Donald Trump battles back against charges of transition tumult

For example, Rudy Giuliani, a contender for secretary of state, has received money consulting for foreign governments – an issue that arose when he ran for the presidency. The call finally took place a full day after his victory and after Trump had spoken to other leaders.

However, Trump’s appointment of Steve Bannon as chief strategist was criticized by Democrats, civil rights organizations and some Republicans. McMaster also said he was told South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was being considered for secretary of state. Tens of thousands of people marched in streets across the United States protesting against Trump. But he said Tuesday that after an exchange with Trump’s team, he had “changed my recommendation”.

Some of the other global leaders are Chinese President Xi Jinping, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it said.

Some current USA intelligence officials anxious that Rogers’ departure would mean Trump was leaning toward more confrontational hardliners to lead his foreign policy team.

Whether or not the process of picking is going smoothly, however, is an entirely different story.

The transition team is planning next week to start sending transition staffers to those and other domestic policy agencies to start planning for the January 20 handover of power from President Obama.

Former house speaker Newt Gingrich said as he left Mr Trump’s transition headquarters in Washington: “The beginning of any transition like this has turmoil because it’s just the nature of the process”.

“You want people filtering in and out of government, and when you stop that you’re going to get people who aren’t that qualified”, said Paul Miller, of the National Institute for Lobbying and Ethics, a lobbying association.

First, he replaced New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who had been overseeing the transition, with Vice President-elect Mike Pence, and subsequently purged lobbyists from the ranks, in keeping with his vow to “drain the swamp” in Washington.

All fingers are pointing at new Trump dauphin, son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence has ordered all lobbyists to be removed from the Trump transition team. We respectfully ask you to instill a spirit of openness and transparency in your administration in many ways but first and foremost, via the press pool.

What is that pooling in the pit of the main lift shaft in Trump Tower?

Vice President-elect Mike Pence has ordered all lobbyists be removed from Donald Trump’s White House transition team, NBC News has learned. New England Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft and New York Jets owner Woody Johnson were also spotted near the lobby’s gilded elevators on Wednesday. Kraft, who praised Trump before the MA primary earlier this year, briefly spoke with Mnuchin before going upstairs shortly before 2 p.m. His whereabouts became clear only after a fellow diner tweeted a picture of the president-elect arriving at the restaurant.

Kraft was then seen leaving Trump Tower by himself around 2:30.

Little progress has been made toward transferring control of the 2.8-million person federal workforce. Pence and Rick Dearborn, the executive director of the transition team, are “removing any lobbyists”, a transition aide said.

The Trump team has acknowledged the meeting will be informal and it will take place in Trump Tower.

Trump pointed out the difficulty in appointing a clean transition team. They declined to provide details about how many lobbyists had been fired or to name them, but said it was a priority.

“The Obama Administration’s last attempt at resetting relations with Russian Federation culminated in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and military intervention in the Middle East”.

Protesters against President-elect Donald Trump march along the Las Vegas Strip.

Trump was not the first president-elect to preside over a disorderly transition. But the transition team appeared to be straining under the enormous challenge of setting up a new administration.

Personnel announcements that were supposed to be made this week have been put on hold. George W. Bush didn’t hit that mark – but, then, he didn’t become president-elect until December 12, 2000.

“These conversations are always best in private, particularly when you’re forming a Cabinet and a senior staff”, Conway said Thursday on MSNBC.

“I’m eager to work with the new president in whatever capacity I can have the greatest impact defending the principles that I was elected to defend”, said the Texas Republican.

“There’s been no outreach to date”, department spokesman John Kirby said.