With ex-Goldman and Soros employee Steven Mnuchin groomed to be Trump’s new Treasury Secretary, as Bloomberg reported earlier today, there was just one big question mark remaining: who would fill the other top post in Trump’s government: the Secretary of State. The answer arrived moments ago courtesy of AP, which reported that contrary to earlier speculation that Rudy Giuliani would be Trump’s Attorney General, the former NY mayor is set to become the top US diplomat under Trump.
BREAKING: AP source: Rudy Giuliani the favorite to be Trump’s secretary of state.
— The Associated Press (@AP) November 15, 2016
The pick of Giulani for SecState means that Senator Jeff Sessions is likely to be Trump’s pick for DOJ. The AP notes adds that Sessions has been meeting with Trump officials on Monday evening. Miller says Trump “would be lucky to have him in any capacity and vice versa.”
More details from AP:
Rudy Giuliani is the favorite to be secretary of state in Donald Trump’s administration.
That’s according to a senior Trump official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the source isn’t authorized to speak on the record.
The official says there’s no real competition for the job and that it’s the former New York mayor’s if he wants it.
Giuliani said at a Wall Street Journal CEO Council event in Washington that he won’t be attorney general in Trump’s administration.
That’s one of the jobs the former federal prosecutor and top Trump adviser has been seen as a top contender for.
It is perhaps worth noting that the alternative to Giuliani was even more disturbing. As the WSJ reported earlier in the day, Trump was set to pick between Giuliani and John Bolton, a hawkish conservative diplomat who called last year for the U.S. to bomb Iran.
Mr. Trump’s pick for State Department will have to navigate a U.S.–Russia relationship that is fraught with complexities, particularly over how to resolve the Syrian conflict.
Asked at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council meeting in Washington on Monday evening if his title would soon be “Secretary,” Mr. Giuliani responded “One never knows.”
Mr. Giuliani also said that Mr. Bolton would be a good choice for secretary of state. He was then asked if there was a better choice than Mr. Bolton and he replied, “Maybe me, I don’t know.”
Mr. Bolton has emerged one of the most hawkish members of the Republican Party in recent decades, a position that puts him at odds with Mr. Trump’s call for the U.S. to pull back from foreign intervention.
We feel Giuliani and Putin will be good friends: recall the following 2014 interview between Cavuto and the ex-NYC mayor in which the latter praised the Russian leader saying “[H]e makes a decision and he executes it, quickly. And then everybody reacts. That’s what you call a leader.”
“President Obama [has] gotta think about it, he’s got to go over it again, he’s got to talk to more people about it. They’re going through the whole, like, Syria thing again. First, we were going to do something to Syria; then [Obama] was going to act on his own; then he was gonna get congressional approval; then he wanted the U.K., the U.K. said no; then it looked like Congress was going to say no; then he was going to go anyway; then he decided not to do it; then, finally, after five, six days of wringing his hands and thinking and thinking and thinking, he brings Putin in and makes Putin a hero.”
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