US President-elect Donald Trump and some of his advisers sought to quell reports of disorganisation on the transition team and fierce internal battles among its members.
Starting early Wednesday morning, Trump once again took to Twitter to reject the reports of chaos and infighting, saying in a tweet-storm that the process of selecting members of his future Cabinet was going “so smoothly”, Efe news reported.
That stance was echoed by two other people acting as advisers to the transition team and who in recent days had severely limited their remarks about the progress in crafting the group of staffers that will accompany Trump to the White House.
According to transition team communications director Jason Miller, Trump is taking a “very structured, methodical approach” in designing his future administration, although so far only two important posts have been publicly announced.
Officials are “making good on President-elect Trump’s promise that we’re not going to have any lobbyists involved with the transition efforts. When we talk about draining the swamp, this is one of the first steps. And so, the bottom line is, we’re going to get the transition team where we need it to be,” Miller said.
Some of the alleged internal fights have been attributed to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who – according to some versions – may have pushed for the removal of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as head of the transition team.
However, according to Trump and his spokesmen, none of that is true, everything is proceeding in a very “organised” way and, as Miller insisted on Wednesday, there is a firm plan in place to fill posts in the new administration.
The spokesman said that anyone who said otherwise was in all likelihood a disgruntled former member of the transition team or someone who was “bitter” about the result of the election.
Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s last campaign chief and now a top adviser to his transition team, said that reports of disorganization within the team were untrue, although she did say that probably no announcements of new appointments would be made on Wednesday..
So far, the President-elect’s team has announced the appointment of Republican National Committee chief Reince Priebus as Trump’s future chief of staff and Brietbart News director Stephen Bannon as the mogul’s chief strategist and senior adviser.
The president-elect’s spokespeople said that it takes time to assemble a federal government and the team is approaching the matter in all seriousness.
Miller said that the team is incorporating people who are ready to implement Trump’s vision for America, a mission – he added – that Vice President-elect Mike Pence knows very well.
Pence on Sunday replaced Christie as the head of the transition team and on Tuesday he met for about six hours with Trump and his advisors at Manhattan’s Trump Tower, although on Wednesday he was in Washington visiting with Vice President Joe Biden.