Trump has completed his dinner outing, according to the press pool:
Trump’s motorcade arrived back at Trump Tower at 9:41pm.
With that we’ll conclude our live-blog politics coverage for the day. See you tomorrow!
Finalists? https://t.co/Y778KLkAHs
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) November 16, 2016
@realdonaldtrump is going to be president:
Very organized process taking place as I decide on Cabinet and many other positions. I am the only one who knows who the finalists are!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 16, 2016
Finalists? https://t.co/Y778KLkAHs
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) November 16, 2016
Updated
Republicans refuse to criticize Steve Bannon hire after growing backlash
Republicans declined to criticize Donald Trump’s decision to appoint Steve Bannon as the chief strategist to his impending administration, despite the latter’s record of promoting white supremacy.
As lawmakers returned to Washington on Tuesday for the first time since Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, Democrats swiftly called on the president-elect to rescind his hiring of Bannon.
But Republicans said it was time to unify behind Trump and sidestepped questions on his promotion of antisemitic, anti-Muslim and misogynist content while overseeing the “alt-right” website Breitbart News.
“I don’t want to accuse a man of being antisemitic or racist whom I’ve never met,” said Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina told reporters on Capitol Hill when asked about the Bannon appointment.
“I’ve never met him. I wouldn’t know him if he walked in the door,” he said, before adding of Breitbart: “The website in question was a friendly site to the alt-right. I don’t like them and they don’t like me and I’m glad.”
Marco Rubio said he had “no reaction” to the Bannon news, even though the former Breitbart chairman used his website to try and undermine the Florida senator’s political career.
“The president has a right to choose his own staff,” said Rubio, who ran unsuccessfully against Trump for the Republican nomination but was re-elected to a second term in the Senate last week.
Rubio also dismissed speculation that he might serve in Trump’s cabinet, saying he had not spoken with the president-elect’s transition team and would “prefer to be in the Senate”.
Read the full piece here:
Former House intelligence committee chairman Mike Rogers has been replaced on Trump’s transition team by Islamophobic fantasist Frank Gaffney, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Rogers was ousted as a part of a purge of potential Chris Christie loyalists, the report says.
Oh dear God. Mike Rogers is replaced on the transition team by Frank Gaffney!! https://t.co/CL8brpiwIr pic.twitter.com/8QsbrXXKsj
— Tom Wright (@thomaswright08) November 16, 2016
Related:
GOP foreign policy leaders grow despondent https://t.co/E37YYwqqBV
— James Pindell (@JamesPindell) November 16, 2016
The Politico report says:
Republican foreign policy veterans are newly alarmed over the emerging shape of Donald Trump’s national security team, after signs that Trump is passing over well-regarded establishment figures in favor of controversial and less experienced political allies including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a likely secretary of state pick.
Read Haroon Moghul in the Guardian last March about Gaffney:
For those of you who don’t know him, Gaffney is a conspiracy theorist whose obsessive focus on Islam and Muslims is clear from his stated concerns about a “worrying pattern of official US submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter’s authorities call Shariah”. He believes the redesigned logo of the Missile Defense Agency, for example “appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo”.
It’s hard to find a better description of American decline: from the country that repeatedly put men on the moon to the country whose national security experts are searching for secret Islamic lunar motifs in government images.
From the longer- and longer-suffering press pool:
Donald Trump is currently at the 21 Club on West 52nd Street. The block is shut down and police are allowing a small group of reporters to stand outside the restaurant, but we will not be allowed inside.
I just talked to [Trump spokeswoman] Hope Hicks who said “I wasn’t aware of this movement” and she would never do anything to “leave the press in the dark.” She said that a protective pool has not yet been set up so she is unable to coordinate the press pool traveling with the president-elect. Once that is set up, she says reporters will have “all of the access that they have ever had under any president.”
That’s encouraging.
The long-suffering transition press pool picks up on this tweet, which appears to show Donald Trump, tonight, now-ish(?), at the 21 Club, three blocks south of Trump tower.
The press pool staked out in the lobby of Trump tower didn’t see him leave and weren’t informed he would.
The tweet says “Keene’s” but that’s not historic Keens on 36th:
Standing ovation and cheers at Keene's steakhouse for @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/zJsA1t00Sk
— Taylor Riggs (@RiggsReport) November 16, 2016
The press pool is chasing after Trump.
Clinton’s popular vote lead ticks past 1.15m...
San Diego: 26k new Clinton votes, 13k Trump. Clinton lead surpasses 1,150,000 nationally: https://t.co/j58GaxfPmH
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 16, 2016
Trump asks for clearance for son-in-law – report
NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell reports that the Trump team has asked for top-secret security clearance for Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka:
Trump team has asked for son in law Jared Kushner to have top secret clearance for Presidential Daily Brief no precedent for that
— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) November 15, 2016
Closest thing is RFK -- and Congress responded w/ nepotism law for Cabinet. https://t.co/zHzprVDgaY
— Bill Barrow (@BillBarrowAP) November 16, 2016
A 1967 anti-nepotism statute bars any public official from appointing a relative “to a civilian position in the agency in which he is serving or over which he exercises jurisdiction or control.”
Obama: 'guard against crude nationalism'
Barack Obama used his last foreign tour as president to warn against the rise of divisive politics with the global ascent of what he described as coarse nationalism and tribalism, apparently referring to Donald Trump’s decision to appoint Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist.
In Athens, a city he repeatedly hailed as the birthplace of democracy, the outgoing leader spoke of the dangers posed by such politics with the stark reminder that not that long ago Europe had been turned into “a bloodbath” because of them.
“I do believe, separate and apart from any particular election or movement, that we are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism or ethnic identity or tribalism that is built around an us and a them,” he said. “We all know what happens when Europeans start dividing themselves and emphasise their differences. The 20th century was a bloodbath.”
Addressing reporters after talks with Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, Obama sought to distance himself from the diplomatic language he has employed since the election last week of his successor.
Read the full piece:
Don’t miss the latest episode of the Keepin’ It 1600 podcast, hosted by former Obama speechwriters Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett and former Obama NSC spokesoman Tommy Vietor – and featuring the Guardian US’s very own Sabrina Siddiqui:
Thanks to @SabrinaSiddiqui for joining us today - great conversation about Trump, the media, and more https://t.co/ejYRwOsIKa
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) November 15, 2016
Bernie Sanders points out that Donald Trump’s plan to #DraintheSwamp in Washington is so far being trusted to lobbyists and banking insiders:
Mr. Trump promised to #DrainTheSwamp, not fill it up. Now do it. pic.twitter.com/gXfcrlp5hC
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 15, 2016
From the long-suffering Trump transition pool, a list of everyone sighted entering and exiting Trump tower today:
+ Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)
+ Jeff DeWit
+ Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA
+ Don Trump Jr.
+ Michael Glassner
+ Steven Mnuchin
+ Don McGahn
+ Bryan Lanza
+ Anthony Scaramucci
+ Mike Pence, his wife and daughter, Charlotte
+ Assorted Pence aides
+ Boris Epshteyn
+ Sean Spicer
+ Eli Miller
+ Peter Thiel (according to Lt Gen Keith Kellogg, who distracted reporters as Thiel arrived)
+ Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg
+ Ted Cruz (according to his staff)
+ Tommy Hilfiger (who has an office in Trump Tower and was likely headed there, not to see Trump)
+ Marla Maples
+ Brad Parscale
+ George Gigicos
+ Pam Bondi
+ Hope Hicks and Stephen Miller (according to fellow poolers who arrived especially early)
Marco Rubio is reactionless on the Bannon question:
Asked about Steve Bannon appointment, @marcorubio says: "I have no reaction. The president has a right to choose his own staff."
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) November 15, 2016
From the long-suffering transition press pool, another Mike Pence sighting:
At 5:41pm, Mike Pence emerged from a backed elevator after spending more than six hours at Trump Tower. As cameras clicked and a huge crowd of gawkers watched, Pence and his wife quickly walked through the lobby, past reporters, through the Trump Bar and out to a waiting motorcade.
One reporter asked how the day went and Pence responded: “Great day.”
Another asked if the transition team is behind schedule. Pence didn’t seem to respond to that question and instead proclaimed for a second time: “Great day.”
Steyer vows to spend 'whatever is necessary' to block Trump anti-environment agenda
Reuters reports that “billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer, who has spent more than $140 million on fighting climate change, said on Tuesday he will spend whatever it takes to fight President-elect Donald Trump’s pro-drilling and anti-regulation agenda”:
The former hedge fund manager from California is putting together a strategy that will “engage voters and citizens to fight back” once Trump takes the White House in January, he told Reuters in an interview. However, he stressed he was not planning to fight Trump through the courts.
Instead, he would focus on “trying to present an opposite point of view and trying to get that point of view expressed, and communicated to citizens.”
Steyer’s pledge to fight Trump suggests an intensifying battle for U.S. public opinion on global climate change, an issue that has already divided many Americans, lawmakers, and companies between those who consider it a major global threat and those who doubt its existence.
Other U.S. environmental groups are also preparing to resist Trump’s agenda, with some vowing street protests and more established organizations that helped draft some of President Barack Obama’s environmental regulations preparing to defend them in court.
“We have always been willing to do whatever is necessary,” Steyer said, when asked how much money he was willing to spend to oppose Trump’s agenda.
Read the full piece here.
Trump announces inaugural committee
Think there might be fireworks at this thing? Donald Trump has announced the members of his inaugural committee. Financier and longtime Trump-friend Thomas Barrack is the chairman. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Jets owner Woody Johnson, Gail Icahn and Steve Wynn are among the finance vice-chairs.
Here’s the full list:
Chairman
Thomas Barrack Jr.
Finance Co-Chairmen
Roy Bailey
Lew Eisenberg
Finance Vice-Chairs
Sheldon Adelson
Dr. Miriam Adelson
Brian Ballard
Gentry Beach
Elliott Broidy
Robert Grand
Diane Hendricks
Tommy Hicks
Gail Icahn
Woody Johnson
Laurie Perlmutter
Phil Ruffin
Anthony Scaramucci
Ambassador Mel Sembler
Ray W. Washburne
Ambassador Ron Weiser
Steve Wynn
Senator Ted Cruz was “pleased” to meet Trump today and “looks forward to assisting the Trump administration,” he said through a spokesperson:
Sen. Cruz is pleased to have the opportunity to meet with President-elect Trump in New York today. The American people issued a clear mandate to ‘drain the swamp’ in Washington, repeal Obamacare and start over with cost-effective, patient-centered health care reform, appoint constitutionalist judges to the Supreme Court, secure our southern border and enforce immigration laws, and enact policies that will create more good-paying jobs for the American people. On behalf of the 27 million Texans he represents, the senator looks forward to assisting the Trump Administration in achieving these objectives.
Blair expresses faith in American resilience
Tony Blair has expressed confidence in America’s ability to endure in the wake of last week’s divisive election and its stunning outcome.
“My experience of your country is it’s a very resilient, strong country with a lot of capacity to handle unusual situations,” Blair said at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank, where he co-authored a report on combating violent extremism.
The former British prime minister did not mention Trump by name and was careful to say that Genghis Khan is no role model, but could not resist citing a quotation from the Mongol emperor: “Conquering the world on horseback is easy; it is dismounting and governing that is hard.”
Asked at the same event how a President Trump changes the landscape of extremism, former defence secretary Leon Panetta replied: “We all need to pray a lot.”
Graham: I don't know Bannon
Here’s further from senator Lindsey Graham, on Donald Trump and his chief strategist Steve Bannon, via the Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui:
Lindsey Graham tells reporters he wants to focus on "common ground" with Trump but will continue to make it known when he disagrees.
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) November 15, 2016
“When President-elect Trump mentions infrastructure, count me in,” Lindsey Graham says.
“Clearly I was not on the Trump train, but he won.” -- @GrahamBlog
Graham: “From a conservative point of view, one of the benefits of his win is to put people in the Supreme Court.”
Lindsey Graham on immigration under Trump: “I will not vote for a bill that quite frankly treats a grandmother and a drug dealer the same.”
Asked @GrahamBlog about Bannon. "I don't want to accuse a man of being anti-Semitic or racist whom I've never met," he says.
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) November 15, 2016
He adds that Breitbart was “friendly to the alt-right. I don’t like them, and they don’t like me, and I’m glad.”
Lindsey Graham: “I think Jeff Sessions has earned the right to serve Donald Trump in the highest levels.”
Assad says Trump could be 'natural ally'
Syrian president Bashar al-Assad sees Trump as a potential “natural ally” alongside the Russians and Iranians:
“If...he is going to fight the terrorists, of course we are going to be ally, natural ally in that regard with the Russian, with the Iranian, with many other countries,” Mr Assad told Portugal’s RTP state television.
“Can he go in that regard? What about the countervailing forces within the administration, the mainstream media that were against him? How can he deal with it?
“That’s why for us it’s still dubious whether he can do or live up to his promises or not. That’s why we are very cautious in judging him, especially as he wasn’t in a political position before.”
Updated
Ted Cruz ambition update.
Lindsey Graham reiterates Donald Trump should nominate Ted Cruz to Supreme Court: "I think he'd get a lot of votes."
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) November 15, 2016
From the long-suffering transition pool: Marla Maples update:
After a visit that lasted less than 25 minutes, Marla Maples came back to the lobby at 4:24pm and very quickly rushed to the exit, waving to reporters but not stopping to chat. A reporter asked how Tiffany is doing and she replied: “She’s doing great, thank you.” Other questions went unanswered. Within seconds, she was gone.
Marla Maples is Trump’s second wife and mother of his second daughter Tiffany and a singer-songwriter:
Say what you will about Ted Cruz, he’s always there to help – especially if you just got elected president.
Ted Cruz is @ Trump Tower today, per @VaughnHillyard. Transition aide says he's not being considered for a post but "came by to offer aid"
— Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) November 15, 2016
On the floor of the US senate:
Reid quotes Bannon divorce records, saying Bannon didn't like how Jews raise kids & Bannon didn't want his kids going to school with Jews
— Tom McCarthy (@TeeMcSee) November 15, 2016
Here’s the AP in August:
In a sworn court declaration following their divorce, Piccard said her ex-husband had objected to sending their twin daughters to an elite Los Angeles academy because he “didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews”.
“He said he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiney brats,’” Piccard said in a 2007 court filing.
Outgoing Senate minority leader Harry Reid is speaking on the senate floor about Donald Trump. He notes that hate crimes have spiked since Trump’s election – there have been 315 reports, he says. Now he tells the story of a friend threatened while dining in Las Vegas. And a similar story about two incidents at a staffer’s daughter’s middle school. And a similar story from Spokane, Washington.
“Those are only a few examples of what people close to me have related, but those kinds of disturbing accounts have been reported across America.” He submits multiple lists of “hundreds of incidents” to the congressional record.
Here’s a live stream.
From the long-suffering transition pool:
Spotted at Trump Tower: Marla Maples, Donald Trump’s second wife and the mother of his daughter, Tiffany.
McCain skeptical of Putin's goodwill
Senator John McCain is not impressed by new expressions of goodwill from Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Trump released a statement Tuesday saying he looked forward to a “strong and enduring relationship” with Russia.
McCain points out that Putin has “plunged his country into tyranny” and “murdered his political opponents” and “invaded his neighbors” and “threatened America’s allies, and attempted to undermine America’s elections.”
Partial McCain statement on Trump's talk with Putin pic.twitter.com/1UHpOqDq6z
— Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) November 15, 2016
Updated
Trump transition team hits rocky patch
Donald Trump’s transition to the White House appeared to be in disarray on Tuesday after the abrupt departure of a top national security adviser and amid continuing questions over the role of his three children and son-in-law.
Former Republican congressman Mike Rogers stepped down from the president-elect’s transition team without explanation, but one report attributed it to a “Stalinesque purge”.
A week after his election, Trump and Vice-President-elect Mike Pence were huddled at Trump Tower in New York to work on key appointments as the US Senate was due to resume business in a still shellshocked Washington.
Rogers chaired the House intelligence committee and is a former army officer and FBI special agent. He said he was proud of the work his team had done to produce policy and personnel guidance “on the complex national security challenges facing our great country”.
The departure offered the latest clue that the transition is going to be every bit as bumpy as feared. Last week the president-elect ditched the head of the team, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who is mired in political scandal, and replaced him with Pence.
NBC News quoted a source as saying Rogers was the victim of a “Stalinesque purge” of people close to Christie. “Two sources close to the situation described an atmosphere of sniping and backbiting as Trump loyalists position themselves for key jobs,” the network reported.
Some Republicans who previously ostracised Trump are returning to the fold but not always with success. Eliot Cohen, a senior state department official under George W Bush, launched a stinging attack on the transition effort. He tweeted:
“After exchange [with] Trump transition team, changed my recommendation: stay away. They’re angry, arrogant, screaming ‘you LOST!’ Will be ugly.”
A few days ago, Cohen had encouraged the suspicious Republican foreign policy establishment to rally around the president-elect.
Read further:
Rand Paul: I oppose Rudy Giuliani or John Bolton for secretary of state
Senator Rand Paul reiterated his opposition to either former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani or former UN ambassador John Bolton as secretary of state in an interview with the Guardian on Tuesday.
The interview follows an op-ed in Rare, an online conservative publication, where Paul condemned Bolton as “out of touch”.
The Kentucky senator grounded his opposition in the importance that Donald Trump “pick people who agree with his foreign policy”. Trump repeatedly argued on the campaign trail that the Iraq war was a mistake and condemned what he saw as an overly interventionist foreign policy from Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. As Paul phrased it, Trump was “standing up not just to Woodrow Wilson and a whole line of neocons in both parties and thought it was a big part of what Trump ran on”.
Paul, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, insisted “there is no way I could vote for someone who is an unrepentant supporter of the Iraq war and regime change. I think that is a disaster for the country, it has made us less safe and so categorically I can’t support anybody that supports regime change.”
He noted in particular that Bolton, who wrote an op-ed in support of bombing Iran in 2015, was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the Iraq war and pointed out that Giuliani agrees with the former UN ambassador on Iran.
Instead, Paul suggested Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Bob Corker as an alternative. He’s “much more of a realist, not likely to be loading the bombs to go to Iran tomorrow”. In contrast, he suggested that Bolton’s hawkish stance was perhaps because he was trying to “assuage guilt” over “not serving in combat”.
Three makes a trend...
Just called a Republican congressional office I deal with often and was told the press relations staff is no longer speaking to reporters.
— Patricia Zengerle (@ReutersZengerle) November 15, 2016
.@SenatorBurr is walking around with photos of reporters he won't talk to. I'm on it.
— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) November 15, 2016
Obama wants to 'facilitate a good transition' to Trump presidency
Video: During his visit to Greece, Barack Obama said he would do everything possible to ensure a smooth transition to president-elect Donald Trump.
“I still don’t feel responsible for what the president-elect says or does,” he said, during a joint press conference with Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras. “But I do feel responsibility as president of the United States to make sure that I facilitate a good transition.”
House Republicans unanimously renominate Paul Ryan as speaker
After a rousing opening to a press conference this morning in which House speaker Paul Ryan welcomed America “to the dawn of a new unified Republican government,” House Republicans unanimously renominated the Wisconsin congressman for a second term as speaker of the House.
The vote is a huge boon to Ryan’s leadership after the election of president-elect Donald Trump, particularly after Trump’s skepticism of Ryan’s support during the campaign led some Republicans to float the idea of throwing Ryan over for a new speaker in the event of Trump’s loss.
Ryan will still need to win a vote from the full House membership in January to officially serve a second term, but with a unanimous vote of nomination from the Republican caucus - which controls the House - that vote is, at this point, nearly assured to go his way.
Donald Trump’s name will be permanently removed from a series of New York City buildings on Wednesday, in an apparent repudiation of his divisive presidential campaign.
The name “Trump” has been displayed prominently on 140, 160 and 180 Trump Place, in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, for more than a decade. Trump developed the apartment buildings in the 1990s.
But Equity Residential, which owns the building, told the Guardian that the Trump signage would be removed – and the actual street names changed – because it would make the apartments more appealing to renters.
“We are in the process of rebranding the buildings using their street addresses as the property names,” said Marty McKenna, a spokesman for Equity Residential.
“The goal is to assume a more neutral building identity that will appeal to all current and future renters.”
An employee at the leasing office at 140 Trump Place said the work would begin on Wednesday – just eight days after Trump won the presidential election.
The move comes after hundreds of residents signed a “Dump the Trump name” petition calling for “Trump” to be removed from the buildings.
Accuser: Trump has pulled 'the biggest con possible' with election win
Donald Trump has pulled off “the biggest con possible”, and may leave many in the United States like “roadkill”, one of the first women to accuse him of sexual assault has told the Guardian.
Jill Harth, a former business partner of Trump’s, claims the incoming president cornered her in 1993 during a purported “tour” of his Mar-a-Lago estate, pushing her up against the wall in one of the children’s rooms and groping her. Her lawsuit against him alleging “attempted rape” has been on the books since she filed it in 1997, and though she later dropped the charges, she has always stood by her story.
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that the man who used to get annoyed at me for being so respectful and friendly to ‘the help’ and who introduced me to people by how many millions they were worth is now the president of the United States,” Harth told the Guardian. “I watched him judge women solely on their youthful looks and attractiveness to him whether they were in a beauty contest or not. He was elected by hard-working, blue-collar workers and women: the same people he showed utter disdain for when I worked with him and spent time with him on a personal level.
“Trump will always be a cartoon character to me,” she continued, “all show and no go. He pulled off the biggest con possible. Now time will tell what happens next. I’m hoping for the best, I really am, but afraid he will leave many of us as roadkill.”
She added that she was “saddened” that voters had fallen for “his superficial tough guy act”, explaining that the biggest laugh to her was how “loyal” Trump is supposed to be, misinformation she said the media had helped spread. “I personally witnessed and experienced the opposite from him. He promised big things and never delivered. He turned on and hurt me and other friends and colleagues who were good to him, helped him, did what they promised they would do and were loyal and supportive to him. He used me [and] my colleagues for his own purpose and is now using the American people to get the power and adulation he always craved.”
Last night: President Barack Obama said that Donald Trump will continue America’s commitment to the Nato alliance.
Speaking in the White House on Monday, after his conversation with president-elect Trump, Obama says he will aim to reassure Nato partners during his trip to Europe.
Bernie Sanders swept into New York City last night and urged his supporters to continue mobilising against Donald Trump, at a book signing just 10 blocks south of the president-elect’s home, Adam Gabbatt reports.
Sanders’ appearance, after days of protests against Trump in several cities, came as the Vermont senator’s supporters outlined plans for a “Tea Party of the left”, aimed at combating Trump’s presidency and sweeping progressive Democrats to power in the 2018 midterm elections.
Hundreds of Sanders’ supporters – some of whom had spent the night out on the streets – had lined up along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to meet the Vermont senator. Trump Tower, where Trump has been holed up selecting his cabinet, was almost visible in the distance. When Sanders arrived, he urged his supporters to continue to oppose the incoming president’s plans.
“I think what they have to understand is that more than ever it is imperative for the American people to be involved in the political process. Many of the positions that Trump advocated during the campaign are positions not shared by the majority of American people,” Sanders said.
“So our job is to mobilise our people and make sure that Trump listens on issue after issue to what the American people want.”
The Vermont senator was in New York to promote his book Our Revolution, which tells the story of his unlikely presidential bid and sets out his vision for the future of the progressive movement. Our Revolution, which was published on Tuesday, is already the top-selling book on Amazon – an indication of Sanders’ enduring popularity.
Gregory Fritz Jr, 39, had been waiting outside Barnes and Noble, in Midtown Manhattan, since 6.30pm on Sunday night. He had driven from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and slept under “a couple of blankets” in order to be the first in line to meet Sanders.
“He changed my life,” Fritz Jr said. “He made me a better person. He opened my eyes.”
President-elect Donald Trump may not be speaking to reporters, but he is tipping his hand when discussing potential Cabinet nominees with Carl Icahn:
1/2 Spoke to @realDonaldTrump. Steve Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross are being considered for Treasury and Commerce. Both would be great choices.
— Carl Icahn (@Carl_C_Icahn) November 15, 2016
2/2 Both are good friends of mine but, more importantly, they are two of the smartest people I know.
— Carl Icahn (@Carl_C_Icahn) November 15, 2016
Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs banker and onetime Hillary Clinton backer who oversaw Trump’s finance efforts, has directly given more than $95,000 to political campaigns in the past 20 years: $8,200 directly to Clinton over the course of her campaigns for the Senate, and for the presidency in 2008. Separately, during Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, Mnuchin contributed $22,500 to Romney Victory, Inc and more than $23,000 to various other ways to support Romney including the Republican National Committee.
Wilbur Ross is an investor whose main claim to fame is building a billion-dollar financial empire on restructuring failing companies.
From the long-suffering transition pool:
Mike Pence and his wife just arrived through the Trump Bar in the lobby of Trump Tower. He walked past reporters without saying anything or answering any of the questions shouted at him, despite an aide having said he would make a statement. One reporter shouted out a question about Ben Carson, another asked about reports of disarray in the transition team. Pence got into an elevator with aides and vanished from view.
Dr. Ben Carson turns down unspecified role in Trump administration
Retired neurosurgeon and political surrogate of questionable utility Dr. Ben Carson has officially turned down a chance to serve in president-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet, according to his business manager and close advisor.
“Dr. Carson was never offered a specific position, but everything was open to him,” Armstrong Williams told The Hill today. “Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.”
Carson was one of the first of Trump’s vanquished opponents in the Republican presidential primary to endorse the New York real estate tycoon’s candidacy, and had been a rumored candidate to serve as the head of the departments of education or health and human services.
Samantha Bee has criticized Donald Trump’s first confirmed cabinet choices and rumored candidates as a “parade of misfits, deplorables, zealots and extremists,” Benjamin Lee reports.
On the latest episode of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, the comedian joked that “Donald Trump is assembling a White House staff after Barack Obama has told him that’s a thing presidents have to do.”
She spoke about the reality TV star’s controversial choice to hire “white nationalist” Steve Bannon as his top adviser, referring to him as “the milkshake that brings all the deplorables to the yard”.
Bee went on to criticize Paul Ryan for refusing to denounce Bannon, after he claimed he couldn’t speak on his extreme views because he didn’t know him.
“I guess Paul Ryan’s vigorous vetting process for determining whether someone is bad consists of two questions: have I met them and do they have a private email server?” she said.
House speaker Paul Ryan, at his weekly press conference:
Welcome to the dawn of a new unified Republican government.
When asked about some of Steve Bannon’s most aggressive past statements and those of his website, including those targeting women, Jews and Catholics, Ryan was dismissive.
“This is a person who helped him win an incredible victory on an incredible campaign,” Ryan said. “I’m not looking backwards; I’m looking forwards.”
Updated
From the long-suffering transition pool:
Trump spokeswoman Jessica Ditto tells reporters that Mike Pence should arrive in about 15 minutes or so. Also: We are told the campaign is working on getting some sort of briefing room set up in New York but unknown when that might happen.
Other notes:
-- A member of Trump’s security team asked reporters not to rush at staff members as they arrive, saying that if we continue to do so, they will install barriers. We are still shouting out questions. At 10:30am, a velvet rope went up, presumably for Pence’s arrival.
-- Another arrival just before 10am: Don McGahn, Trump’s lawyer. And at 10:14am: Bryan Lanza, who oversees surrogates.
-- Charlie Kirk left at 9:40am, according to eagle-eyed Francesca Chambers.
Nomination watch: The New York Times reports that former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, a loyal backer of president-elect Donald Trump during even the darkest days of the campaign, is the frontrunner to head the state department under Trump’s administration.
Giuliani, who has no foreign policy experience beyond strong advocacy for the War on Terror, has highlighted his role after the September 11, 2011 terrorist attacks as a foreign-policy qualification in the past.
“I am the only one here who actually has had to face an Islamic terrorist attack,” Giuliani said in a Republican presidential debate in 2008, when he briefly sought the party’s nomination. “With regard to foreign policy, I’ve negotiated with governments when I was in the Justice Department. I worked on a task force on terrorism in the 1970s.”
Although former UN ambassador John Bolton is also seen as a contender for the role, Giuliani has reportedly been lobbying aggressively for the position, and Trump is inclined to reward the only major backer who advocated on his behalf after the release of video fro 2005 showed the now-president-elect bragging about sexually assaulting women.
President Obama reaffirms US commitment to Nato ahead of Trump administration
Speaking at a press conference in Athens at the beginning of his final international tour as president of the United States, Barack Obama told reporters that the United States was committed to its Nato allies, an attempt to alleviate the concerns of Nato members who have taken seriously president-elect Donald Trump’s threats to abandon members of the treaty organization if they don’t “pay their fair share.”
Standing with Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras, Obama commended Greece “for being one of the five Nato allies that spends 2% of GDP on defense, a goal that we have consistently set but not everybody has met.”
“Greece has done this even during difficult economic times,” Obama continued. “If Greece can meet this Nato commitment, all our Nato allies should be able to do so.”
During his most recent discussions with Trump, the future president “expressed a great interest in maintaining our core strategic relationships,” Obama said at a press conference on Monday. “And so, one of the messages I will be able to deliver is his commitment to Nato and the transatlantic alliance.”
Los Angeles 2024 Olympic bid leaders sought to allay concerns within the Olympic movement following Donald Trump’s US presidential election victory, saying the candidacy would continue to “celebrate our diversity,” Reuter reports.
Los Angeles, bidding to host the summer Games for a third time after 1932 and 1984, was seen as the front-runner in the race with Paris and Budapest until Trump’s election this month. Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, a Democrat, had warned that victory for Republican Trump would not help the bid given the makeup of the 98 voting members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) membership.
Trump courted controversy in the run-up to the election with campaign proposals including a call to ban Muslims from entering the United States and building a wall along the US-Mexican border.
“We just finished our presidential election and some of you may question our commitment to our founding principles,” Los Angeles bid official Allyson Felix, a six-times Olympic track and field champion, told a meeting of national Olympic committees in Doha. “I have one message for you. Please do not doubt us. America’s diversity is our greatest strength.”
The audience included the IOC president, Thomas Bach, as well as international sports federation presidents and IOC members as the three cities made the first of three official presentations ahead of the vote next year.
Felix said Los Angeles needed the Games “now more than ever” to help make the United States better. “We are a nation of people whose descendants came from all over the world for a better life,” she said. “We are also a nation with individuals like me, descendants of people who came to America, not of their own free will but against it,” she added.
“But we’re not a nation that clings to our past, no matter how glorious – or how painful. Americans rush toward the future.”
From President Barack Obama’s presser in Athens:
"Did I recognize tt there was anger & frustration in the American people? Of course I did," #obama says in #Athens when asked about #trump
— Helena Smith (@HelenaSmithGDN) November 15, 2016
"We have 2 deal with inequality, dislocation, the more we deal w those issues, the less [they] will pit ppl against each other." @POTUS
— Helena Smith (@HelenaSmithGDN) November 15, 2016
Another day, another shakeup in the nascent Trump administration’s transition operation. This time, the man sending the president-elect’s transition planning into chaos is Mike Rogers, who had been in charge of national security matters until he abruptly resigned from the position today.
Rogers, a former Michigan congressman and onetime chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement to the New York Times that he was “proud of the team that we assembled at Trump for America to produce meaningful policy, personnel and agency action guidance on the complex national security challenges facing our great country,” and that he was “pleased” to hand off the work to the new head of the transition, vice president-elect Mike Pence.
Pence had taken over the transition efforts last week, after Trump shuffled the transition deck to remove scandal-plagued New Jersey governor Chris Christie from his post at the top of the campaign’s transition efforts. The transition within the transition, however, has been hampered because Pence “has yet to sign legally required paperwork to allow his team to begin collaborating with President Obama’s aides on the handover,” according to the New York Times.
President Barack Obama holds press conference with Greek prime minister
Watch it live here:
Barack Obama will not tighten the rules governing US drone strikes ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Guardian has learned.
Trump will inherit the apparatus for what Obama calls “targeted killing” – the so-called drones “playbook” formally known as the 22 May 2013 Presidential Policy Guidance or PPG – that has turned drone strikes into Obama’s signature counter-terrorism tactic.
While the White House considers its standards for drone strikes to be scrupulous, much of the rest of the world considers them to represent an arbitrary, secret and dangerous apparatus of secret killing that Trump will soon have at his disposal.
“Maybe on the left no one would believe that Trump has a steady hand, but Obama has normalized the idea that presidents get to have secret large-scale killing programs at their disposal,” said Naureen Shah of Amnesty International USA.
Begun under George W Bush, drone strikes were vastly accelerated and codified by Obama beyond officially declared war zones. Official estimates claim they have killed nearly 2,600 “terrorists”, though human rights activists consider that to be an undercount.
The footprint of the drones has become increasingly widespread, situated in airfields from Tunisia to Niger to Cameroon, they represent the outgrowth of a legal theory which was embraced by both presidents Bush and Obama, who considered the war on terrorism’s battlefield to be global.
For Obama, the drone has been a calibrated, restrained instrument of death, an alternative to grueling all-out war. Trump will now be the one capable of harnessing its power.
Members of the House GOP has been gifted with “Make America Great Again” hats this morning, which seems normal.
@HouseGOP ready to Make America Great Again. @cathymcmorris giving hats to members this AM. #MAGA pic.twitter.com/6AQmSjdgba
— Nate Hodson (@natehodson) November 15, 2016
Video: The Guardian explains the battle over president-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Breitbart boss Steve Bannon as his chief strategist and senior counsel – and why many liberals fear his appointment will encourage antisemites, racists and misogynists.
From the long-suffering transition pool:
Good morning from Trump Tower, where transition staffers are slowly filtering into work in the rain. At about 8:45am, Jeff DeWit - Arizona’s treasurer and Trump’s campaign COO - arrived, carrying what looked like rolled up posters in a FedEx bag. About five minutes later, my co-pooler Francesca Chambers of the Daily Mail spotted Charlie Kirkof Turning Point USA, who wouldn’t say why he’s in Trump Tower this morning.
At 8:57am, Donald Trump Jr arrived, carrying athletic shoes in hand and keeping his back to reporters. But when someone asked if we can expect any announcements today, he turned, smiled and said: ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ When asked what his role in the transition team is, he turned back around and didn’t answer.
Also spotted before 9am: Deputy campaign manager Michael Glassner, pulling a suitcase and declining to answer questions.
“The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.” – Donald J. Trump, November 7, 2012
The Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the smaller ones, into play. Campaigning is much different!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2016
Obama will not restrict drone strike 'playbook' before Trump takes office
Good morning, and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the transition between the two-term Obama administration and the nascent Trump administration. It’s 66 days until president-elect Donald Trump is sworn in as president.
First, some news: Barack Obama will not tighten the rules governing US drone strikes ahead of Trump’s inauguration, the Guardian has learned. Trump will inherit the apparatus for what Obama calls “targeted killing” – the so-called drones “playbook” formally known as the 22 May 2013 Presidential Policy Guidance or PPG – that has turned drone strikes into Obama’s signature counter-terrorism tactic.
While the White House considers its standards for drone strikes to be scrupulous, much of the rest of the world considers them to represent an arbitrary, secret and dangerous apparatus of secret killing that Trump will soon have at his disposal. “Maybe on the left no one would believe that Trump has a steady hand, but Obama has normalized the idea that presidents get to have secret large-scale killing programs at their disposal,” said Naureen Shah of Amnesty International USA.
In other news, Trump’s selection of Breitbart chair and former campaign CEO Steve Bannon as his chief strategist and senior counsel has infuriated Washington’s left, who have swiftly pointed to Breitbart’s reputation for antisemitic, misogynistic and white-nationalist coverage of American and international politics.
Breitbart headlines have included Would You Rather Your Child had Feminism or Cancer?, Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy and “Hoist it high and proud: The Confederate flag proclaims a glorious heritage.”
House minority leader Nancy Pelosi said of Bannon’s appointment: “There must be no sugarcoating the reality that a white nationalist has been named chief strategist for the Trump administration.”
Unlike a cabinet nomination, however, there’s no mechanism to stop Trump from appointing Bannon to a position in the White House, so barring overwhelming public criticism of Bannon – a relatively unknown figure outside of the Acela corridor – he’s likely baked in the cake.
The day ahead: Trump is still holed up in the Trump Tower triplex that he calls home, with periodic visits from senior campaign staff and members of the Trump family (for whom Trump is reportedly attempting to secure security clearances, according to the latest pool report).
Obama is in Athens, Greece, on the first leg of his final foreign tour as president.
Updated
