Jason Miller says he won’t take the job in order to spend more time with family
Though Mr. Trump’s practice has been to disparage the press at rallies, in Mr. Miller he had elevated someone who largely took a less-confrontational, more traditional approach in dealings with reporters.
.. Mr. Miller said his duties as communications director will be handled by incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer. Hope Hicks, the campaign press secretary, will serve as director of strategic communications and Dan Scavino will serve as the director of social media.
What It’s Like to Apply for a Job in Donald Trump’s White House
“He was approaching this from a deal standpoint, and he wanted to know if he was on the right track,” said Mr. Perdue, who is being considered for secretary of agriculture and wore a tie adorned with tractors to the meeting. “He believes that we in the United States have been sort of patsies over the years in the way we’ve dealt with our foreign competitors and international trade — and I agree with him — and he wanted to know what I would do about it.”
Mr. Trump’s interview style in the real world is direct but conversational, according to people who have sat opposite him. He did not take notes or appear to refer to a set list of questions, but he did have dossiers on his visitors and often displayed intricate knowledge of their backgrounds and experience. He rarely drank or ate. He kept his suit jacket on. In New York, he liked to show off the sweeping views of Central Park visible over his shoulder.
.. Lou Barletta, Republican of Pennsylvania, who has offered himself up as a secretary of transportation or labor — said that the president-elect often asked open-ended questions and had little patience for meandering answers.
“If you filibuster, he’ll cut you off,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who was initially in the running to be Mr. Trump’s secretary of state but has since said he is not interested in a cabinet post. “He wants to know what you can do for him.”
.. Mr. Trump has been more hands-on in the interviews than his predecessors were. George W. Bush rarely spoke in person to more than one finalist for each cabinet post, said Clay Johnson III, who directed his transition effort in 2000. President Obama also interviewed a single finalist for each post in most cases, usually in a one-on-one discussion meant to confirm an already well-established conclusion that the candidate would be right for the job, said Dan Pfeiffer, a senior transition official in 2008.
.. Mr. Trump wants a gut sense for a potential hire, people close to him said, prizing personal chemistry and an entrepreneurial spirit. But he also leans on the judgment of trusted advisers — particularly Mr. Pence and his elder daughter, Ivanka Trump — when assessing a candidate.
.. “I told him as we sat down in the room that, ‘President-elect Trump, you shouldn’t ask African-American voters what they have to lose, as you did in your campaign; what you should have said, and what you should be talking about now is, this is what you have to gain from a Trump administration,’” Mr. Johnson said.
Mr. Trump seemed to take the advice. He said, “ ‘So I should focus on the aspirational aspects,’ ” Mr. Johnson said.
.. Mr. Trump, who prizes loyalty, also wanted to know precisely what the job seekers did to propel him into the White House.
Trump Campaigned Against Lobbyists, but Now They’re on His Transition Team
President-elect Donald J. Trump, who campaigned against the corrupt power of special interests, is filling his transition team with some of the very sort of people who he has complained have too much clout in Washington: corporate consultants and lobbyists.
Jeffrey Eisenach, a consultant who has worked for years on behalf of Verizon and other telecommunications clients, is the head of the team that is helping to pick staff members at the Federal Communications Commission.
.. Mr. Trump was swept to power in large part by white working-class voters who responded to his vow to restore the voices of forgotten people, ones drowned out by big business and Wall Street. But in his transition to power, some of the most prominent voices will be those of advisers who come from the same industries for which they are being asked to help set the regulatory groundwork.
.. “This whole idea that he was an outsider and going to destroy the political establishment and drain the swamp were the lines of a con man, and guess what — he is being exposed as just that,” said Peter Wehner, who served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush before becoming a speechwriter for George W. Bush.
.. But in other areas, most notably the energy sector, the transition team advisers are far from independent.
Mr. Catanzaro’s client list is a who’s who of major corporate players — such as the Hess Corporation and Devon Energy — that have tried to challenge the Obama administration’s environmental and energy policies on issues such as how much methane gas can be released at oil and gas drilling sites, lobbying disclosure reports show.
.. David Malpass, the former chief economist at Bear Stearns, the Wall Street investment bank that collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis, is overseeing the “economic issues” portfolio of the transition
.. Mr. Eisenach, as a telecom industry consultant, has worked to help major cellular companies fight back against regulations proposed by the F.C.C. that would mandate so-called net neutrality — requiring providers to give equal access to their networks to outside companies. He is now helping to oversee the rebuilding of the staff at the F.C.C.
.. Dan DiMicco, a former chief executive of the steelmaking company Nucor, who now serves on the board of directors of Duke Energy, is heading the transition team for the Office of the United States Trade Representative. Mr. DiMicco has long argued that China is unfairly subsidizing its manufacturing sector at the expense of American jobs.
.. “This is one of the reasons you had such anger among voters — people rigging the system, gaming the system,” Mr. Freed said. “This represents more of the same.”
A King in His Castle: How Donald Trump Lives, From His Longtime Butler
If the cap was white, the staff noticed, the boss was in a good mood. If it was red, it was best to stay away.
.. Mr. Senecal, with horn-rimmed glasses, a walrus mustache and a white pocket kerchief in his black jacket, seems to reflect his boss’s worldview: He worries about attacks by Islamic terrorists and is critical of Mr. Trump’s ex-wives.
.. Mr. Senecal encounters Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey lounging on a couch under the living room’s 21-foot gold-leafed ceiling, or chatting with Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama as he exits the luxurious Spanish Room.
.. In the early years, Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka slept in the same children’s suite that Dina Merrill, an actress and a daughter of Mrs. Post, occupied in the 1930s. Mr. Trump liked to tell guests that the nursery rhyme-themed tiles in the room were made by a young Walt Disney.
“You don’t like that, do you?” Mr. Trump would say when he caught Mr. Senecal rolling his eyes. The house historian would protest that it was not true.
“Who cares?” Mr. Trump would respond with a laugh.
.. When she died in 1973, Mrs. Post left the house to the United States government with the intent that it would become a presidential retreat. But the upkeep proved too expensive, and ownership was transferred back to Mrs. Post’s daughters, who unloaded it to Mr. Trump for less than $10 million in 1985.
.. These days, what really seems to bug Mr. Trump is the sound of planes over the property. Whereas Mrs. Post ensured that the nearby airport would divert flights away from the estate during her stays, the same courtesy has not been extended to Mr. Trump, and the constant roar of engines “drives him nuts,” Mr. Senecal said.
.. But he also added of the foreigners: “They’re so good. They are so professional. These local people,” he trailed off, making a disapproving face.
.. The ballroom later hosted an 80th birthday party for Maya Angelou, thrown by Oprah Winfrey, during which part of the hall was set aside for a “religious ceremony with the hooting and the hollering,” Mr. Senecal recalled.