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Who is President-elect Donald Trump appointing to key positions?

2024-11-13 08:13:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Who is President-elect Donald Trump appointing to key positions?

President Donald Trump

United States President-elect Donald Trump is moving quickly to fill positions in his fledgling administration with Republican officials who have been most politically loyal to him during the four years he has been out of office.

President-elect Trump, according to various US media reports, intends to nominate Florida Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state.

On Tuesday evening, he announced that South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem will be the head of the Department of Homeland Security. Among the other selected members of the government cabinet is Pete Hegseth, who will lead the Department of Defense. Mr. Hegseth is a former military man and has hosted shows on the Fox News television channel.

Mr. Rubio and Ms. Noem were on the list of possible vice-presidential candidates a few months ago. While Mr. Trump later picked Ohio Senator JD Vance, now the vice president-elect, both Mr. Rubio and Ms. Noem continued to support Mr. Trump, who won last week's election in a landslide over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

President-elect Trump also announced that he will nominate former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to serve as CIA director. Mr. Ratcliffe was the sixth director of national intelligence to serve during the last eight months of former President Trump's administration. Mr. Trump also announced on Tuesday that he has selected Mr. William McGinley as White House legal counsel.

Among other announcements made by the president-elect is that two entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will co-head the new Department of Government Efficiency. The announcement said they will provide advice and guidance "to guide large-scale structural reform" of the federal government.

President-elect Trump also decided to nominate Florida lawmaker Michael Waltz as national security adviser. Mr. Waltz earlier this year supported an effort by Republican lawmakers to name Washington International Airport after Mr. Trump.

President-elect Trump on Monday also named Thomas Homan, the former immigration director, as the "national director of border affairs" to lead efforts to deport to their countries of origin possibly millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States. The media reported that Stephen Miller, another vocal anti-immigration adviser who served in former President Trump's first term, would be named the president-elect's deputy chief of staff for policy.

The president-elect selected another staunch supporter, New York lawmaker Elise Stefanik, as the new US ambassador to the United Nations. He named former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel.

Shortly before the election, Mr. Trump, who rarely publicly admits mistakes, told podcast host Joe Rogan that his biggest mistake during his 2017-2021 tenure was hiring "bad people, or people not faithful".

"I picked some people I shouldn't have picked," he said.

Some of the top officials former President Trump picked at the time, including former chief of staff John Kelly and national security adviser John Bolton, became fierce public critics of Mr Trump after he fired them. Mr. Kelly said during this year's campaign that former President Trump met the definition of a fascist ruler. Former President Trump attacked both former officials, calling Mr Kelly "a bully but a weak person" and dismissing Mr Bolton as "an idiot".

Before the election, Mr. Bolton said that: "What Trump will ask from candidates for high office in a second term is loyalty. He wants men who only say 'yes' and women who only say 'yes'.”

Senator Rubio clashed with Mr Trump during their 2016 bid for the official Republican presidential nomination, which Mr Trump won. Mr. Rubio mocked Mr. Trump for having small hands and an orange tan, while Mr. Trump belittled him by calling him "little Marco."

But Sen. Rubio, like many of Mr. Trump's former critics, was a staunch supporter of his during this year's campaign. In recent years, Mr. Rubio has openly taken a hard line on foreign policy, taking tough stances on the United States' relations with China, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.

He has sometimes been at odds with Republicans who were skeptical of the United States' involvement in far-flung conflicts, such as aid funding Ukraine's war against a Russian attack in 2022. But recently, he voted against sending aid to further American military presence in Ukraine, while Mr. Trump has also expressed skepticism about the continuation of American aid to Kiev.

Mr. Rubio told NBC News in September that, “I think the Ukrainians have been so brave and strong in dealing with Russia. But at the end of the day, what we're funding here is a deadlocked war, and a conclusion must be reached, or that country will go back 100 years."

"I'm not on Russia's side — but unfortunately, the reality is that the way the war in Ukraine is going to end is with a negotiated settlement," Mr. Rubio said.

Ms. Noem gained national attention and earned praise from conservatives after she refused to pass a mask-wearing ordinance in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

President-elect Trump is thought to have even considered her name as a vice-presidential candidate. But she faced widespread criticism after she wrote in a memoir that she gunned down an "untrainable" dog she "hated" on her family's farm.

Mr. Waltz is a former U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who shares President-elect Trump's views on illegal immigration and skepticism about America's continued support for Ukraine.

Mr. Waltz, who also served in the National Guard with the rank of colonel, has criticized China's activity in the Asia-Pacific region and said the United States should be ready for a possible conflict in the region.

Just as important as President-elect Trump's initial picks are the names of the two former officials he has so far rejected for top posts in his new administration: Nikki Haley, his former ambassador to the United Nations and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Ms. Haley ran against Mr. Trump for the official Republican nomination for president in 2024, and Mr. Pompeo considered running against Mr. Trump, but then withdrew.

President-elect Donald Trump heads to Washington on Wednesday to meet with President Joe Biden, who defeated Mr. Trump in the 2020 election. Talks are expected to focus on the transition of power when President-elect Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20. Mr. Trump is also planning to meet with Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives./ Voa