WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President-elect Donald Trump (all times EST):



2:40 p.m.



President-elect Donald Trump's transition team is pushing back against Democrats' calls for all Cabinet nominees to release their tax returns. Video: Donald Trump wants James 'Mad Dog' Mattis for Secretary of Defense

At a 'thank you' victory rally in Cincinnati Thursday evening, President-elect Donald Trump announced he would "appoint" former Marine Corps General James Mattis as Secretary of Defense. Trump said he was supposed to unveil that Monday, so he jokingly warned the Cincinnati crowd to “not tell anyone.”

The raucous rallies during the Trump campaign road show often had the feel of a rock concert, and Thursday night in Cincinnati had all the hallmarks of a reunion tour: Trump took a veiled swipe at fellow Republicans. He remembered his general election foe by joking, “We had fun fighting Hillary, didn’t we?” He boasted about the size of his victory and repeatedly bashed the media. And the crowd chanted “Build the Wall” and “Lock Her Up.”

The president-elect had eased up on those campaign promises recently, suggesting the U.S.-Mexico border wall could be part-fence and indicating no willingness to pursue criminal charges against Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. He has been quoted as saying, “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”

But to serve as defense secretary, Mattis would need Senate confirmation — and a waiver of a law that bans uniformed military officers from serving in that post for seven years after leaving active duty. “We are going to appoint ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis as our secretary of defense,” Trump told cheering supporters in Cincinnati, referring by nickname to the four-star Marine general who headed the US Central Command, with authority over troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. “He’s one of us.”

But while Kanowitz largely praised Trump’s initial moves as president-elect, he visibly recoiled at the suggestion that he might pick Mitt Romney as secretary of state, saying the 2012 Republican presidential nominee was “someone we should leave behind as we move forward.”

Others at the rally also expressed some hesitancy at Trump’s picks, with a few suggesting that choosing former Goldman Sachs partner Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary was not exactly fulfilling Trump’s campaign promise to “Drain the Swamp” and eliminate corruption and elitism from Washington. “What happened today in Indiana, we’re going to do that all over the country,” he said in Cincinnati.
President-elect Donald Trump names retired United States Marine Corps general James Mattis as United States Secretary of Defense.