Trump taps hardliners for justice, CIA and national security
US President-elect Donald Trump. AFP PHOTO
Donald Trump on Friday nominated three conservative stalwarts to take key posts in his administration including Senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general, suggesting the US president-elect will take a hard line on immigration.
To lead the CIA, Trump tapped hawkish congressman Mike Pompeo, a strident opponent of the Iran nuclear deal and a sharp critic of Trump’s White House rival Hillary Clinton during the hearings into the 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya.
The incoming commander-in-chief also appointed retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn, a top military counsel to the 70-year-old Republican billionaire-turned-world leader, as his national security advisor.
“I enthusiastically embrace President-elect Trump’s vision for ‘one America,’ and his commitment to equal justice under law,” said Sessions, a 20-year veteran of Congress.
Trump described Sessions in the statement as having a “world-class legal mind.”
While his picks suggest he is adhering closely to far-right positions, Trump made efforts to send reassuring signals about stability and continuity regarding America’s place in the world.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Friday he had a “good talk” with Trump by telephone, telling AFP in Brussels he was “absolutely confident” that the incoming president remains committed to the transatlantic alliance.
Pompeo, 52, said he was “honored and humbled” to accept the nomination to head the Central Intelligence Agency.
The Kansas lawmaker co-authored a report slamming then-secretary of state Clinton’s handling of the Benghazi attack, in which the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans died.
House Speaker Paul Ryan offered glowing praise of Pompeo, hailing him as “one of the strongest national security voices in Congress” and who will “bring integrity and dedication to the CIA.”
For his national security adviser, Trump turned to 57-year-old Flynn, who is set to play a key role in shaping policy for a president with no experience in government or diplomacy.
His hardline stance on Islamic extremism has rankled many.
In a New York Times interview, he described Islamic extremism as an existential threat on a global scale, and he tweeted in February that “fear of Muslims is rational.
Confirmation challenge
Flynn is highly respected as a decorated military intelligence officer who helped combat insurgent networks. But he left the military after President Barack Obama fired him as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 following complaints about his leadership style.
Flynn’s appointment does not need approval from the Senate.
But that of Sessions as attorney general does, and he has baggage: racially charged comments he made in the 1980s and which once cost him a chance for a job for life as a federal judge.
Back in 1986, Sessions said that a prominent white lawyer was a “disgrace to his race” for defending African-Americans.
He also reportedly joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying he had thought its members were “OK, until I found out they smoked pot.”
Sessions has also been a fiery opponent to immigration, waging an all-out assault on the efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform through Congress in 2007 and again in 2013.
Senate Democrat Patrick Leahy hinted that his colleagues will approach the confirmation process with an open mind.
“Senator Sessions and I have had significant disagreements over the years, particularly on civil rights, voting rights, immigration and criminal justice issues,” Leahy said.
“But unlike Republicans’ practice of unprecedented obstruction of President Obama’s nominees, I believe nominees deserve a full and fair process before the Senate.”
With regard to Pompeo, the American Civil Liberties Union warned that his “positions on bulk surveillance and Guantanamo Bay also raise serious civil liberties concerns about privacy and due process.”
Congressman Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, praised Pompeo as “bright and hard working” but noted he had strong differences with the nominee, “principally on the politicization of the tragedy in Benghazi.”
The appointments came a day after the president-elect met with a foreign leader for the first time — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Some US allies have been rattled by Trump’s campaign comments that questioned whether he would maintain US loyalty to joint security arrangements and free trade accords.
Abe said after the 90-minute meeting in New York that Trump was a leader “in whom I can have great confidence.”
Romney for State?
Trump was headed Friday to his exclusive golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he was to meet Saturday with Mitt Romney.
The moderate, failed presidential candidate — and formerly vehement critic of Trump — is thought to be in the running for secretary of state, alongside former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Romney, who lost to Obama in 2012, had described Trump as a “fraud” and out of line with American values, rebuking the tycoon for proposals such as banning the entry of all foreign Muslims.
If chosen, Romney would bring a more orthodox Republican worldview to foreign policy. In 2012, he described Russia as the top geopolitical threat — a sharp contrast to Trump, who has exchanged compliments with Putin. TVJ
