Here’s what we’re watching in transition world today:
🗓️ What we’re watching
- Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, just four days after Trump announced his decision to impose 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico. The two leaders shared a “wide-ranging discussion,” according to Trudeau’s team.
- Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on BRICS nations if they attempt to abandon the U.S. dollar as their reserve currency on Saturday.
- President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, on Sunday evening, a move that Trump called “an abuse and miscarriage of Justice.”
🚨What’s up with the nominees?
- Several Cabinet nominees and appointees faced bomb threats at their homes last Wednesday, including House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, HUD secretary pick Scott Turner, Agriculture secretary pick Brooke Rollins, and a relative of former Rep. Matt Gaetz. The FBI said it is working with law enforcement partners to look into the matter.
- Former staffers for Trump’s choice for HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. questioned whether he is up for the job, throwing doubt on his ability to be a manager. “I have no idea how he’s going to run a full department, if that’s how he ran the campaign,” one former campaign staffer said.
- A New Yorker article on Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for Defense secretary, details a whistle-lower report from his time at Concerned Veterans for America that is placing more scrutiny on the former Fox News host.
📝ICYMI: Here are the latest Cabinet picks
- The president-elect on Saturday picked Kash Patel, former chief of staff to the secretary of Defense during Trump’s first term, to lead the FBI. Patel is a loyal Trump supporter, previously calling for a purge of Trump’s opponents from intelligence agencies.
- Real estate mogul Charles Kushner was chosen as ambassador to France on Saturday. Kushner was pardoned by Trump in 2020 for 16 counts of tax evasion, one count of retaliating against a cooperating witness and one count of making false statements to the FEC. He is also the father of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former senior adviser to Trump during his first term.
- Massad Boulos was picked Sunday to be Trump’s senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. Boulos is a prominent Lebanese American businessman as well as the father of Michael Boulos, Tiffany Trump’s husband.
- Trump appointed former national security aide and retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg as a special envoy to Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday, tasking him with ending the Russia-Ukraine war.
