Donald Trump insisted on Thursday that he was “working hard” even during the Thanksgiving holiday, as the latest speculation around the president-elect’s cabinet focused on billionaire distressed debt investor Wilbur Ross.

Trump is spending the holiday with his family at his Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, a luxury resort which has a $100,000 membership fee plus $14,000 in annual dues.

Late Wednesday he made a video appeal saying it was time to “begin to heal our divisions” after a bruising campaign. Then just after 10am on Thursday, the president-elect tweeted: “I am working hard, even on Thanksgiving, trying to get Carrier A.C. Company to stay in the U.S. (Indiana). MAKING PROGRESS – Will know soon!”

Carrier, a manufacturing company, announced in February it would move 2,000 jobs at two of its Indiana plants to Mexico to cut costs. Trump repeatedly referred to the company on the campaign trail, though many workers were not convinced he could stop the planned move.

Carrier said in a statement that it: “has had discussions with the incoming administration and we look forward to working together”.

The president-elect, who announced the first two women as choices for his cabinet on Wednesday, was thought to have been having a more restful day before meeting with potential cabinet members on Friday, and possibly confirming retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson as head of housing and urban development. The transition team communications director Jason Miller tweeted saying there would be no announcements on Thursday.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. No announcements from the Transition Team today, so enjoy the turkey and football! — Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) November 24, 2016

Last week, Carson adviser Armstrong Williams told multiple reporters that Carson would not be a good fit for Trump’s cabinet because “Dr Carson feels he has no government experience”. But Carson suggested on Wednesday that he had changed his mind. “An announcement is forthcoming about my role in helping to make America great again,” he wrote in a Facebook post.



There has also been speculation that Trump would name General James Mattis as defense secretary shortly after announcing Carson’s appointment. The president-elect this week credited Mattis for changing his mind about the value of waterboarding, which Trump previously said he supported.

“He [Mattis] said, ‘I’ve never found it to be useful,’” Trump told the New York Times. He went on to say Mattis found more value in building trust with terrorism suspects: “‘Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers, and I’ll do better.’”

“I was very impressed by that answer,” Trump said.

President-elect Donald Trump, left, stands with investor Wilbur Ross after meeting at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

Ross, who backed Trump during the campaign and had spent time with the president-elect in New Jersey with on Sunday at his Bedminster golf course, has emerged as the leading candidate to be Trump’s choice for commerce secretary.

The Associated Press reported he would be Trump’s choice, citing a senior transition official.

Ross, reputed to be worth $3bn, has been called the “king of bankruptcy” for buying troubled companies and restructuring. He helped craft Trump’s tax-cut and infrastructure plans and has praised the president-elect for representing a shift to a “less politically correct direction”.

Ross played a role in the president-elect’s tax-cut and infrastructure plans and has suggested that much of America is disgruntled because the economy has left middle-class workers behind. “Part of the reason why I’m supporting Trump is that I think we need a more radical, new approach to government at least in the US from what we’ve had before,” Ross told CNBC in June.

He’s a Yale graduate and worked as a banker at Rothschild for 24 years, specialising in bankruptcy and corporate restructurings. He then founded his own firm, WL Ross, in 2000 and earned part of his fortune from investing in troubled factories in the industrial Midwest.

That region swung hard for Trump in the election on the promise of more manufacturing jobs from renegotiated trade deals and penalties for factories that outsourced their work abroad.



A specialist in corporate turnarounds, Ross buys distressed or bankrupt companies at steep discounts, then seeks to shave costs and generate profits. He has been described by some as a saviour of distressed firms, though some critics say cost reductions have come from altering pay and benefits for workers.

Both Ross and Carson have homes near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago retreat, but it is unclear whether they will also be spending the Thanksgiving holiday there.



Before the holiday, Trump named the first women to his cabinet. On Wednesday, he announced South Carolina governor Nikki Haley as the ambassador to the United Nations and Betsy DeVos, a billionaire philanthropist and conservative activist, as education secretary.

Both women criticized Trump during the campaign and backed his opponents – Haley supported Florida senator Marco Rubio, while DeVos spent most of the campaign raising money for other Republican candidates.

But Trump insisted it was time for Americans to put the campaign behind them and aim for unity in a Thanksgiving address released on Wednesday night, where he acknowledged the previous year of campaigning had taken a toll on the country. “Emotions are raw and tensions just don’t heal overnight,” he said.

This message was echoed by Barack Obama, who released his final Thanksgiving address as president on Thursday morning. “As a country, we’ve just emerged from a noisy, passionate and sometimes divisive campaign season,” Obama said.

He continued to say it was time to move past the election and unite. Obama said: “A few short weeks later, Thanksgiving reminds us that no matter our differences, we are still one people – part of something bigger than ourselves”.

These calls for unity came as Trump’s opponents clung to Hillary Clinton’s 2m-vote lead in the popular count – campaigns emerged this week calling for recounts in the states that were essential to Trump’s electoral college victory. As of 12pm ET on Wednesday, the Green party presidential candidate, Jill Stein, had raised more than $3m for a fund she said was needed to request reviews of the results in several key battleground states.