Trump gives Priebus top position
Print Edition
PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump chose Washington insider Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff and firebrand conservative Stephen Bannon as chief strategist, showing a willingness to work with Congress and giving a nod to right-wing activists who helped sweep him into office.
Less than a week after his upset win over Democrat Hillary Clinton in last Tuesday’s presidential election, Trump’s choice on Sunday of Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman and friend of House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, could help him repair his strained relations with members of the Republican Party establishment in Washington.
But Trump gave the job of strategist and senior counselor to Bannon, a fierce critic of Ryan who spearheaded Breitbart News website’s shift into a forum for the “alt-right,” a loose online confederation of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites.
Bannon and Priebus would work “as equal partners to transform the federal government”, Trump said in a statement.
Democrats were outraged by the choice of Bannon, calling him a promoter of racism and misogyny who is backed by the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan.
“It is easy to see why the KKK views Trump as their champion when Trump appoints one of the foremost peddlers of White Supremacist themes and rhetoric as his top aide,” Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, said in a statement.
US Representative Adam Schiff said Bannon’s selection for a top White House job was unsurprising but alarming. “His alt-right, anti-Semitic & misogynistic views don’t belong in WH,” he said in a Twitter post.
In morning TV interviews on Monday, Priebus defended Bannon as a wise and well-educated former naval officer and said he had not encountered the sort of extremist or racist views that critics are assailing.
“He was a force for good on the campaign,” Priebus said on Fox News, adding that they were in agreement on “almost everything” in terms of advising the president-elect.
Hardline Trump backers counting on the wealthy real estate developer to keep his campaign promise to “drain the swamp” of business-as-usual Washington insiders may be disappointed he has named Priebus as chief of staff, a position that serves as gatekeeper and agenda-setter for the president.
Trump said both appointees were “highly qualified leaders” who had helped him win the White House race.
Since the election, Trump has softened one of his major campaign promises of building a wall along the US border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants. In an interview with the CBS program “60 Minutes” on Sunday, Trump said he would accept some fencing instead of a brick-and-mortar wall.
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