Washington Post: Trump keeps eye on Romney for State Dept

The Washington Post newspaper said President-elect Donald Trump is for now unswayed by the extraordinarily public revolt by some of his top advisers and allies over the possible choice of Mitt Romney as secretary of state.

Romney plans to have a private dinner Tuesday with Trump, who is said to be intrigued by the notion of reconciling with one of his fiercest Republican antagonists — even as he also weighs rewarding the loyalty of former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani with one of the administration’s most prized jobs or selecting a decorated military officer in David H. Petraeus.

Trump is looking for assurances that Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee who has championed a muscular and at times interventionist foreign policy, could be trusted to defend and promote Trump’s markedly different worldview in capitals around the globe.

Giuliani has openly campaigned for the job and has told friends that he is likely to get it. 

But Trump’s team has determined that it may be challenging and even unlikely for Giuliani to win Senate confirmation: His web of international business interests and the millions of dollars he has earned in paid speeches and consulting work for foreign entities would come under scrutiny, while Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), one of 10 Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee, has threatened to block Giuliani’s nomination.

Romney and Giuliani have been seen as co-favorites to lead the State Department, but Trump this week is expanding his search to include other candidates, chief among them Petraeus, a retired Army general and former CIA director.

Transition officials said Trump has long admired Petraeus and described his candidacy as formidable, despite the baggage he would carry into any confirmation battle because of his 2015 conviction for mishandling classified information. 

Petraeus’s public service career came to an end amid revelations that he had an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, and shared classified information with her.

On the campaign trail, Trump played down the significance of Petraeus’s conviction, repeatedly arguing that it was “a fraction” of what Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton had gotten away with by using a personal email server as secretary of state.

Petraeus and Trump met Monday afternoon in New York for about an hour, with Vice President-elect Mike Pence joining them for part of the session. 

As the general exited Trump Tower following their session, he praised Trump, telling reporters that he “showed a great grasp of a variety of the challenges that are out there and some of the opportunities as well. Very good conversation and we’ll see where it goes from here”.

Source: MENA