People once confined to the political fringes will be at the center of power in Donald Trump
Donald TrumpThe New York Times, other outlets crying 'wolf' over Trump NSA head: DNC hack didn't affect election outcome With Trump political disruption matters more than morality MORE’s White House.
Of the people tapped so far by President-elect Trump, only one — Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus — is identified with the party’s mainstream. Priebus will be chief of staff in the Trump White House.
The other names tapped for important positions are outsiders, albeit to varying extents.
Former Breitbart News executive Steve Bannon will be chief strategist, while Gen. Michael Flynn will be national security advisor.
Liberals accuse Breitbart of trafficking in racism, misogyny and bigotry, though Bannon vigorously denies that critique. Flynn has made a number of incendiary remarks about Islam, including asserting that fear of Muslims is “rational.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions
Jeff SessionsEllison hits Trump on appointments: It's 'pretty clear' where he's going GOP rep: Trump Cabinet will have women in top positions Trump's favorability jumps since election MORE (R-Ala.), Trump’s pick to be attorney general, is perhaps the leading hardliner in the Senate on immigration, while his choice for CIA director, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) is a staunch conservative who was among Hillary Clinton
Hillary Rodham ClintonOur digital democracy has no need to Electoral College Flournoy: Mattis would be an 'outstanding' candidate for Pentagon Colbert: 'Don't give Trump an inch' MORE’s harshest critics over the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya. Pompeo opposes closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and has called Clinton’s tenure at the State Department “morally reprehensible.”Sessions and Pompeo will require Senate confirmation to their positions, but Bannon and Flynn will not.
Democrats and others on the left are horrified by the transition that is unfolding. David Axelrod, a former key aide to President Obama, tweeted on Friday that Trump was “sticking with those who brought him to the dance but to many Americans, it will seem a Monster's Ball.”
A succession of liberal groups lined up to slam the picks, urging Democrats to fight tooth and nail in the Senate to prevent the nomination of Sessions, in particular.
The NAACP said that the Alabaman’s nomination “supports an old, ugly history where Civil Rights were not regarded as core American values.”
Liberal icon Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth WarrenEllison says he'd increase voter turnout as DNC chair Sunday show questions swirl over optics, strategy of Trump picks Schumer vows 'tough vetting' for Sessions MORE (D-Mass.) issued a statement calling on Trump to rescind Sessions’s nomination. If he did not do so, she said, “it will fall to the Senate to exercise fundamental moral leadership for our nation and all of its people.”
Others on the left emphasized that their opposition to Trump’s picks went far beyond standard disagreements with an incoming Republican administration.
Isaiah Poole, communications director of People’s Action, a progressive group, said that the fear of the Trump administration was of “a whole different magnitude” than the concerns that might have been voiced if previous GOP nominees such as Mitt Romney or John McCain
John McCainNSA head: DNC hack didn't affect election outcome Pete King: Pompeo would bring 'realistic approaches' like waterboarding Week ahead: Short-term spending bill in the works | Trump Treasury talk | Rate hike clues MORE had won the presidency.
“What we are seeing is what I might call the Steve Bannonization, or the Breitbartization, of the federal government. There was a real question about whether we were going to see ‘Trump the pragmatist’ come out of hiding. The answer, based on these appointments, is clearly no.”
On the right, there is enthusiasm rather than concern. Some are delighted that Trump’s appointments suggest no trimming of his sails but, rather, a rededication to pursuing the policies that resonated with voters.
Perhaps none of those promises is so famous as the pledge to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico, and to crack down on illegal immigration more generally.
Trump insisted during his first major TV interview after the election — on CBS’s “60 Minutes” last weekend — that he would indeed build the wall, softening only in suggesting that some stretches of the border could be secured by fencing instead of concrete.
Activists opposed to illegal immigration are fired up about the Sessions pick.
“If there has been one voice in Congress that has really reflected the American public [on immigration], it has been Jeff Sessions,” said Ira Mehlman, the media director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR. The group seeks to stop illegal immigration and reduce legal immigration to “levels consistent with the national interest.”
On the broader politics of Trump’s picks, Mehlman said, “The voters made their position very clear: they voted the establishment out of power. First, Trump decimated the Republican establishment and then he decimated the most establishment candidate the Democrats had picked in a long time.”
There is still time for the complexion of Trump’s administration to change, given how few positions have been filled so far. Senior adviser Jason Miller said on a Friday conference call Friday with reporters that the president-elect was seeking to staff his White House with “the best, brightest and most qualified” people, even if they had not supported him in the past.
Romney is expected to meet with Trump on Saturday. Sen. Ted Cruz
Ted CruzOur digital democracy has no need to Electoral College Outsiders take power in Trump's Washington Ted Cruz: Election was the 'revenge of flyover country' MORE (R-Texas), Trump’s fiercest competitor during the GOP primary, has already visited the transition headquarters in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, as has South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who endorsed another rival, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio
Marco RubioOutsiders take power in Trump's Washington Dems pledge to fight Sessions nomination GOP unveils bill to block ObamaCare 'bailout' MORE.
But the wind is behind the pro-Trump, anti-establishment forces, as Haley acknowledged in a speech to the Federalist Society in Washington on Friday.
"If we as Republicans are going to lead effectively and have staying power as a governing party, we must accept that Donald Trump's election was not an affirmation of the way Republicans have conducted themselves," she said.
“The president-elect deserves tremendous credit for the way he was able to connect with the electorate, but he did not do it by celebrating the Republican Party.”
Some centrist Republicans, for the moment at least, are insisting that they are not panicked by Trump’s choices to date — even as their words hint at some tension just below the surface.
Jim Walsh, a former GOP congressman from upstate New York, insisted that “by and large they are good appointments so far.” But Walsh added that, “I don’t really know anyone who knows what his operating principles will be. I suspect he will be conservative in some respects, and in some respects he won’t.”
Walsh added that, “I think the more he learns about the job, the more complex his policies will become.”
John Feehery, a Republican strategist who is also a columnist for The Hill, said he was “not freaking out” about any of the appointments so far. Instead, Feehery said, they showed that the president-elect was keeping faith with the voters who elected him.
“I don’t understand why anyone is surprised that he is picking the people who got him to the White House. This is what people do.”
Feehery added with a wry laugh, “If I were elected president, I maybe wouldn’t have picked some of these people. But I didn’t run."
