[Special] Washington Post Transition Round-Up

I'm a subscriber to the Washington Post, so by extension I read quite a few articles from that newspaper every day. Recently, I have noticed I have been favoring posting WaPo pieces. While I consider it to be a fairly good mainstream newspaper, hence the subscription, I do try to diversify when presenting news on this blog. Whether I have an audience of one or one million, it would be nice to make it seem like I am trying, even though this is just a simple blog. So anyway, here are a few Washington Post stories from late November:



Key Figures Purged From Trump Transition Team by Karen DeYoung and Greg Miller (November 15, 2016)

The bloodletting in President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team that began with last week’s ouster of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie escalated Tuesday with new departures, particularly in the area of national security, as power consolidated within an ever-smaller group of top Trump loyalists. Former congressman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) announced that he had left his position as the transition’s senior national security adviser. Rogers, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the leading candidate for CIA director, was among at least four transition officials purged this week, apparently because of perceived ties to Christie. As turbulence within the team grew, some key members of Trump’s party began to question his views and the remaining candidates for top positions. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) said Trump’s efforts to work more closely with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin amounted to “complicity in [the] butchery of the Syrian people” and “an unacceptable price for a great nation.”

In Trump’s Washington, Rival Powers and Whispers in the President’s Ear by Philip Rucker and Robert Costa

(November 16, 2016)

But other Republicans offered warning signs about erecting rival power centers. Patrick J. Buchanan, a veteran of the Nixon and Reagan White Houses, pointed out that Bannon and Priebus, regardless of their shared allegiance to the president-elect, carry with them different ideologies and experiences. “Bannon is coming in with very strong views and ideas, and those are not the same ideas that Reince Priebus and Paul Ryan and the others have — on security of the border, on trade deals, on globalization, on war and peace,” Buchanan said. “This is the reality. You’re going to have a clash in the White House — and the president is going to have to make the call.” Schwartz, who was a critic of Trump’s candidacy and informally advised Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign on her opponent’s psychology, said Trump seeks a variety of opinions in part out of necessity. “He doesn’t have a clear set of guiding principles inside him,” Schwartz said. “He doesn’t have values that he feels compelled to live by. He doesn’t have a significant store of knowledge about the subjects he’s dealing with. So it would make sense that he’s casting around for intelligence, even if he doesn’t end up trusting or relying on it.”

Trump Defends Pace of Transition Work as Process Remains Opaque by Karen DeYoung (November 16, 2016)

Offices prepared for Trump transition teams in departments and agencies across the government remained empty Wednesday as the president-elect stayed ensconced with close aides in his Manhattan tower. The White House said that it received paperwork, signed Tuesday evening by Vice President-elect Mike Pence, necessary for the teams to move into the department offices and begin to receive briefings from current officials. But people close to the transition said the first wave of teams was not expected at the Washington locations until Thursday. The “landing teams” for the State Department, the Justice Department, the Pentagon and the National Security Council will be announced and begin interacting with the Obama administration Thursday, Republican National Committee communications director Sean Spicer said late Wednesday. Economic policy landing teams will be announced next week, followed by teams devoted to domestic policy and independent federal agencies.

With Treasury Candidate Come Possible Conflicts by Ylan Q. Mui and Renae Merle (November 17, 2016)

A leading candidate to be ­President-elect Donald Trump’s treasury secretary was deeply involved in running a bank that has received $900 million in federal bailout money and that has been accused of discrimination — examples of the potentially thorny conflicts of interest that could plague Trump’s nascent administration. Steven T. Mnuchin was the finance chairman for Trump’s campaign, and three people close to the presidential transition team said that at the moment he is among the most likely candidates to helm Treasury. Mnuchin, a Goldman Sachs veteran, made his name as a private investor when he led the 2009 purchase of failed subprime mortgage lender IndyMac, the California bank whose long lines of customers waiting to withdraw their money became an enduring image of the financial crisis. Central to the deal was a promise by federal regulators to cover a significant share of the bank’s losses — a guarantee that lasts through 2019. In addition, the bank — later renamed OneWest — has repeatedly faced criticism over its attempts to foreclose on homeowners who were in the process of modifying their loans, among other practices. On Thursday, an advocacy group filed a complaint with the Department of Housing and Urban Development accusing the bank of locating branches in predominantly white neighborhoods while avoiding minority communities, including two years in which only two black borrowers received home loans across six counties.