President-elect Donald Trump on Friday chose Washington insider Donald McGahn to be his White House counsel, giving him the job of untangling potential conflicts of interest that the New York businessman's presidency may present.

McGahn, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, had been the chief counsel of the Trump campaign and was one of the few members of the Republican establishment to embrace the outsider candidate.

While Trump during his campaign frequently promised to "drain the swamp" of the political establishment in Washington, McGahn has an extensive history in the capital, especially in conservative politics.

McGahn served for years as counsel to the National Republican Congressional Committee, the arm of the Republican Party that oversees campaigns for the US House of Representatives.

During his time at the FEC, McGahn was an advocate for loosening restrictions on campaign spending and was widely praised for opening up more of the commission’s internal processes to the public.

Along with providing guidance on ethics issues, the White House Counsel's office advises the president on the legality of proposed executive orders and legislation passed by Congress and vets potential administration appointees, including Supreme Court justices.

“Don has a brilliant legal mind, excellent character and a deep understanding of constitutional law,” Trump said in a statement.

Trump, a businessman who has never held public office, has real estate and leisure holdings all over the world, sparking concerns that his investments could colour his decision-making in office. Trump has said that he will hand over day-to-day responsibilities of running his company to his children, but he has resisted calls to place his assets in a blind trust.

Trump also has expressed interest in finding a way to bypass a federal anti-nepotism law in order to give his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a formal White House role.

When Trump met with President Barack Obama earlier this month, Obama advised Trump during their Oval Office chat that his White House counsel would be an important job.

Trump has vowed to reverse Obama’s executive orders in a number of areas, including immigration and gun control. He also must nominate someone to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. McGahn will be tasked with shepherding the nominee through confirmation hearings.

Trump, who is spending the Thanksgiving holiday weekend at his home in Palm Beach, Florida, also continued to round out his national security team on Friday, naming Kathleen Troia "K.T." McFarland, as his deputy national security adviser.

McFarland served in three Republican administrations and was an aide to Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. A strong backer of Trump during the election campaign, McFarland will work with Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Trump’s pick as his national security adviser.

Neither position requires confirmation by the U.S Senate.

The appointments came amid reports that Trump’s aides are divided about his choice for secretary of state, with some preferring 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who harshly criticized Trump during the campaign, and others backing Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor.

Transition officials on Friday downplayed any internal tension, calling reports of discord “overblown.”

Officials said that after returning to New York, Trump will meet with several more potential cabinet picks on Monday, including John Allison, the former chief executive of BB&T Corp who has been mentioned as a possible choice for U.S. Treasury secretary, and Paul Atkins, a former commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission.</s>Donald Trump has flip-flopped on a lot of things since the election.

The climate-change denier now has an “open mind” on the subject. The “big, beautiful wall” with Mexico might be more chain-link fence. And never mind about locking up Hillary Clinton.

But the U.S. president-elect is steadfast about one thing: his determination to keep the global business empire that bears his name intact and firmly in family hands when he moves to the White House.

Breaking with decades of presidential precedent, Mr. Trump is brazenly mixing affairs of state and his own business interests, even as he prepares for his January inauguration. And the billionaire real-estate mogul is bragging about how it will all make him even richer.

“The brand is certainly a hotter brand than it was before. I can’t help that, but I don’t care,” the relentless self-promoter told The New York Times this week.

These blurred lines could lead Mr. Trump into a minefield of conflicts where no president has dared go before. His business dealings with foreign governments may even be illegal under an obscure section of the U.S. Constitution. Allies and enemies alike will forever wonder who’s in the White House – the head of state, a profiteer-in-chief or some murky hybrid, exposing the country to unprecedented financial and national security risks. The only way out, ethics experts say, is to sell everything or put his empire beyond family control in a truly blind trust.

“It’s a crazy maelstrom,” says Stuart Gilman, a former United Nations diplomat whose company, Global Integrity Group, of Manassas, Va., advises governments and organizations on ethics and governance. “I see unbelievable problems. The first year will look like an ethics nightmare, and the president could care less.”

Mr. Trump is unbowed. He insists Americans knew full well what they were getting when they elected him – as he rationalized in a recent tweet: “Prior to the election it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world. Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!”

His position is clear. He’s telling Americans that he has many obvious conflicts of interest, but they don’t matter because he’s too wealthy to let them cloud his judgment and because he’ll step back from actively running the Trump Organization, his international conglomerate.

The early signs aren’t encouraging that Mr. Trump is willing or able to compartmentalize his many and multilayered conflicts of interest. And they suggest that, far from not caring – as he insists – his branded business empire remains as important to him as ever.

Trump-owned condos, resorts and golf courses have become convenient backdrops for the cameras as he forges the team and policies of his new administration. And behind closed doors it’s business as usual. His daughter Ivanka, an executive in his organization, sits in on meetings and phone calls with foreign leaders, while his son-in-law Jared Kushner, a real estate developer, advises him on policy. And the president-elect met with British politician Nigel Farage in recent days, urging him to oppose a windmill farm that would mar the view from two Trump golf courses in Scotland.

The world has taken note: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has just appointed a real-estate developer who pays millions of dollars to put the Trump name on a tower in Manila as his special envoy in Washington.

Meanwhile, foreign diplomats say they are booking rooms at one of Mr. Trump’s newest ventures – a hotel located five blocks from the White House on land leased from the U.S. government – to ingratiate themselves with the incoming administration.

Mr. Trump acknowledges many of these conflicts will inevitably follow him into the White House. “The president of the United States is allowed to have whatever conflicts he wants,” he insisted.

Technically, he’s right. No U.S. law bars Mr. Trump from continuing to be involved in his diverse business interests, which include hotels, condos, golf courses and various brand licensing deals. Presidents are specifically exempted from provisions of the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, which requires members of Congress, cabinet secretaries and other top officials to recuse themselves from any government business that affects their personal financial dealings.

But Mr. Trump is heading into uncharted waters. There have been wealthy men in the White House before (most usually are), but none who ran a global business empire built on the value of their own name. And for decades, every U.S. president has placed his assets in a blind trust, run by independent trustees – something Mr. Trump is saying he won’t do.

The closest comparison internationally is Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, who openly exploited his ownership of a media empire to further his political aims.

Since Richard Nixon, U.S. presidents have gone to extraordinary lengths specifically to avoid potential conflicts. Barack Obama sold all his assets and converted them into treasury bonds and index funds.

Mr. Trump, on the other hand, seems proud of his conflicts – and his wealth.

“In theory, I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly,” he said. “And there’s never been a case like this where somebody’s had … this kind of asset and this kind of wealth, frankly.”

Integrity experts strongly disagree. They insist that not putting everything he owns in a blind trust isn’t just unethical, it could pose a threat to national security.

A prominent group of governance organizations and experts, including White House ethics advisers to Mr. Obama and George W. Bush, sent a letter this week to Mr. Trump, urging him to sell all his assets and put the fortune into a “genuine” blind trust, not one run by his three eldest children, Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric. Without that separation, they argue, the future president would have a clear window into his business empire – and his children into the affairs of state.

“There is no acceptable alternative – and your duties to the American people now must prevail over your personal ties to the Trump Organization businesses,” they told Mr. Trump. “Failure to follow this course of action will create conflicts of interest of unprecedented magnitude.”

So far, there has been no direct response to the letter from Mr. Trump or his transition team, according to Jordan Liebowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, one of the signatories.

“When they exempted the president from conflict-of-interest laws, they figured the president does so many things, so everything could be considered a conflict,” Mr. Liebowitz explained. “But they were never considering someone with business interests like this. Everything Trump does is put up in giant gold letters.”

The problem isn’t just the opportunity to line his pockets by enhancing the Trump brand. As president, he’ll be confronted with multiple scenarios, where people won’t know if he’s acting as president or business mogul. There’s the continuing audit of his tax returns, which could put his pick to run the U.S. Internal Revenue Service finding problems with his boss’s tax filings. And there are the continuing multibillion-dollar settlement talks between Deutsche Bank, a German financial giant with $120-million (U.S.) in loans to Trump properties, and the Department of Justice over allegations that the bank sold toxic mortgages before the housing crash. The interests of Trump the borrower might clash with those of Trump the president, who will make as many as 300 political appointments at the Department of Justice in the coming months.

Similarly, imagine a dispute involving the new Trump hotel in Washington, where Mr. Trump would be both landlord and tenant because the property is owned by the federal government.

“There is a lot here that makes people very uncomfortable,” Mr. Liebowitz said.

Mr. Trump’s ties to foreign properties, developers and lenders may prove to be the trickiest ethical challenge of all.

“The fear is that he will endanger American national and financial security to benefit the Trump organization’s bottom line,” Mr. Liebowitz argued. “I’m not saying he’s going to do that, but there is the spectre of that, especially in dealing with foreign countries.”

Among Mr. Trump’s global assets are roughly 10 deals in which developers pay him millions of dollars to use the Trump name on their buildings, including planned projects in countries where the lines between business and government are often murky – in the Middle East, China and former Soviet bloc countries. Over all, Mr. Trump has done business in 18 foreign countries, including hotel and condo towers in Toronto and Vancouver.

He has ties in countries where the United States has sensitive national security interests, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and China. His properties in many of these countries would become obvious security risks, merely because they bear his name. Imagine if the U.S. was embroiled in a political showdown or a conflict with a country where the Trump Organization has assets. Would Mr. Trump put U.S. lives at risk to protect a Trump property?

None of this is strictly illegal – just fraught with ethical red flags. And unlike ordinary citizens, presidents can’t be prosecuted criminally for breaking laws; the only recourse is impeachment by Congress or civil suits.

But Mr. Trump’s foreign dealings could land him in hot water with the U.S. Constitution – a document his presidential oath of office demands he “preserve, protect and defend.”

An obscure section of the Constitution known as the Emoluments Clause prohibits all elected officials, including the president, from accepting payments of any kind from foreign governments or officials.

Any number of payments to the Trump Organization could, arguably, be deemed unconstitutional, including foreign diplomats staying at his hotels, payments for use of his brand by foreign government-owned companies or even the now-enhanced value of some of his foreign properties.

That raises the ultimate question: Would a Republican-led Congress dare to impeach one of its own and say, “You’re fired”?

Just what is the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution?

“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Personal net wealth: $3.7-billion (U.S.), No. 156 on Forbes magazine’s 2016 list.

The Trump Organization has assets of: $4-billion

It has a debt of at least $650-million; annual revenues of $490-million; holdings include interests in 50 U.S. properties, 18 golf courses,15 hotels and roughly 500 limited liability companies, plus name-licensing deals on condos, apartments and hotels in a dozen other countries. Roughly 65 per cent of Trump assets are in New York City real estate, including its flagship Trump Tower, where the presidential transition team is preparing the incoming administration.

Sources: The New York Times, The Economist, Forbes, Trump Organization

The eldest child of Donald Trump and former wife Ivana Trump is executive vice-president of development and acquisitions for the Trump Organization and will help run the company while his father is in the White House. He is married to Vanessa Trump, and they have five children. Donald Jr. has an economics degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He was an adviser and constant presence during the election campaign. He has come under fire for a Paris meeting during the campaign with a group of Syrians aligned with Russia in the civil war – apparently acting as an envoy for his father.

The daughter of Donald and Ivana Trump, she too is executive vice-president of development and acquisitions for the Trump Organization. The former fashion model also has her own line of jewellery, clothing, shoes and accessories. She is married to Jared Kushner, and they have three children. Like her brothers Donald and Eric, Ivanka was a close campaign adviser. She introduced her father at the Republican convention and helped craft his family policies. In recent days, she attended a meeting between her father and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as well as joining a phone conversation with Argentine President Mauricio Macri. (Media reports in Argentina said a stalled Trump project in Buenos Aires came up during the conversation, but the accounts were denied by both men.) Her fashion company used a Trump family postelection appearance on the CBS program 60 Minutes to promote a $10,800 gold-and-diamond bracelet from her line that she wore on the show.

He is the youngest child of Donald and Ivana Trump. He is married to Lara Yunaska. Like his older siblings, he is executive vice-president of development and acquisitions for the Trump Organization. Eric has a finance and management degree from Georgetown University, overseas the Trump Organization’s 18 golf clubs and separately owns the Trump Winery in Charlottesville, Va. During the campaign, he was a regular surrogate for his father at rallies and interviews.

Ivanka Trump’s husband emerged as a powerful adviser to Mr. Trump on the campaign trail, on the transition team and perhaps even in the White House. Mr. Kushner is a real-estate developer and owner of the New York Observer newspaper group. The president-elect says he wants to make Mr. Kushner a special envoy to the Middle East, charged with helping forge peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Mr. Trump has called him “a very smart guy … a quality person,” adding, “I think he can be very helpful.” That would make a Trump son-in-law an administration insider, although that Trump team insists it should not trigger federal anti-nepotism laws because Mr. Kushner would be hired but would work without pay as an adviser. It could still put Mr. Kushner in an awkward ethical spot – married to a Trump Organization executive and working for the White House.

She is the president-elect’s fourth child, a daughter from his second marriage, to actress Marla Maples. Tiffany grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania this year with a double major in sociology and urban studies. She also spoke at July’s Republican convention, praising her father’s support throughout her life.

Barron is the only child of Donald and Melania Trump. He attends the $45,000-a-year Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in Manhattan, where he will stay until the end of the 2016-17 school year. That means he and his mother may not move into the White House immediately after the Jan. 20 inauguration. He has been part of the family entourage at a range of Trump events and videos. If he follows in the path of his older siblings, he has a good shot at becoming executive vice-president of development and acquisitions for the Trump Organization.</s>You apparently don’t need intelligence to make America great again.

President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly been dodging classified intelligence briefings and only received two since his election win over two weeks ago — a notably lower frequency as compared to his predecessors. Mike Pence, meanwhile, has received briefings almost every single day since the election, according to both current and former U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Post on Wednesday.

“Trump has a lot of catching up to do,” a senior official who receives daily briefings told the newspaper.

As mandated, a team of military officials and intelligence analysts has been prepped to deliver daily briefings on global conflicts and security threats to the President-elect. But even though he has no actual national security experience, Trump has only showed up for two briefings — one a couple of days after his election win, and another on Tuesday before he departed to Florida for Thanksgiving.(nydailynews.com)…[+]</s>I think Donald Trump is as shocked as we are that he got elected (“The rise of Donald Trump,” Election 2016, Nov. 21). I also think that he actually didn’t want the job. He thrived on being an obnoxious critic, but it backfired: now he’s the one that will have to endure a lot of criticism. He can no longer abuse the system as a parasitic con man: he has become the system. And he’s going to make his earlier predecessor, George W. Bush, look like a scholar.

I am identified with one of the most reviled groups in society. I am a straight white male. I have caused all the problems in the world. I am uneducated, ignorant, misogynistic, racist and homophobic? I am none of those things. If you are subjected to sexism, racism or homophobia, I will be the first one to defend you. However, if you make assumptions about me based on my colour or gender, that’s on you. If you choose to be a victim, I will not help you. If you are full of loathing for me and spew that hatred through the media, I will turn you off. The media reporting on the election put the blame on straight white males as if we are a homogeneous group. If I were American, I would have probably swallowed hard and voted for Trump, just to show my frustration with being the convenient whipping boy for everyone’s problems. Nobody in the political elite in the States, particularly the Democratic Party, cared. That’s on them. That is one reason why Donald Trump is president-elect. Revenge is sweet.

You have to give Donald Trump credit. He proved it is possible to lie and deceive your way to the White House. Chances are he will not build a border wall that Mexico will pay for, his health care plan will not be cheaper and better than Obamacare, he will not deport millions of illegal immigrants and his tax plan will only benefit the rich and raise the deficit like most Republican presidents have. President-elect Trump is due for a big reality check and so is the American public.

Your writers spent half an entire issue, page after page, tearing Donald Trump apart again. We all have come to our own conclusion and need not get hammered with a literary mallet telling us of the apocalypse Donald Trump will bring upon us all. Are we now going to read every week about all the wrongs Trump will be doing, how he is incapable of doing anything right? Nobody, even Donald Trump can be as bad, mischievous and stupid as you make him out to be and get elected president.

Do the working-class citizens of the U.S. really think Trump will be their champion for tax reform, health care, fairness? He’s a billionaire who’s made his billions off the backs of other people. He’s hidden his taxes. To build his buildings, he bought his steel from China. Isn’t that a glaring contradiction? Do the American disenfranchised men without jobs really believe he’ll bring back the auto industry? It’s a desperate hope from the hopeless. It was the American business elite who sent the manufacturing to China and Mexico. Why? Cheap labour. Do the Americans remember the slogan “greed is good”? The 2008 financial meltdown was on the Republican watch. Let’s not kid ourselves that an incipient, underlying bias of misogyny and racism did not have a major impact in this election. We all better hope Trump was “just kidding” with all his rhetoric. If he wasn’t, God help America. Good luck, you’re going to need it. The world is watching. Guaranteed entertainment for the next four years.

After reading the last several issues of Maclean’s, I only have this bit of advice: GET OVER IT. The U.S. election is over, the campaign is dead and the people have spoken. The voters of the U.S.A. have soundly and democratically elected a new president, whether we like it or not. How about burying your barbs, spears and hatchets, and looking to the future, and giving the new administration a chance to see what really develops.

I am intrigued by so many reflections on how Trump is going to behave as president. It reminds me of the old adage: if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and waddles like a duck, you’ve got a duck! If he looks like Trump, talks like Trump and behaves like Trump, you’ve got Donald Trump!

When advance polls were open in the U.S., news reports were saying that the turnout was heavily Democratic. Publicizing these results ahead of Election Day could have assured Democrats that if they did not have time to vote, the election would turn out the way they wanted. And it could have inspired Republicans to make sure that they made it to the election booth. Advance polls are needed, but any results should be kept under wraps until all Election Day voting is completed across the country.

How could a person of Donald Trump’s character be chosen to lead the most progressive and powerful country in the world? He spoke to Christians. The “progressives” in the U.S., just as in Canada, want freedom of religion for everyone—except Christians! “Thou shalt not kill” is part of our Bible, which is every bit as important to us Christians as the Quran or Talmud are to other faiths. Abortion is murder. On immigration he said the most important people in a country are the citizens that are already there, not the new ones that want to come. If you want to come here because you like what we have, don’t try to change it to reflect that which you left. Integration of immigrants created the country we enjoy. Creating many little countries within a big one will destroy us. Obviously, Trump pushed many of the right buttons. “Sunny ways, my friends”? I think there is a storm brewing.

Watching the U.S. election results, I kept waiting for Rod Serling to appear.

Allen Abel capped his excellent series of postcards from behind the lines in the U.S. election with an enlightening piece on why America elected Trump, and it was written well before Election Day (“There’s only one president Clinton,” International, Nov. 14). Now that all the pundits are wallowing in rationalization, I suggest a second and third read of the Mr. Abel’s able narrative.

Anyone inclined to wax lyrical at the prospect of president-elect Donald Trump running America as a business (“Trump talk,” Letters, Nov. 21) should take a closer look at Trump’s track record when running his own businesses. Time and again he ran them into the ground and had to be bailed out—and this despite his well-documented practice of stiffing his own workers and suppliers. Is that really who you want running the North American economy?

I appreciate the letters complaining about your criticism of Donald Trump and his attitude toward women and minorities. It’s nice too know I am not the only racist male chauvinist pig in Canada.

The treatment of Adam Capay is unacceptable and so shocking that it is difficult to process (“1,560 days,” National, Nov. 14). I have lost faith in the Canadian justice system. Excuses won’t do. Whomever has overall responsibility for this atrocity must immediately end it, and all the other human rights violations of a similar nature, and never allow anything like this to happen again.

We are besieged hourly with news, often disturbing, from around the world. Few of these events have the impact of the distressing story about Adam Capay’s incarceration in solitary confinement for four years without a trial in a Canadian prison. We are outraged when Canadians are jailed for no rational reason in countries that do not respect basic human rights. But Canada? The individuals responsible need to be brought to account and procedures changed to prevent this from ever happening again. Shame on us!

Thank you for publishing the tribute to Yaaka Markusie Yaaka (The End, Nov. 14). Yaaka was truly a great Canadian. I developed a close friendship with him starting in 2011 as I conducted my Ph.D. research in Kangiqsujuaq, Que. I experienced some of the greatest moments of my life—such as mussel picking under the sea ice and goose hunting in the interior of Nunavik—because of him. Yaaka was a member of a generation of Inuit that grew up in the “old ways” but also had to learn how to navigate the world of qallunaat—white people. Of course, as your article mentioned, negotiating this cultural divide wasn’t always easy. Yaaka’s experiences led him to be profoundly concerned for the future, particularly about the environment and the well-being of Inuit youth. He was fully devoted to these causes, particularly to Inuit cultural education. But however resilient and dedicated they may be, people like Yaaka cannot solve these problems on their own, nor should they have to. As Canadians, we all have a responsibility to help mend the grievous economic, environmental, and health disparities that afflict the Indigenous peoples of our country.</s>ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump’s disavowal this week of white supremacists who have cheered his election as president hasn’t quieted concerns about the movement’s impact on his White House or whether more acts of hate will be carried out in his name.

Members of the self-declared “alt-right” have exulted over the Nov. 8 results with public cries of “Hail Trump!” and reprises of the Nazi salute. The Ku Klux Klan plans to mark Trump’s victory with a parade next month in North Carolina. Civil rights advocates have recoiled, citing an uptick in harassment and incidents of hate crimes affecting African-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Muslims, Latinos, gays, lesbians and other minority groups since the vote.

The president-elect has drawn repeated criticism for being slow to offer his condemnation of white supremacists. His strongest denunciation of the movement has not come voluntarily, only when asked, and he occasionally trafficked in retweets of racist social media posts during his campaign.

Further, Trump has named Stephen Bannon, the conservative media provocateur who shaped the final months of Trump’s campaign, as a White House chief strategist who will work steps from the Oval Office. Bannon’s appointment has become as a flashpoint for both sides.

Trump’s detractors and his “alt-right” supporters broadly agree on one thing: It may not even matter what Trump himself believes, or how he defines his own ideology, because his campaign rhetoric has emboldened the white identity politics that will help define his administration.

“Those groups clearly see something and hear something that causes them to believe he is one who sympathizes with their voice and their view. … Donald Trump has to take responsibility for that,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, a black Democrat. He was among 169 members of Congress who signed a letter opposing Bannon’s White House appointment.

White nationalist leader Richard Spencer said he believes Trump, Bannon and the “alt-right” are “all riding in the same lane.” Spencer explained that neither Trump nor Bannon is a movement “identitarian,” Spencer’s preferred term for his racially driven politics. But Spencer said Trump’s election validates Spencer’s view that America must reject multiculturalism and “political correctness” in favor of its white, Christian European heritage.

Spencer’s group, the National Policy Institute, drew headlines for their recent gathering where some attendees mimicked the Nazi salute as they feted Trump. Spencer told The Associated Press the salutes were “ironic exuberance” that “the mainstream media doesn’t get.”

But at the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks incidents of anti-Semitism, Oren Segal said it is part of a disturbing postelection atmosphere tied to Trump’s 17-month campaign.

Before, Segal said, it wasn’t “surprising” for the ADL to get calls about a swastika, the Nazi insignia, defacing public or private property. “What’s surprising now,” he said, “are the references to the campaign” in the incidences. “‘Make American White Again’ … ‘Go Trump’ with the swastika,” he said. “That is unique.”

Trump was asked about the rash of incidents during a postelection interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes.” Trump said he was “saddened,” and he looked into the camera and said, “Stop it.” But Trump has steadfastly defended his hiring of Bannon, who previously led Breitbart News and in July described it as a “platform for the alt-right” — just a month before he took the job running the Republican nominee’s campaign.

Jared Taylor, editor of the white supremacist magazine “American Renaissance,” said Trump bears some responsibility for his pitched rhetoric, which included describing Mexican immigrants as “rapists” at the outset of his campaign and proposing a ban on all Muslim immigrants. But Taylor said Trump is still unfairly maligned as a white supremacist and racist because he “cares about Americans already here.”

But white supremacist imagery was a common sight at Trump rallies. Pepe the frog, a cartoon character appropriated by the white supremacist movement on social media, appeared on dozens of T-shirts and signs. The “Make America Great Again” motto was seen by some as a call back to the nation’s simpler, whiter, past. While the businessman’s campaign never actively courted votes from the movement, it did recognize the long-term fears that some whites feel about immigration.

Taylor insisted, “There’s nothing Ku Klux Klan about any of this.”

As part of his prolific Twitter use, he has retweeted white nationalist accounts and a famous quote of Benito Mussolini, the 20th century fascist leader of Italy, saying “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” In February, Trump declined to repudiate former Klan leader David Duke during a CNN interview. Afterward, Trump blamed the move on a faulty earpiece, only to come back days later and offer an explicit condemnation.

He has several times fallen back on the excuse of merely retweeting when asked about his controversial social media behavior. In February, he retweeted a message from the account of a neo-Nazi, which came shortly after he retweeted false crime statistics that dramatically overstated the number of whites killed by blacks.

“Bill, am I gonna check every statistic?” he asked Fox News host Bill O’Reilly at the time. “All it was is a retweet. It wasn’t from me.”

While Trump is quick to blast his foes on Twitter — in recent days that includes The New York Times and the cast of the Broadway musical “Hamilton” — he has yet to proactively condemn racist acts his win has inspired. His eldest son, Don Jr., has used Twitter to liken Syrian refugees to a poisoned bowl of Skittles candy, and he has posted images of Pepe. And Trump’s rise to political celebrity came as he peddled the falsehood that the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, was born in Africa, not in the United States.

In an interview Tuesday with The New York Times, Trump did denounce the white supremacist movement when asked, saying “I condemn them. I disavow, and I condemn.” But he has yet to convene the traditional news conference held by a president-elect in the days after winning where he could potentially face more pointed questions about it.

The ADL’s Segal called Trump’s answers when questioned an important step to “allay any illusions” white supremacists have about their place in a Trump administration.

But Ben Jealous, a former national president of the NAACP, went a step further, saying Trump should “pull a George Wallace.” The segregationist Alabama governor ran for president on white identity politics but years later publicly apologized for his views.

Trump “shouldn’t just disavow the worst behavior of others,” Jealous said, “but take accountability for the worst behavior he’s engaged in him himself.”

Reach Barrow on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP and Lemire and http://twitter.com/JonLemire</s>ATLANTA – Donald Trump’s disavowal this week of white supremacists who have cheered his election as president hasn’t quieted concerns about the movement’s impact on his White House or whether more acts of hate will be carried out in his name.

Members of the self-declared “alt-right” have exulted over the Nov. 8 results with public cries of “Hail Trump!” and reprises of the Nazi salute. The Ku Klux Klan plans to mark Trump’s victory with a parade next month in North Carolina. Civil rights advocates have recoiled, citing an uptick in harassment and incidents of hate crimes affecting African-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Muslims, Latinos, gays, lesbians and other minority groups since the vote.

The president-elect has drawn repeated criticism for being slow to offer his condemnation of white supremacists. His strongest denunciation of the movement has not come voluntarily, only when asked, and he occasionally trafficked in retweets of racist social media posts during his campaign.

Further, Trump has named Stephen Bannon, the conservative media provocateur who shaped the final months of Trump’s campaign, as a White House chief strategist who will work steps from the Oval Office. Bannon’s appointment has become as a flashpoint for both sides.

Trump’s detractors and his “alt-right” supporters broadly agree on one thing: It may not even matter what Trump himself believes, or how he defines his own ideology, because his campaign rhetoric has emboldened the white identity politics that will help define his administration.

“Those groups clearly see something and hear something that causes them to believe he is one who sympathizes with their voice and their view. … Donald Trump has to take responsibility for that,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, a black Democrat. He was among 169 members of Congress who signed a letter opposing Bannon’s White House appointment.

White nationalist leader Richard Spencer said he believes Trump, Bannon and the “alt-right” are “all riding in the same lane.” Spencer explained that neither Trump nor Bannon is a movement “identitarian,” Spencer’s preferred term for his racially driven politics. But Spencer said Trump’s election validates Spencer’s view that America must reject multiculturalism and “political correctness” in favour of its white, Christian European heritage.

Spencer’s group, the National Policy Institute, drew headlines for their recent gathering where some attendees mimicked the Nazi salute as they feted Trump. Spencer told The Associated Press the salutes were “ironic exuberance” that “the mainstream media doesn’t get.”

But at the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks incidents of anti-Semitism, Oren Segal said it is part of a disturbing postelection atmosphere tied to Trump’s 17-month campaign.

Before, Segal said, it wasn’t “surprising” for the ADL to get calls about a swastika, the Nazi insignia, defacing public or private property. “What’s surprising now,” he said, “are the references to the campaign” in the incidences. “’Make American White Again’ … ‘Go Trump’ with the swastika,” he said. “That is unique.”

Trump was asked about the rash of incidents during a postelection interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes.” Trump said he was “saddened,” and he looked into the camera and said, “Stop it.” But Trump has steadfastly defended his hiring of Bannon, who previously led Breitbart News and in July described it as a “platform for the alt-right” – just a month before he took the job running the Republican nominee’s campaign.

Jared Taylor, editor of the white supremacist magazine “American Renaissance,” said Trump bears some responsibility for his pitched rhetoric, which included describing Mexican immigrants as “rapists” at the outset of his campaign and proposing a ban on all Muslim immigrants. But Taylor said Trump is still unfairly maligned as a white supremacist and racist because he “cares about Americans already here.”

But white supremacist imagery was a common sight at Trump rallies. Pepe the frog, a cartoon character appropriated by the white supremacist movement on social media, appeared on dozens of T-shirts and signs. The “Make America Great Again” motto was seen by some as a call back to the nation’s simpler, whiter, past. While the businessman’s campaign never actively courted votes from the movement, it did recognize the long-term fears that some whites feel about immigration.

Taylor insisted, “There’s nothing Ku Klux Klan about any of this.”

Related: Breitbart: The website that now rules America

As part of his prolific Twitter use, he has retweeted white nationalist accounts and a famous quote of Benito Mussolini, the 20th century fascist leader of Italy, saying “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” In February, Trump declined to repudiate former Klan leader David Duke during a CNN interview. Afterward, Trump blamed the move on a faulty earpiece, only to come back days later and offer an explicit condemnation.

He has several times fallen back on the excuse of merely retweeting when asked about his controversial social media behaviour. In February, he retweeted a message from the account of a neo-Nazi, which came shortly after he retweeted false crime statistics that dramatically overstated the number of whites killed by blacks.

“Bill, am I gonna check every statistic?” he asked Fox News host Bill O’Reilly at the time. “All it was is a retweet. It wasn’t from me.”

While Trump is quick to blast his foes on Twitter – in recent days that includes The New York Times and the cast of the Broadway musical “Hamilton” – he has yet to proactively condemn racist acts his win has inspired. His eldest son, Don Jr., has used Twitter to liken Syrian refugees to a poisoned bowl of Skittles candy, and he has posted images of Pepe. And Trump’s rise to political celebrity came as he peddled the falsehood that the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, was born in Africa, not in the United States.

Related: Don’t allow the ‘alt-right’ to disguise hate in linguistic semantics

In an interview Tuesday with The New York Times, Trump did denounce the white supremacist movement when asked, saying “I condemn them. I disavow, and I condemn.” But he has yet to convene the traditional news conference held by a president-elect in the days after winning where he could potentially face more pointed questions about it.

The ADL’s Segal called Trump’s answers when questioned an important step to “allay any illusions” white supremacists have about their place in a Trump administration.

But Ben Jealous, a former national president of the NAACP, went a step further, saying Trump should “pull a George Wallace.” The segregationist Alabama governor ran for president on white identity politics but years later publicly apologized for his views.

Trump “shouldn’t just disavow the worst behaviour of others,” Jealous said, “but take accountability for the worst behaviour he’s engaged in him himself.”</s>Donald Trump is spending his first Thanksgiving as President-elect at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, where he is joined by his family for the holiday.

Trump wished Americans a happy Thanksgiving in a series of tweets Thursday, including a video message calling on Americans to unite during the holiday season. "Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. We will, together, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" Trump tweeted.

Here's a look back at Trump's Thanksgiving tweets throughout the years:</s>Play Facebook

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Donald Trump is continuing to build out his administration this holiday weekend.

The president-elect tapped Kathleen Troia "K.T." McFarland, a former government official and one-time Fox News analyst, as a deputy national security adviser, a transition official told NBC News.

A Fox News spokesperson confirmed Friday that McFarland's contract has been terminated on the heels of Trump offering her the position, a necessary step in order for her to serve in his administration.

Trump also has asked attorney Donald McGahn to serve as his White House counsel, a top transition source confirmed. The news was first reported by Reuters. McGahn, a partner at Jones Day, is Trump's campaign lawyer and is currently advising the transition effort.

Kathleen Troia 'KT' McFarland poses at her home in New York, on Mar 6, 2006. JASON DECROW / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Politico has reported that McGahn, who has longstanding familial ties to the Trump organization and an "inside the Beltway" background as a former chairman of the FEC, may be tasked with putting distance between the president-elect and his myriad of business interests, which critics have argued could present unprecedented number of conflicts of interest and potential Constitutional crisis for the incoming administration.

“Don has a brilliant legal mind, excellent character and a deep understanding of constitutional law,” said President-elect Trump in a statement on Friday. “He will play a critical role in our administration, and I am grateful that he is willing to serve our country at such a high-level capacity.”

Meanwhile, following Trump's selections of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as U.N. ambassador and billionaire businesswoman Betsy DeVos for education secretary this week, McFarland marks just the third female appointment to his administration — featuring a Cabinet that has been criticized in some circles for being disproportionately white and male.

Don McGahn, general counsel for the Trump transition team, gets into an elevator in the lobby at Trump Tower in New York, on Nov.15, 2016. Drew Angerer / Getty Images

The Oxford-educated McFarland, with her experience working in the Ford and Reagan administrations in national security and defense positions, also represents a break from some of the more inexperienced names which Trump has floated for some of his administration's top jobs.

Ironically, McFarland was once seeking to run against the candidate who Trump just narrowly defeated in the presidential election — Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

In New York's U.S. Senate race in 2006, McFarland sought the GOP nomination that year to challenge Clinton's run for re-election, but fell short in the primary. Clinton would be re-elected that year in a landslide.

Her selection will likely be far less controversial than Trump's choice for national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who has been condemned for his extreme anti-Muslim rhetoric in the past, accused of conflicts of interest because of his lobbying relationships with foreign governments and described as having an unstable temperament by some of his former colleagues.

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Still, neither his position, nor McFarland's or McGahn's, are subject to Senate approval.

Flynn tweeted Friday that he was happy to have McFarland on board: "So proud & honored to have KT McFarland as part of our National Security team."

So proud & honored to have KT McFarland as part of our National Security team. She will help us #MAGA — General Flynn (@GenFlynn) November 25, 2016

“I am proud that KT has once again decided to serve our country and join my national security team,” said President-elect Trump in an official statement, which boasted praise for McFarland's appointment from the likes of former Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman and Robert C. “Bud” McFarlane, President Ronald Reagan’s former National Security Adviser. “She has tremendous experience and innate talent that will complement the fantastic team we are assembling, which is crucial because nothing is more important than keeping our people safe.”

“The American people chose Donald J. Trump to lead them for a reason,” added Ms. McFarland in her own official statement, released by the Trump team. “He has the courage, brilliance and energy to Make America Great Again, and nobody has called foreign policy right more than President-elect Trump, and he gets no credit for it. I’m honored and humbled that he has asked me to be part of his team.”</s>President-elect Donald Trump on Friday chose Washington insider Donald McGahn to be his White House counsel, giving him the job of untangling potential conflicts of interest that the New York businessman’s presidency may present.McGahn, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, had been the chief counsel of the Trump campaign and was one of the few members of the Republican establishment to embrace the candidate.

During his campaign Trump frequently promised to “drain the swamp” of the political establishment in Washington but McGahn has an extensive history in the capital, especially in conservative politics.

He served for years as counsel to the National Republican Congressional Committee, the arm of the Republican Party that oversees campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives.

During his time at the FEC, he was an advocate for loosening restrictions on campaign spending, and was widely praised for opening up more of the committee’s internal processes to the public.

Trump, a businessman who has never held public office, has real estate and leisure holdings all over the world, sparking concerns that his investments could color his decision-making in office. He has said that he will hand over day-to-day responsibilities of running his company to his children but has resisted calls to place his assets in a blind trust.

Trump also has expressed interest in figuring out how to bypass a federal anti-nepotism law in order to give his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a formal White House role.

When Trump met with President Barack Obama earlier this month, Obama advised Trump during their Oval Office chat that his White House counsel would be an important job.

Trump, who is spending the Thanksgiving holiday weekend at his home in Palm Beach, Florida, also continued to round out his national security team on Friday by naming Kathleen Troia “K.T.” McFarland, his deputy national security adviser.

McFarland, who served in three Republican administrations and was an aide to Henry Kissinger in the 1970s, will work with Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Trump’s pick as his national security adviser.

Neither position requires confirmation by the U.S Senate.

The appointments came amid reports that Trump’s aides are divided about his choice for secretary of state, with some preferring 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who harshly criticized Trump during the campaign, and others backing Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor.

Transition officials on Friday downplayed any internal tension, calling reports of discord “overblown.”

Officials said after returning to New York, Trump will meet with several more potential cabinet picks on Monday, including John Allison, the former CEO of BB&T Corp who has been mentioned as a possible choice for U.S. Treasury secretary, and Paul Atkins, a former commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission.</s>ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump’s disavowal this week of White supremacists who have cheered his election as president hasn’t quieted concerns about the movement’s impact on his White House or whether more acts of hate will be carried out in his name.

Members of the self-declared “alt-right” have exulted over the Nov. 8 results with public cries of “Hail Trump!” and reprises of the Nazi salute. The Ku Klux Klan plans to mark Trump’s victory with a parade next month in North Carolina. Civil rights advocates have recoiled, citing an uptick in harassment and incidents of hate crimes affecting African-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Muslims, Latinos, gays, lesbians and other minority groups since the vote.

The president-elect has drawn repeated criticism for being slow to offer his condemnation of White supremacists. His strongest denunciation of the movement has not come voluntarily, only when asked, and he occasionally trafficked in retweets of racist social media posts during his campaign.

Further, Trump has named Stephen Bannon, the conservative media provocateur who shaped the final months of Trump’s campaign, as a White House chief strategist who will work steps from the Oval Office. Bannon’s appointment has become as a flashpoint for both sides.

Trump’s detractors and his “alt-right” supporters broadly agree on one thing: It may not even matter what Trump himself believes, or how he defines his own ideology, because his campaign rhetoric has emboldened the White identity politics that will help define his administration.

“Those groups clearly see something and hear something that causes them to believe he is one who sympathizes with their voice and their view. … Donald Trump has to take responsibility for that,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, a Black Democrat. He was among 169 members of Congress who signed a letter opposing Bannon’s White House appointment.

White nationalist leader Richard Spencer said he believes Trump, Bannon and the “alt-right” are “all riding in the same lane.” Spencer explained that neither Trump nor Bannon is a movement “identitarian,” Spencer’s preferred term for his racially driven politics. But Spencer said Trump’s election validates Spencer’s view that America must reject multiculturalism and “political correctness” in favor of its White, Christian European heritage.

Spencer’s group, the National Policy Institute, drew headlines for their recent gathering where some attendees mimicked the Nazi salute as they feted Trump. Spencer told The Associated Press the salutes were “ironic exuberance” that “the mainstream media doesn’t get.”

But at the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks incidents of anti-Semitism, Oren Segal said it is part of a disturbing postelection atmosphere tied to Trump’s 17-month campaign.

Before, Segal said, it wasn’t “surprising” for the ADL to get calls about a swastika, the Nazi insignia, defacing public or private property. “What’s surprising now,” he said, “are the references to the campaign” in the incidences. “‘Make American White Again’ … ‘Go Trump’ with the swastika,” he said. “That is unique.”

Trump was asked about the rash of incidents during a postelection interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes.” Trump said he was “saddened,” and he looked into the camera and said, “Stop it.” But Trump has steadfastly defended his hiring of Bannon, who previously led Breitbart News and in July described it as a “platform for the alt-right” — just a month before he took the job running the Republican nominee’s campaign.

Jared Taylor, editor of the White supremacist magazine “American Renaissance,” said Trump bears some responsibility for his pitched rhetoric, which included describing Mexican immigrants as “rapists” at the outset of his campaign and proposing a ban on all Muslim immigrants. But Taylor said Trump is still unfairly maligned as a White supremacist and racist because he “cares about Americans already here.”

But White supremacist imagery was a common sight at Trump rallies. Pepe the frog, a cartoon character appropriated by the White supremacist movement on social media, appeared on dozens of T-shirts and signs. The “Make America Great Again” motto was seen by some as a call back to the nation’s simpler, Whiter, past. While the businessman’s campaign never actively courted votes from the movement, it did recognize the long-term fears that some Whites feel about immigration.

Taylor insisted, “There’s nothing Ku Klux Klan about any of this.”

As part of his prolific Twitter use, he has retweeted White nationalist accounts and a famous quote of Benito Mussolini, the 20th century fascist leader of Italy, saying “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” In February, Trump declined to repudiate former Klan leader David Duke during a CNN interview. Afterward, Trump blamed the move on a faulty earpiece, only to come back days later and offer an explicit condemnation.

He has several times fallen back on the excuse of merely retweeting when asked about his controversial social media behavior. In February, he retweeted a message from the account of a neo-Nazi, which came shortly after he retweeted false crime statistics that dramatically overstated the number of Whites killed by Blacks.

“Bill, am I gonna check every statistic?” he asked Fox News host Bill O’Reilly at the time. “All it was is a retweet. It wasn’t from me.”

While Trump is quick to blast his foes on Twitter — in recent days that includes The New York Times and the cast of the Broadway musical “Hamilton” — he has yet to proactively condemn racist acts his win has inspired. His eldest son, Don Jr., has used Twitter to liken Syrian refugees to a poisoned bowl of Skittles candy, and he has posted images of Pepe. And Trump’s rise to political celebrity came as he peddled the falsehood that the nation’s first Black president, Barack Obama, was born in Africa, not in the United States.

In an interview Tuesday with The New York Times, Trump did denounce the White supremacist movement when asked, saying “I condemn them. I disavow, and I condemn.” But he has yet to convene the traditional news conference held by a president-elect in the days after winning where he could potentially face more pointed questions about it.

The ADL’s Segal called Trump’s answers when questioned an important step to “allay any illusions” White supremacists have about their place in a Trump administration.

But Ben Jealous, a former national president of the NAACP, went a step further, saying Trump should “pull a George Wallace.” The segregationist Alabama governor ran for president on White identity politics but years later publicly apologized for his views.

Trump “shouldn’t just disavow the worst behavior of others,” Jealous said, “but take accountability for the worst behavior he’s engaged in him himself.”

Reach Barrow on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP and Lemire and http://twitter.com/JonLemire
President-elect Donald Trump appoints KT McFarland as Deputy National Security Advisor and Donald McGahn as White House Counsel.