Trump aide says ‘he’s ready’ for presidency

During his campaign, Trump has attacked media reports he found unfavorable to him, often targeting the New York Times as a failed newspaper while regularly granting its reporters interviews.

The Trump transition has looked, from the outside, like a mess.

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. Other departures quickly followed in what was described as “a purge” of people close to Christie.

Pence and transition executive director Rick Dearborn have ordered the removal of all lobbyists from the team, NBC News said it had learned.

That will start with national security.

Assessments that Trump’s moves from campaigning to governing have been rocky have infuriated the president-elect.

Amidst the initial confusion about who was in charge, one diplomat wondered whether to reach out directly to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is one of his closest advisers, or his daughter Ivanka Trump. Higbie said he’s “just saying there is precedent for it, and I’m not saying I agree with it”, and Kelly cut in again: “You can’t be citing Japanese internment camps as precedent for anything the president-elect is going to do”.

Donald Trump’s transition team said Wednesday that it likely could have offered “better communication” after the incoming president emerged from his NY skyscraper Tuesday night for the first time in days and moved about the nation’s largest city without a pool of journalists to ensure the public had knowledge of his whereabouts.

Most of Trump’s transition team members have been named.

“It is going so smoothly”, Trump wrote in the first tweet of his second Twitter war with the Times.

The president-elect expects to depart New York Friday afternoon to spend the weekend in Bedminster, N.J. Trump is scheduled to meet Mitt Romney, one of his fiercest critics during the Republican primaries, at the Trump Organization’s golf club this weekend.

Stating that the Times was “losing thousands of subscribers due to their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the “Trump phenomena, ‘” Trump wondered if the Times” “bad” coverage of him would change. “I don’t want to talk about that right now”.

Trump also has yet to hold a press conference following his election, the longest time any president-elect has waited in modern history and a continuation of months without speaking directly to the press on the campaign trail.

Anyone vetted for a position with the administration will be required to sign a contract stating they are not a registered lobbyist.

Among them – Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions who sat in on Mister Trump’s hour-plus meeting on Supreme Court nominees.Steve Mnuchin (Ma-noo-chin).and Rudy Giuliani. “I think there is, but I think this is growing pains. and once they integrate people who have been doing it (in Washington) with people in NY, I think you’ll see a smoother transition”. They will take back what they learn to the transition to inform the White House team as well as the future secretary or leader of that agency.

The delay cost the transition several crucial days, but they have time to catch up.

The process of agency landing teams was delayed, in part, by paperwork. “It is critical that they be allowed to do their jobs”, he said.

A top aide to President-elect Donald Trump acknowledged Wednesday that there could have been “a little bit better communication” with the press the day after the Trump left his home to attend dinner with his family unannounced, purposely leaving the press behind. Yet his deliberate pace received support from an unlikely source, former top Obama adviser David Axelrod.

They should be prepared for a lot of information. “Not a fair shot”, Axelrod tweeted.

“There are a lot of jobs to fill, and it takes a lot of time to do it”, said Danny Werfel, a former Office of Management and Budget controller now with the Boston Consulting Group. Bumpy transitions, however, have been the norm rather than the exception, and in that sense, Trump’s is not as unconventional as it may seem.