In a peculiar update on Thursday morning, just around 9am Eastern, Trump’s former campaign manager and transition aide Kellyanne Conway tweeted that she is “Receiving deluge of social media & private comms re: Romney Some Trump loyalists warn against Romney as sec of state.”
Receiving deluge of social media & private comms re: Romney Some Trump loyalists warn against Romney as sec of state https://t.co/HDtpjeJTc3
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) November 24, 2016
She linked to a recent Politico article according to which “some of Donald Trump’s allies are steering him away from tapping one of his fiercest critics to lead his State Department. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Wednesday morning both cast 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney as a detractor who’s unlikely to be loyal to Trump.”
Huckabee warned that appointments of disloyal Republicans could prove to be a distraction in a president’s administration, arguing that such a person could be a problem because he or she doesn’t have a sense of commitment to or compatibility with the president-elect.“It’s not about that I don’t care for Mitt personally, but I’m still very unhappy that Mitt did everything he could to derail Donald Trump,”
Huckabee told Fox News. “He didn’t just go after him from a standpoint of saying I disagree with his policy on immigration or I disagree with his policy on taxes. He attacked him on a personal level about his character, integrity, his honor.”
As a reminder, earlier this week, the WSJ reported that Trump is “inclined to select Romney” as Secretary of State. This, despite a long history of animosity between the “establishment republican” and the New York billionaire: “Romney delivered a blistering speech in March in Salt Lake City in which he called Trump a “phony” and a “fraud.” He also tried to pick a convention floor fight, boldly calling on voters to cast their primary ballot for whichever Republican had a chance to beat Trump in their state.”
As the WSJ also added on Tuesday, one thing that appears to be delaying Trump’s decision about the secretary of state “is an internal tug of war between supporters of Romney, and those urging the selection of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. A third group is pressing the president-elect to keep searching for candidates.”
While the tension within the Trump transition team on the selection of Romney is known, what is surprising is that Conway, by taking to Twitter with her complaint, makes it appears that there is more than mere internal bickering, and that she is willing to directly address her followers in what may be interpreted as a consensus-building effort against Romney.
Her subsequent tweet appears to confirm that she has reservations against Romney, by saying that “Kissinger & Schultz as Secs of State flew around the world less, counseled POTUS close to home more. And were loyal. Good checklist.”
Receiving deluge of social media & private comms re: Romney Some Trump loyalists warn against Romney as sec of state https://t.co/HDtpjeJTc3
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) November 24, 2016
While we wait to see who Trump will pick for Secretary of State, it appears that another staffing decision is imminent: as the WSJ reported overnight, Trump is expected to pick Wilbur Ross as Commerce Secretary.
Mr. Ross, 78 years old, is chairman and chief strategist of private-equity firm W.L. Ross & Co., a company known for deals that included combining bankrupt steel producers Bethlehem Steel, Acme Steel, Weirton Steel and LTV Steel to form International Steel Group in 2002. His company’s work in the steel industry raised Mr. Ross’s profile in the Rust Belt, a region of the country that was pivotal to Mr. Trump’s electoral victory on Nov. 8. For some, the New Jersey native has been a savior for steelworkers, willing to risk his money to save thousands of jobs. For others, he was a vulture who cut jobs and pensions and forced pain on a once proud industry.
It is not exactly clear what Ross’ current stance is on global trade, one of the key issues in Trump’s platform:
Mr. Ross worked on policies proposing overhauls of U.S. trade and regulatory policy in the final months of the campaign with Peter Navarro, an economist who has been extremely critical of U.S. policy toward China.
“I favor world trade myself. A lot of our businesses engage in international trade. But over the years I’ve also learned quite a few of the trade deals that we’ve made have been just plain bad deals,” he said in an interview earlier this year. “There’s nothing inconsistent with being an advocate of trade and yet saying you need to do deals that make sense.”
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