Donald Trump’s very public auditions for the job of next US secretary of state look set for an extended run, as surprise new hopefuls were added the invitation list to ride the golden elevator to the top of Trump Tower.
Among the new names floated in press leaks on Monday were Jon Huntsman, former Utah governor and ambassador to China, Rex Tillerson, the chief executive officer of the Exxon Mobil oil company and Nato’s former commander in Europe, and the retired admiral James Stavridis.
The expanded search will come as a disappointment to the four men who were on the shortlist last week: the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, the former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the retired general David Petraeus and the Republican senator Bob Corker. They seemed headed for a final until the weekend, when Trump, a former reality TV star and a master of suspense, unveiled a new season with a fresh cast of characters.
Not all the new names are necessarily in line for the secretary of state job. Juli Hanscom, a spokeswoman for the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where Stavridis is the dean, confirmed that he would be going to New York to talk to the president-elect on Thursday but added: “There has been no discussion of a position in the Trump administration.”
Stavridis, a registered independent, was vetted by the Hillary Clinton campaign in July as a possible running mate. The former supreme allied commander in Europe (Saceur) derided Trump’s foreign policy, after the candidate gave an interview to the New York Times suggesting US protection for Nato allies could depend on if “they had met their obligations to us”.
“I can picture the scene: national security advisor Tiffany Trump walks into the Oval Office with a load of charts on trade policy, basing agreements, cost-sharing, and balance of payments – all while Russian troops are pouring into Estonia,” Stavridis wrote in Foreign Policy.
“Unfortunately, his reckless proposals would deeply damage the underpinnings of the global system and work to America’s profound disadvantage.”
Huntsman wavered in his loyalties over the course of the campaign, publicly withdrawing support from Trump after a video surfaced in October in which he boasted about sexually assaulting women. Huntsman urged Trump to drop out of the race and let his running mate compete for the presidency instead.
“I’m around to serve my country. I’ve always believed in that, and any way I can help I can always stand up, salute and do what I can,” Huntsman told NBC News on Monday. He defended Trump’s controversial decision to hold a phone conversation with the Taiwan president, Tsai Ing-wen, which broke a 37-year diplomatic norm and upset Beijing.
“It provides space and leverage in the overall US-China relationship. It’s been tried and talked before, but what is different this time is you’ve got a businessman who has become president of the United States, who understands real leverage and how to find real leverage in that relationship,” he said.
Huntsman, who speaks Mandarin Chinese, was appointed ambassador to China by Barack Obama in 2009 and served there until 2011 when he resigned and returned to the US to stage a presidential campaign.
Forbes magazine noted that if Huntsman were nominated as secretary of state, he would be the third scion of a billionaire family to be picked for Trump’s cabinet. The 56-year-old Utah politician’s father founded Huntsman Corp, a Texas-based chemical company. Like Romney, Huntsman comes from an established and wealthy Mormon family.
Tillerson, the Exxon executive, is due to meet Trump on Tuesday. He is a prominent conservative businessman who has generally funded Republican campaigns, but did not contribute to the Trump presidential bid.
Also mentioned in press leaks as being under consideration for the secretary of state job are the Californian Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher, an outspoken supporter of Vladimir Putin (who recalled over the weekend a drunken arm-wrestling match in the early 1990s with the future Russian leader) and a Democratic senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, who backed Clinton in the campaign. Manchin met the president-elect last week, and was touted earlier as a possible energy secretary.
Also on the newly extended list is John Bolton, an ultra-conservative former ambassador to the UN, who was thought to have dropped out of contention, but who visited Trump in New York on Friday and is said to be still under consideration.
“It’s true he’s broadened the search,” Trump’s aide, Kellyanne Conway, said on Sunday. “He’s very fortunate to have interest among serious men and women, all of whom need to understand that their first and foremost responsibility as secretary of state would be to implement and adhere to the president-elect’s America first foreign policy and be loyal to his view of the world.”
Trump’s cabinet hiring process has been far more public than previous presidential transitions, so although it has not taken longer than its predecessors, to many observers it has felt that way.
“The time it has taken is not unusual. The fact he is talking to several candidates is not unusual. The fact he is turning it into a parade is quite different,” said Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. “One of the reasons people normally do it quietly is that you can avoid humiliating and embarrassing the people who don’t get the job or are asked to serve in a more junior capacity.”
The public way Trump has gone about it and the risk of wounded pride, Walt said, “is quite short-sighted, because the last thing you want is other Republicans or VIPs out there bad-mouthing you from the outside”.
“Trump more than anything else views the transition as public relations. It is dominating the news cycles,” Walt said. “He has turned it into an audience-participation spectacle, which creates enormous suspense.”
Part of that spectacle so far has been a line of public figures who had failed to support or even derided the president-elect during the campaign, entering Trump Tower in recent days and then emerging, singing his praises.
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