NATION
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
East Oregonian
Trump transition team faces troubles
NEW YORK (AP) — Hidden from the
public in his Manhattan high-rise, Donald
Trump huddled Tuesday with Vice Presi-
dent-elect Mike Pence as he tried to fill out
key posts in his Cabinet. But the transition
team appeared to be straining under the
enormous challenge of setting up a new
administration.
Former Rep. Mike Rogers, a respected
Republican voice on national security
issues, announced he was quitting the
transition effort. An apparent clerical
oversight effectively halted the Trump
team’s ability to coordinate with President
Barack Obama’s White House.
Trump himself broke with protocol
Tuesday night by leaving Trump Tower
without his press contingent. The transi-
tion team had told reporters and photog-
raphers there would be no movement by
the president-elect for the rest of the day
and night, but less than two hours later a
presidential-style motorcade rolled out
of the building, suggesting that Trump
was on the move and leaving reporters
scrambling.
Trump turned up at Club 21, a midtown
Manhattan restaurant where he was having
dinner with his family. Reporters were not
allowed inside, and Trump spokeswoman
Hope Hicks asked that they respect that he
was having an evening out with his family.
With no public statements from Trump
on the transition itself, his allies engaged
in an unusual round of public speculation
about his potential appointments —
including their own futures — as the
president-elect and his aides weighed the
nation’s top national security posts.
Former New York Mayor Rudy
Giuliani seemed to be angling for secretary
of state. But Trump’s transition team was
reviewing Giuliani’s paid consulting work
for foreign governments, which could
delay a nomination or bump Giuliani to
a different position, according to a person
briefed on the matter but not authorized to
speak publicly about it.
Giuliani founded his own firm,
Giuliani Partners, in 2001, and helped
businesses on behalf of foreign govern-
ments, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and
Venezuela. He also advised TransCanada,
which sought to build the controversial
Keystone XL pipeline, and helped the
maker of the painkiller drug OxyContin
settle a dispute with the Drug Enforcement
Administration.
A Trump official said John Bolton, a
former U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, remained in contention for
secretary of state. Bolton has years of
foreign policy experience, but he has
raised eyebrows with some of his hawkish
stances, including a 2015 New York Times
op-ed in which he advocated bombing
Iran.
Businessman Carl Icahn disclosed
on Twitter, based on conversations with
the president-elect, that Trump was
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Vice President-elect Mike Pence walks past the media as he leaves Trump
Tower with his wife Karen on Tuesday in New York.
considering Steve Mnuchin, a former
Goldman Sachs banker, and Wilbur Ross,
a billionaire investor, to lead the Treasury
and Commerce departments.
Pence, now running the transition team,
ignored questions from reporters both as
he entered Trump Tower, a thick binder
tucked under his arm, and as he left six
hours later. He took over from New Jersey
Gov. Chris Christie, who spent months
running transition operations before his
demotion last week.
The switch has slowed Trump’s ability
to coordinate with the White House.
Pence has yet to sign a memorandum of
understanding facilitating interactions
between his team and Obama adminis-
tration officials. Christie had signed the
document, but Pence’s promotion makes
it invalid.
A person familiar with the transition
efforts said different factions in Trump’s
team “are fighting for power.”
Indeed, Trump effectively created
two power centers in his White House
even before taking office. He named
Republican
National
Committee
Chairman Reince Priebus as his chief of
staff and flame-throwing media mogul
Steve Bannon as his chief strategist, but
called them “equal partners.” Trump’s
son-in-law Jared Kushner is also deeply
involved in the transition, creating another
layer of uncertainty about who is making
decisions.
“That organization right now is not
designed to work,” according to the
person close to the efforts, who like others
involved in the transition, insisted on
anonymity because they were not autho-
rized to discuss the internal process.
Former GOP national security official
Eliot Cohen blasted Trump’s team on
Twitter, calling them “angry, arrogant.”
Cohen opposed Trump during the
campaign, but in recent days, he said
those who feel duty-bound to work in a
Trump administration should do so. But
he said Tuesday that after an exchange
with Trump’s team, he had “changed my
recommendation.”
Meanwhile, Trump made time to call
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key to
pass on his sympathies for the powerful
earthquake there that killed two people.
With Trump’s team divided, embold-
ened Republicans on Capitol Hill moved
forward with a united front. House
Speaker Paul Ryan, a lukewarm Trump
supporter during the campaign, unani-
mously won his GOP colleagues’ votes for
another term at the helm of the House. He
told fellow Republicans he had Trump’s
support, and heralded “the dawn of a new,
unified Republican government.”
Democrats, reeling from sweeping
defeats in the election, focused their ire
on Bannon, a man celebrated by the white
nationalist movement.
“If Trump is serious about seeking
unity, the first thing he should do is rescind
his appointment of Steve Bannon,” Senate
Minority Leader Harry Reid said. “As
long as a champion of racial division is a
step away from the Oval Office, it would
be impossible to take Trump’s efforts to
heal the nation seriously.”
Trump’s team has defended Bannon
and tried to put its focus on filling the top
national security jobs. Trump’s selections
will be the first signals to anxious interna-
tional allies about the direction he plans to
take U.S. foreign policy.
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, a loyal
Trump ally and immigration hard-liner, is
said to be a contender for defense secre-
tary.
Trump also is considering Richard
Grenell as U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, which would bring some experi-
ence and diversity to his nascent admin-
istration. Grenell, who served as U.S.
spokesman at the U.N. under President
George W. Bush, would be the first openly
gay person to fill a Cabinet-level foreign
policy post.
Page 7A
BRIEFLY
Obama struggles
to explain
Trump’s rise
ATHENS, Greece
(AP) — President
Barack Obama pointed
Tuesday to fears of
globalization, economic
uncertainty, suspicion of
elites — anything but his
own performance — as
he grasped for ways to
explain the unexpected
rise of Donald Trump.
Opening his final
overseas trip as president,
Obama acknowledged he
was surprised by Trump’s
victory — and said it
stemmed from deep-
seated anxieties among
working-class Americans
that government must
do better to address. But,
he added paradoxically:
“That’s been my agenda
for the last eight years.”
“People seem to think
I did a pretty good job,”
Obama told reporters,
citing his strong approval
numbers. “So there is
this mismatch, I think,
between frustration and
anger.”
Obama’s diagnosis
of what went wrong
for Hillary Clinton and
Democrats offered little
in the way of a road map
for Democrats to avoid
a similar fate in future
elections. Democrats
reeling from their
resounding defeat last
week are divided about
what went wrong and
even more divided about
how to fix it.
ACLU, other
groups report
post-election
surge of
donations
NEW YORK (AP)
— In the week since
Donald Trump’s election,
there’s been a dramatic
surge in donations to
the American Civil
Liberties Union,
Planned Parenthood, the
Sierra Club and other
progressive organizations
which have pledged to
resist any moves by the
new administration that
would undercut their
causes.
Within hours after
the election was called,
the ACLU unleashed
feisty fundraising
appeals, including one
warning that if Trump
implemented certain
campaign promises,
“We’ll see him in court.”
The result, according
to the ACLU, has been
the largest surge of
support in its 94-year
history, including roughly
120,000 donations
totaling more than $7.2
million.
Bring your own
weed: Denver
allows pot in
bars, eateries
DENVER (AP) —
Denver has approved
a first-in-the-nation
law allowing people to
use marijuana at bars,
restaurants and other
public spaces such as art
galleries or yoga studios.
The catch: Patrons
could use pot as long as
it isn’t smoked and the
locations would have
to seek the approval of
neighbors.
Denver voters
approved Proposition
300 as eight other states
legalized marijuana for
medical or recreational
purposes last week. The
Denver vote was so close
that it took an entire week
for supporters to claim
victory and opponents to
concede.
The city measure takes
effect immediately, but it
has a lot of caveats.
First, interested bars
and restaurants would
have to show they have
neighborhood support
before getting a license to
allow marijuana use. In
addition, patrons would
have to bring their own
weed to comply with
state law banning the sale
of both pot and food or
drink at a single location.
Patrons at participating
bars could use pot inside
as long as it isn’t smoked.
The law does provide for
the possibility of outside
smoking areas.
Facebook’s fake news problem
NEW YORK (AP) —
Facebook is under fire for
failing to rein in fake and
biased news stories that some
believe may have swayed
the presidential election. Its
predicament stems from this
basic conundrum: It exercises
great control over the news
its users see, but it declines
to assume the editorial
responsibility that traditional
publishers do.
On Monday, Facebook
took a minor step to address
the issue, clarifying its adver-
tising policy to emphasize
that it won’t display ads on
sites that run information
that is “illegal, misleading
or deceptive, which includes
fake news.” The company
said it was merely making
explicit a policy that was
already implied.
Its move followed a similar
step by Google earlier on
Monday, after the search giant
acknowledged that it had let a
false article about the election
results slip into its list of
recommended news stories.
In the case of both compa-
nies, the aim is to discourage
fake-news sites by depriving
them of revenue.
Facebook is also said to
be facing brewing internal
turmoil over its influence and
what it can and should do
about it.
Employees have expressed
concern over Facebook’s role
in spreading misinformation
and racist memes largely
associated with the alt-right,
according to The New York
Times and BuzzFeed. Some
have reportedly formed an
unofficial task force to inves-
tigate the role the company
played in the election.
Founder and CEO Mark
Zuckerberg, however, insists
that Facebook remains a
neutral technology platform
where its users can share
anything they want, with only
a tiny fraction of it fake or
problematic.
Last week, Zuckerberg
called the idea that voters
might have been influenced
by what they saw on Face-
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AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File
In this June 2014 file photo, a man walks past a mural in
an office on the Facebook campus in Menlo Park, Calif.
book — fake, uber-partisan
stories, such as a false one
about Pope Francis endorsing
Donald Trump for president
— “pretty crazy.”
People update to Face-
book so frequently that the
company has no choice but
to filter what everyone sees in
their news feeds — the main
artery through which users
see posts from their friends,
family, businesses, news
sources and celebrities they
follow.
The company’s secret
algorithms are designed to
deliver the posts from friends
and other sources that will
draw people in and lead them
to read and click and “like”
and share — “maximizing
their engagement,” in Face-
book’s jargon.
Facebook
frequently
tweaks its algorithm to
improve engagement. Various
changes have been aimed at
shutting out sites that promote
clickbait and other garbage
that users say they don’t want
to see, even as they click on it
and share away. When users
are surrounded by posts they
want to see, they’re more
likely to stick around.
That’s key to Facebook’s
advertising business. But it
can be problematic when
it comes to false but highly
interesting posts.
Facebook’s news feed
“maximizes for engagement.
As we’ve learned in this
election, bulls--t is highly
engaging,” former Facebook
product designer Bobby
Goodlatte wrote in an
Election Day post. “Highly
partisan, fact-light outlets” on
both the right and the left, he
wrote, “have no concern for
the truth, and really only care
for engagement. ... It’s now
clear that democracy suffers
if our news environment
incentivizes bulls--t.”
Social media companies
today have to acknowledge
that they are news organi-
zations, said Jeffrey Herbst,
president and CEO of the
Newseum, a journalism
museum in Washington. “Not
like news companies of the
20th century,” he added. “But
not just pipes where people
get their news. They deter-
mine what is news.”
In a post Saturday night,
Zuckerberg rejected that idea.
“News and media are not
the primary things people
do on Facebook, so I find
it odd when people insist
we call ourselves a news or
media company in order to
acknowledge its importance,”
he wrote. “Facebook is mostly
about helping people stay
connected with friends and
family.”
Back in 2013, Zuckerberg
said he wanted Facebook to
be people’s “own personal
newspaper,” one that delivers
the stories most interesting
and important to them. That’s
still the company’s goal —
though minus any reference to
itself as a media company of
any kind.
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