Maggie Haberman Tells CNN Anchor ‘Retribution Will Be a Thing’ in Trump’s Attorney General Pick

Maggie Haberman outlined the variables involved in President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of his cabinet during a Sunday morning appearance on CNN’s Inside Politics.

The well-regarded Trump biographer who covers Donald Trump for the New York Times was invited on CNN to discuss a recent article she co-wrote discussing Trump’s methodologies, concerns, and priorities regarding the assembly of senior positions within his second administration.

“You and your colleagues wrote that Trump’s doing what he tends to do. He calls around to friends and associates; asks them who he thinks they should pick for his administration,” opened anchor Manu Raju. “So, what are you hearing, Maggie, about what Trump’s most interested in as he’s — and what he’s focused on, as he’s looking to fill out his cabinet?”

Haberman opend with the same caveat included in the NY Times piece, that “All of this is heavily, heavily asterisked right now. There are lists going around. There are people floating names. Trump is soliciting names. He’s suggesting names that he’s considering for people.”

“None of this is real until he actually says what he’s going to do. And it’s notable that he started out by eliminating people with a Saturday night Truth post about Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley,” she said before revealing what she sees as Trump’s priorities.

“He’s most interested in a handful of cabinet posts, and that’s been the case the whole time. He was not interested in most of his cabinet during his term. He’s interested in the attorney general, the secretary of defense, the CIA director,” she said. “And he is interested in the secretary of Homeland Security, because that’s the piece that deals heavily with immigration. And that is something that he’s campaigned on aggressively.”

“What those posts end up looking like really remains to be seen. What we have heard is that there is not a ton of consensus around who could fill any of those spots right now. And unlike what we saw when he was coming in as new president in 2017, there are not a bunch of big names from, you know, established Washington or, you know, prominent companies — like Rex Tillerson, the head of ExxonMobil, who became the Secretary of State,” she added. “This is much more people who are coming from Congress or people who are coming from the states or who are known to Trump. And we’ll see what that ends up looking like. They are aware that they have a Senate majority now that makes it easier to get a bunch of people confirmed, but it’s still — there’s the possibility of losing a bunch of Republican votes if Trump nominates controversial people.”

Raju followed up, noting how Trump “talks so much about retaliation against his political enemies on the campaign trail. Is that a real consideration as he weighs his attorney general pick?”

“I don’t think that there is a clear front-runner right now, Manu,” she replied as a graphic of possible AG candidates appeared on screen. “There are a bunch of overlapping camps around Trump right now, and they all have to sort of align on a consensus in order for him to go ahead with somebody. There’s a bunch of names that you’ve put up there, I think some are more real than others. But whether those people end up being the person is anybody’s guess.”

“Is he serious about retribution? He’s been talking about retribution or revenge pretty consistently over the last, you know, two years, but certainly most of his life. So yes, I expect that will be a thing,” she said. “He talked earlier in the show about his desire for loyalty. We heard him ask a number of people about when he was in office previously. That will be the case this time.”

“The constraints on him in terms of what he needs for loyalty, Manu, are a little different because the Supreme Court ruling about presidential immunity for official acts gives him a lot more latitude to do things that people would have stopped him from doing that last time he was president,” she concluded. “But he still wants somebody who is going to be basically an extension of him, which Jeff Sessions was not. Jeff Sessions honored the post-Watergate norm of judicial justice from independence. Bill Barr was more in lockstep with Trump in terms of how he viewed the world. But there were things he wouldn’t do either.”

Watch above via CNN.