Trump and his transition team push ahead, meeting with political allies

Job seekers, advisers and would-be allies paraded through Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, over the weekend as President-elect Donald Trump worked on filling his Cabinet.

By Sunday, Marine Gen. James Mattis had emerged as a leading contender for secretary of Defense.

Members of the Trump team took to the Sunday talk shows. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who heads Trump's transition, and the incoming chief of staff, Reince Priebus, defended Trump's Cabinet picks so far and elaborated on Trump's more controversial campaign promises, including the reinstatement of waterboarding and a ban on Muslims entering the country.

Trump, who met Saturday with Mattis, called him "the real deal" and a "brilliant, wonderful man." In a tweet early Sunday morning, Trump said "General James "Mad Dog" Mattis, who is being considered for Secretary of Defense, was very impressive yesterday. A true General's General!"

A person familiar with transition discussions, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that no decision has been reached about whether Mattis will join the Trump administration. Now a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Mattis has publicly criticized Obama's defense and national security policies.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, whom Trump met with on Saturday for more than an hour, is under "active and serious consideration" to serve as secretary of state, Pence said.

"I know the president-elect was very grateful that Governor Mitt Romney came here to New Jersey yesterday," Pence said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation." "We spent the better part of an hour together with him. And then I know that the two of them actually had some private time together. I would tell you that it was not only a cordial meeting but also it was a very substantive meeting." It is still an open question whether Romney, once a fierce critic of the president-elect, would be willing to serve in a Trump administration.

After Trump and Pence attended services at nearby Lamington Presbyterian Church in Bedminster, they began back-to-back meetings with a dozen people, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who had been ousted as chairman of Trump's transition team; former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani; and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an immigration hard-liner.

Trump spokesman Jason Miller said "there definitely is a possibility" that more Cabinet announcements could be made Monday.

More waterboarding?

In his interview on CBS, Pence did not rule out the possibility that Trump could reinstate waterboarding as an interrogation technique against terrorism suspects during his administration, a practice that Congress made illegal after its use during the George W. Bush administration.

Sen. John McCain, speaking Saturday at the Halifax International Security Forum, insisted that any attempt to bring back waterboarding, which simulates drowning, would be quickly challenged in court.

"I don't give a damn what the president of the United States wants to do or anybody else wants to do," the Arizona Republican said. "We will not torture. My God, what does it say about America if we're going to inflict torture on people?"

Pence said he has "great respect for Senator McCain" but added that "we're going to have a president again who will never say what we'll never do."

"What I can tell you is that going forward, as he outlined in that famous speech in Ohio, is that a President Donald Trump is going to focus on confronting and defeating radical Islamic terrorism as a threat to this country," Pence said.

Last December, as a candidate, Trump called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims" entering the country.

Asked about the idea of such a ban, Priebus, who appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, said "I'm not going to rule out anything, but we're not going to have a registry based on a religion."

Priebus was asked on another Sunday television show about a tweet in February by retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, whom Trump has chosen as his national security adviser. Flynn tweeted "Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL."

"Is that the official policy of the Trump administration, that fear of Muslims is rational?" asked Jake Tapper, host of the CNN show.

"Well, of course not," Priebus said. "Look, I think, in some cases, there are radical members of that religion that need to be dealt with, but certainly we make it clear that that's not a blanket statement for everyone. And that's how we're going to lead."

Conflicts of interest

Priebus also vowed that Trump's White House counsel will ensure that Trump avoids all conflicts of interest with his business ventures during his administration.

Last week, Trump held a meeting at Trump Tower with three business partners building a Trump property south of Mumbai. His daughter Ivanka Trump, a vice president in the Trump Organization and one of the family members who will be in charge of Donald Trump's businesses after he takes office, attended his meeting last week with the Japanese prime minister.

Tapper cited those examples and asked Priebus, "As White House chief of staff, you're supposed to look out for any political or ethical minefields. Is it seriously the position of the Trump transition team that this is not a huge cauldron of potential conflicts of interest?"

"Obviously we will comply with all those laws and we will have our White House counsel review all of these things," Priebus said. "We will have every 'i' dotted and every 't' crossed, and I can assure the American people that there wouldn't be any wrongdoing or any sort of undue influence over any decision-making."

Sessions criticism

Priebus also defended Trump's choice of Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican, as attorney general. Several minority and civil rights groups, including the NAACP and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, have spoken out against the selection week, sharply criticizing Sessions and referring to accusations of racism that kept him from a federal judgeship in 1986.

"It is outrageous and outright dangerous to have one of the most racist politicians in Congress, who has made it his life's mission to hurt Latinos, immigrants and African -Americans, as the head of the Department of Justice," said Cristobal J. Alex, president of the Latino Victory Project, a group dedicated to increasing the number of Hispanics in office.

Sessions has denied that he is racist or insensitive to minorities. Priebus called such criticism "very political, very unfair" during an interview with Martha Raddatz on ABC's "This Week."

Priebus said that Sessions should not be judged on accusations of statements he made decades ago and called Sessions an "unbelievably honest and dignified man who started his career working against George Wallace." In 1966, Sessions campaigned against Lurleen Wallace, who was running for governor to keep in place the policies of her husband, then-Gov. George Wallace, a staunch proponent of segregation.

But Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat and the incoming minority leader, said that Sessions "is going to need a very thorough vetting."

"Many of those statements, they're old but they're still troubling," Schumer said on "Fox News Sunday." "And the idea that Jeff Sessions, just because he's a senator, he should get through without a series of very tough questions - particularly given those early things - no way."

No change of address

Trump confirmed Sunday that future first lady Melania Trump and their 10-year-old son, Barron, will remain in New York after he becomes president, as first reported in the New York Post.

When asked about the family's relocation plans post-inauguration, Trump, 70, told reporters that he would immediately settle into the executive mansion and that Melania Trump and his youngest son, a fourth-grader at a Manhattan prep school, would move "Very soon. After he's finished with school," according to McClatchy White House Correspondent Anita Kumar. Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller confirmed that there was "obviously a sensitivity to pulling out a 10-year-old in the middle of the school year."

"The campaign has been difficult for Barron, and she is really hoping to keep disruption to a minimum," an unidentified person "close to Trump's transition team" told the New York Post in an article published online early Sunday.

Melania Trump's decision not to live in the White House, at least for now, appears unprecedented. Nearly every first lady has taken up residence there. According to the White House Historical Association, George Washington and his wife, Martha, did not live in the White House because it hadn't been built yet. Also, first lady Anna Harrison, whose husband, William Henry Harrison, was the ninth president of the United States, never moved into the executive mansion because her husband died one month after his swearing-in.

Melania Trump, 46, told People magazine in September 2015 that her primary role was not as a campaigner or a political figure but as a mother to Barron, the youngest of the five Trump children, echoing a sentiment expressed by self-described "mom in chief" Michelle Obama when her husband was first elected president.

"My husband is traveling all the time," Trump said. "Barron needs somebody as a parent, so I am with him all the time."

A rare figure on the campaign trail, Melania Trump remains a mystery to most. We know she thinks her husband has a "good heart" and is a "great negotiator," that she plans to take on cyberbullying as first lady and that the white jumpsuit she wore during her husband's presidential victory speech was designed by Ralph Lauren. But not much else.

The question of whether she planned to move to Washington after her husband's swearing-in had been batted around since the summer. Donald Trump reportedly plans to spend as much time as possible at the couple's tony penthouse at Trump Tower in Manhattan and at his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla.