The senior Trump transition official said all three were ready for a fight, and that rumors that any would drop out were not true. To Obama officials’ public and private complaints about the president-elect’s transition process, Team Trump retorts: ‘This is the best you can expect.’ 
 
 Outgoing Obama administration officials are muttering darkly of a Team Trump unstaffed and unprepared to take on major crises on Day One. But Trump transition officials tell The Daily Beast the controlled-chaos standard in any White House handover is on track—a mantra of “we got this” combined with a little bit of “enough already!” 
 
 “I actually think it’s gone pretty well and this is the best you can expect,” said Trump transition team member James Carafano of the Heritage Foundation. That means there will be only 20 or so political appointees at most. Asked how long it could take to process Trump’s Cabinet, Durbin responded: “How long will it take to go through the financial papers of some of these billionaires? “It’s nothing to do with politics. Some of those names got to Mattis, however, especially Trump’s reported choice of businessmen Vincent Viola as secretary of the Army, and that caused friction, according to multiple officials involved in the Trump process.
– Barack Obama may have exited the White House, but some of his administration staffers are unexpectedly sticking around. New White House press secretary Sean Spicer says 50 State Department and national security officials who served under Obama will stay at their posts temporarily, while Obama appointee Thomas A. Shannon Jr. has been named as acting secretary of State pending Rex Tillerson's confirmation, the New York Times reports. The goal is to ensure "continuity of government" as just 30 of 660 executive appointments have been filled, according to the Partnership for Public Service. Politico has reviewed the last five administrations and says the last time a Cabinet was filled this slowly (only 2 of 15 nominees have gotten the OK from congressional committees) was in 1989 under George HW Bush. Politico quotes one Democratic senator as saying Trump's choice to go with "billionaires with enormously complicated financial situations, and people who have enormous conflicts of interests" has hampered things. Republicans have instead accused Democrats of dragging out the confirmation process, while some transition officials have put the blame on Chris Christie, who headed Trump's transition team before he was fired in November. The Times, however, says it has viewed the transition plan created by Christie and details what it saw, including guidelines to complete Cabinet and ambassador appointments in December. Despite the delay, one transition official doesn't get all the fuss. The transition has "gone pretty well and this is the best you can expect," he tells the Daily Beast. "If anybody expects this to be a frictionless process, they're kind of nuts."