trump transition team turmoil

Extracts SMH:

"The bloodletting in President-elect Donald Trump's transition team that began with last week's ousting of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie escalated on 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 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.

Sources say former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has emerged as a leading candidate to be US secretary of state for President-elect Donald Trump.
As turbulence within the transition team grew, some key members of Trump's party began to question his views and the remaining candidates for top positions. Senator John McCain 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."

Trump met on Tuesday with incoming vice president Mike Pence, who replaced Christie at the head of the transition on Friday, to discuss Cabinet and top White House personnel choices. Little to no information was released by the transition office, leaving a clutch of reporters gathered in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York to hustle after team members passing between the front doors and the elevators.

The ethics rules that apply - and don't apply - to Trump's children
Trump tapped into 'troubling' strain says Obama
As he had during the campaign, Trump appeared to be increasingly uncomfortable with outsiders and suspicious of those considered part of what one insider called the "bicoastal elite," who are perceived as trying to "insinuate" themselves into positions of power.
Those in the inner circle reportedly were winnowed to loyalists who had stuck with Trump throughout the campaign and helped devise his winning strategy. They include Senator Jeff Sessions , former Breitbart News head Stephen Bannon, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn and members of Trump's family, including son-in-law Jared Kushner.

"This is a very insular, pretty closely held circle of people," said Philip Zelikow, a former director of the Miller Centre of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and a senior figure in the George W. Bush transition. "Confusion is the norm" for transitions, he said, "but there are some unusual features here, because they're trying to make some statements."
"They feel like their election was a lot of the American people wanting to throw a brick through a window," Zelikow said. "They want to make appointments that make it sound like glass is being broken."

The purging has begun.

Increasingly, among the shards are more mainline Republicans in the national security field. In an angry Twitter post on Tuesday morning, Eliot Cohen, a leading voice of opposition to Trump during the campaign who had advised those interested in administration jobs to take them, abruptly changed his mind, saying the transition "will be ugly."
After responding to a transition insider seeking names of possible appointees, Cohen said, he received what he described as an "unhinged" email from the same person saying "YOU LOST" and accusing Trump critics of trying to infiltrate the new administration's ranks.
The man Mike Pence deposed as transition team leader: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

"It became clear to me that they view jobs as lollipops, things you give out to good boys and girls, instead of the sense that actually what you're trying to do is recruit the best possible talent to fill the most important, demanding, lowest paying executive jobs in the world," Cohen said.
Rogers' departure coincided with word from Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, whose possible selection as secretary of state comforted more mainline Republicans, that he was unlikely to be chosen.
Mike Rogers was among at least four transition officials purged this week.”

http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-elec...om-trump-transition-team-20161116-gsqdw6.html