List of Trump’s potential cabinet appointees leaked

Allahpundit:

BuzzFeed has it. Normally a president-elect has to balance two interests in filling a cabinet, patronage for his most loyal political allies and competent oversight for each department. Jared Kushner may be a trusted Trump aide but that doesn’t mean he should head Homeland Security. Trump’s task is harder than most presidents’, though, because he needs to please another constituency, his anti-establishment base. He can’t staff up with nothing but GOP retreads or else he’ll be signaling early that it’s business as usual in Washington. He needs an outside-the-box choice or two to show that he intends to do things differently.

In a handful of instances there is only one candidate listed — Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is the only name listed for chief of staff, EEOC Commissioner Victoria Lipnic is listed for secretary of labor, Rep. Jeff Miller as veterans affairs administrator, Sen. Jeff Sessions as director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Donald McGahn, who has served as counsel to Trump’s campaign, to be White House counsel.

In some cases, it appears the transition team is looking to find a home for a particularly loyal ally — Ben Carson, for instance, is listed as a potential candidate to be the secretary of education and secretary of health and human services, while Sen. Jeff Sessions is listed as a possible attorney general, head of the Office of Management and Budget, or secretary of defense.

Likewise, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is heading up the transition team, has his chips spread across the board, listed as a candidate for AG, commerce secretary, and homeland security secretary. Christie may face unusual scrutiny after the guilty verdicts handed down to two of his former advisers in the trial over the George Washington Bridge lane closures.

Click for the full BuzzFeed list, which may be incomplete in capturing Trump’s intentions. The Journal is reporting that Bobby Jindal, who’s not on the list, is also under consideration for Health and Human Services, a position he’s been touted for since he was a young whiz-kid health-care bureaucrat in Louisiana. But Jindal was a sharp early critic of Trump when he ran for president briefly last year (and a sometimes petty one too) before becoming a supporter after he dropped out. If he ends up at HHS, it’ll be an encouraging sign that Trump intends to let bygones be bygones and prioritize competence. As for Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani, the latter of whom told the Journal he wasn’t much interested in a government position (sure), it looked earlier this year like Trump was eyeing Christie for Attorney General — or VP, before rescinding the offer — and Rudy for Homeland Security per his 9/11 pedigree. Now, thanks to the convictions in the Bridgegate case, it seems like those roles might flip. Giuliani, who started as a federal prosecutor, may end up at the DOJ while Christie might get a shot at DHS on the theory, I guess, that the Senate would be less forgiving about Bridgegate if Christie’s up for chief law enforcement officer. I saw a headline last night that having him and Giuliani in the cabinet would make for a “very conservative” administration. Uh, no. It would make for a very authoritarian one.

As for Newt Gingrich, his name has been circulating for Secretary of State although BuzzFeed’s list also puts him as a possibility for HHS. He told Sean Hannity yesterday, for what it’s worth, that he was more interested in helping to restructure the government and that a cabinet position would interfere with that. The real mystery of the list is whether some of the more “crowd-pleasing” names, familiar to Republicans from their frequent liberal-bashing appearances on Fox News, are really in contention for plum spots or if they’ve been included for PR reasons, to assure grassroots right-wingers that Trump has some of their favorites in mind even if he doesn’t end up appointing them. Sarah Palin’s named as a contender for the Department of the Interior, along with Jan Brewer and Mary Fallin. Ben Carson is listed for the Department of Education. John Bolton is a contender for State alongside Newt and Sen. Bob Corker. And Mike Flynn, one of Putin’s favorite Trumpers, is in consideration for Defense — along with former Bush National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley.

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