It’s disconcerting for the Republicans to have Trump jeering at the intelligence agencies.

Though Mr. Trump has wasted no time in antagonizing the agencies, to carry out priorities like combating terrorism and deterring cyberattacks he will have to rely on them for the sort of espionage activities and analysis that they spend more than $70 billion a year to perform.

At this point in a transition, a president-elect is usually delving into intelligence he has never before seen and learning about C.I.A. and National Security Agency abilities. But Mr. Trump, who has taken intelligence briefings only sporadically, is questioning not only analytic conclusions, but also their underlying facts.

“To have the president-elect of the United States simply reject the

So, yeah, apparently it is the case that we have this rampaging idiot monster preparing to destroy everything because Putin put his elbow on the scale.

American intelligence agencies have concluded with “high confidence” that Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of the presidential campaign to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J. Trump, according to senior administration officials.

They based that conclusion, in part, on another finding — which they say was also reached with high confidence — that the Russians hacked the Republican National Committee’s computer systems in addition to their attacks on Democratic organizations, but did not release whatever information they gleaned from the Republican networks.

In the months before the election, it was

John Glenn didn’t agree with Trump on the flag:

John Glenn played a key role in the U.S. Senate helping to defeat an amendment making the "descrecration" of the American flag a crime. pic.twitter.com/rgcyNH4Ayz

— ACLU National (@ACLU) December 9, 2016

 … Read the rest

News in Trump from the Times:

Rex W. Tillerson, the president and chief executive of Exxon Mobil, is the leading candidate to be Mr. Trump’s secretary of state, according to a person with direct knowledge of the search process.

Mr. Tillerson went to Trump Tower in New York on Tuesday to meet with Mr. Trump, who is said to be close to making a decision. Mr. Tillerson has been strongly recommended by a number of business leaders.

What does running an oil company have to do with being the country’s foreign minister?

And then there’s this questionnaire.

President-elect Trump’s transition team has circulated an unusual 74-point questionnaire that requests the names of all employees and contractors who have attended

Goldman Sachs. Clinton’s $200k fees for chatting to them over dinner probably cost her a good few votes, and certainly gave Donnie from Queens useful talking points, but now…well now is now, and all is transformed.

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name a top Goldman Sachs executive, Gary Cohn, to lead the National Economic Council, handing the Wall Street veteran significant sway over his administration’s economic policy.

The council includes the heads of various departments and agencies and works within the administration to coordinate economic policy. As director, Cohn would be in position to advise Trump as he attempts to fulfill some of his chief campaign promises, including lowering corporate taxes and rethinking U.S. trade policy.

And generally … Read the rest

Yesterday I posted about union leader Chuck Jones’s fact-checking of Trump’s claims about the Carrier jobs. From Danielle Paquette in the Washington Post two days ago:

Jones, president of the United Steelworkers 1999, which represents Carrier employees, felt optimistic when Trump announced last week that he’d reached a deal with the factory’s parent company, United Technologies, to preserve 1,100 of the Indianapolis jobs — until the union leader heard from Carrier that only 730 of the production jobs would stay and 550 of his members would lose their livelihoods, after all.

At the Dec. 1 meeting, where Trump was supposed to lay out the details, Jones hoped he would explain himself.

“But he got up there,” Jones said Tuesday,

Of course. Who better to run the Labor Department than the CEO of a fast food chain? CEOs are of course the people who are best placed to understand the needs of workers, and the least disposed to put profits ahead of workers’ need for a living wage. So well done, billionaire worker-cheating Donald Trump – you found such a CEO.

President-elect Donald J. Trump is expected to name Andrew F. Puzder, chief executive of the company that operates the fast food outlets Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. and an outspoken critic of the worker protections enacted by the Obama administration, to be secretary of labor, people close to the transition said on Thursday.

Mr. Puzder has spent his career

More draining the swamp, by spurning people who know anything about climate or the environment for head of the EPA:

President-elect Donald J. Trump has selected Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general and a close ally of the fossil fuel industry, to run the Environmental Protection Agency, signaling Mr. Trump’s determination to dismantle President Obama’s efforts to counter climate change — and much of the E.P.A. itself.

Mr. Pruitt, a Republican, has been a key architect of the legal battle against Mr. Obama’s climate change policies, actions that fit with the president-elect’s comments during the campaign. Mr. Trump has criticized the established science of human-caused global warming as a hoax, vowed to “cancel” the Paris accord committing nearly every

Time’s choice of photo to illustrate its Person of the Year cover of Trump is interesting.

He…erm…usually doesn’t let it show.

But more seriously, what a surly bruiser he does look. He may be trying to look serious and grown up, but all he looks is hostile and belligerent. He’s making not duck-face but fascist-face.

Also notice the dig under his name.

Updating to add:

There are many valuable replies to Helen Rosner’s tweet, for instance pointing out the fiendish positioning of Trump’s head right under the M so that it makes horns. Rosner says the whole photo uses a very 1940s aesthetic.

… Read the rest