November 20, 2016
Trump Transition Trudges Along
Donald Trump inched forward with his transition team over the weekend appointing a number of polarizing figures to key roles. He appointed Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, known for hardline anti-immigration stances to the role of Attorney General indicating that immigration reform and “law and order” would be the administration’s top priority. Sessions was one of Trump’s earliest and most vocal backers during his run for the Presidency. Sessions is one of the most conservative members of the Senate.
Trump also appointed retired General Michael Flynn to serve as his National Security Advisor. Flynn is considered a competent military commander having served in Grenada (yup, we invaded them), Haiti (invaded them too), Iraq and Afghanistan. He is a registered Democrat and was appointed Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Obama then was “retired” (aka fired) due to his “chaotic management style” and attachment to “Flynn-facts” also known as things that are not actual facts. Flynn is known for his hardline anti-Islamist stance and suffers from conflicts of interests stemming from his consulting firm the “Flynn Intel Group” that has previously lobbied on behalf of the Turkish government.
Finally, Trump’s third major appointee was Congressman Mike Pompeo of Kansas to CIA Director. Pompeo rode the Tea Party wave into Congress in 2010 and served on the Benghazi Committee. He’s a known critic of the Iran Deal and was “looking forward to rolling back this disastrous deal.” He might find, in his new role, that rolling back such a complicated multi-party deal is much easier said than done. Meanwhile, Republican Senator John McCain took the weekend as an opportunity to remind Trump and his team that he would take them to court if they even thought about bringing back torture, a stance Trump has repeatedly favored on the campaign trail.
Finally, despite a busy weekend of meetings Trump found time to spar with the cast of Hamilton and Saturday Night Live on Twitter because apparently that’s what Presidents do now-a-days. During a brief attempt at a reprieve over the weekend Mike Pence tried to go watch the musical Hamilton but found that his job would be following him everywhere when they called him out at the end of the show, saying they were the diverse America that was afraid of his administration. Pence said that he “wasn’t offended” by their remarks despite Trump’s tweets against the show.
