speak about it. The president doesn’t speak about city building permits.”

Vice-president-elect Mike Pence arrived at Trump tower about 45 minutes ago and went upstairs (up-elevator? skyward) without taking questions from reporters, the media pool advises.

So do we!

There is concern that the media’s ability to hold the government to account on behalf of the public – on matters from surveillance to war-fighting to public health to community policing to banking regulations to housing policy or tax policy &c. – may be about to be curtailed owing to the precedent elect’s apparent weak-tea belief in a free press. On the campaign trail, Trump called for new libel prosecutions and routinely harangued the media for publishing reports he deemed critical.

Apropros update:

To that point, don’t miss New Yorker editor David Remnick’s description of Trump’s meeting yesterday with executives and talent from the big TV networks:

In the presence of television executives and anchors, Trump whined about everything from NBC News reporter Katy Tur’s coverage of him to a photograph the news network has used that shows him with a double chin. Why didn’t they use “nicer” pictures?

For more than twenty minutes, Trump railed about “outrageous” and “dishonest” coverage. When he was asked about the sort of “fake news” that now clogs social media, Trump replied that it was the networks that were guilty of spreading fake news. The “worst,” he said, were CNN (“liars!”) and NBC.

This is where we are. The President-elect does not care who knows how unforgiving or vain or distracted he is. This is who he is, and this is who will be running the executive branch of the United States government for four years.

Read the full piece here.

Updated

Hello, and welcome to our live-wire coverage of Donald Trump’s transition to the White House. Trump is expected to travel this evening to Mar-a-Lago, his home in Palm Beach, Florida, where he will spend the Thanksgiving holiday.

The Trump team has not announced a list of the day’s meetings. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and Trump aides Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort have been spotted entering the tower and heading upstairs.

Trump does not want to ‘lock her up’ – Conway

Top Trump aide Kellyanne Conway told MSNBC that Trump no longer desires to see Hillary Clinton behind bars, despite his popular rally chant “lock her up”.

Conway’s statement was decried for implying that the president would direct the conduct of the Department of Justice in general, and in particular the attorney general – who is traditionally supposedly independent from the White House despite being a political appointee, and who would conceivably initiate and oversee any such executive branch investigation. (We’re couching all this because it’s unclear – isn’t it? – how all this will/could work going forward.)

“[If Trump] tells you before he’s even inaugurated he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone and content, to the members,” Conway said, referring to a yet separate, potential congressional inquiry into Clinton.

A former spokesman for Eric Holder sends up an alarm:

Conway continued:

I think Hillary Clinton still has to face the fact that a majority of Americans don’t find her to be honest or trustworthy, but if Donald Trump can help her heal then perhaps that’s a good thing. I think he’s thinking of many different things as he prepares to become the president of the United States, and things that sound like the campaign aren’t among them.

Farage will not be ambassador to US, UK government says

A wishful tweet by Trump notwithstanding, interim UKIP leader Nigel Farage will not become the British ambassador to the US, Downing Street and the UK foreign office have said.

The prime minister’s spokesman said: “As far as the ambassador goes, there is no vacancy for that position. We have an excellent ambassador to the United States and he will continue his work.”

Read further:

Trump describes ‘first 100 days’ in video address

Trump has issued a two-and-a-half minute video assuring everyone that his transition is going smoothly and sketching a few points for pursuit in his first 100 days in office, including deregulation and withdrawal from Trans-Pacific Partnership talks “from day one” of his presidency. The TPP has not yet been signed.

Donald Trump outlines job plan in YouTube clip

Trump’s off-again, on-again Times meetings

The New York Times has announced that meetings between Trump and the Times publisher, and with editors, reporters and columnists is back on after the Trump team canceled it earlier.

Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy has released this statement:

Mr Trump’s staff has told us that the President Elect’s meeting with The Times is on again. He will meet with our publisher off-the-record and that session will be followed by an on-the-record meeting with our journalists and editorial columnists.

The Times released a statement earlier this morning announcing the meeting had been canceled:

Thank you for reading and please join us in the comments.

Updated

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