WASHINGTON: Any apprehensions about dissonance, rift, mixed messages, and crossed signals in a forthcoming Trump cabinet were allayed by the
President-elect
on Friday after he asked his nominees to feel free to express themselves.
"All of my Cabinet nominee are looking good and doing a great job. I want them to be themselves and express their own thoughts, not mine!" Trump declared in a tweet, after some of his cabinet picks took positions during confirmation hearings this week that ran contrary to the views he expressed during the presidential campaign and after.
Among them were Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson, who said he believes intelligence reports that Russia was involved in cyber attacks designed to influence the
US elections
, a view that Trump has accepted reluctantly and feebly.
Tillerson also said he opposed a potential ban on Muslims coming into the US and any type of Muslim registry, a hardline position Trump expressed during his presidential campaign while occasionally throwing in caveats. The former Exxon executive also said he supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which Trump has opposed and pledged to abandon.
Defence Secretary nominee
James Mattis and CIA Director pick
Mike Pompeo
echoed Tillerson expressing reservations about Russia, in keeping with nearly half-century of establishment thinking in the United States that Trump has tried to upturn.
"I'm all for engagement, but we also have to recognize reality in terms of what Russia is up to," Mattis said at his confirmation hearing on Thursday as Moscow remained centerstage in the week running up to Inauguration Day.
Mattis also backed NATO, calling it "the most successful military alliance probably in modern world history, maybe ever," and embraced the Iran nuclear deal, saying it was a workable prospect. Trump has trashed both.
Also diverging from Trump's position were nominees for key internal and external security positions - Homeland Security prospect John Kelly and CIA Director pick Mike Pompeo.
Kelly too opposed any creation of a Muslim database, saying "I don't think it's ever appropriate to focus on something like religion as the only factor" when looking to prevent terrorism, while Pompeo broke with Trump on several issues, including water-boarding (which Trump backs) and Russian malignancy, putting him in conflict with the man it allegedly helped put in office and who he will report to.
How all this play out in a Trump cabinet is hard to foresee given the president-elect's immodest temperament of believing he knows everything better than anyone else (he once boasted he knows more than the generals). But his Friday morning tweet asking his nominees to "express their own thoughts, not mine!" could be an encouraging sign.
In fact, even his vice-president elect Mike Pence diverged from his position more than once during the campaign and yet they winged it through the election.
Vice-president
Joe Biden is among those who believe Trump could be a different man once he comes into office and gets used to the intelligence-briefings of the kind the US spookdom has long plied the establishment with. Call it arbitrariness or not embracing dogma, but Trump's constantly shifting position on issues is something Washington has never seen.
"It's hard to know what the president-elect's position is, because his style is so different than any president or president-elect that I've been associated with," Biden mused in a conversation with reporters on Thursday.