Trump world sparring over secretary of state selection

According to the Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump is “leaning toward” picking Mitt Romney for secretary of state, but a rival camp is pushing for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. He is also said to be “likely” to nominate former General James Mattis for Secretary of Defense and to choose Governor Nikki Haley (R-S.C.) for U.N. Ambassador.

Trump’s train wreck meeting with the media

President-elect Donald Trump’s off-the-record meeting on Tuesday with network news anchors and executives went extremely poorly, according to multiple reports on the Trump Tower summit.

The New York Post, talking to two anonymous sources who attended the meeting, described the scene as “a f—ing firing squad” and “a total disaster,” in which network representatives received a “Trump-style dressing-down” from the president-elect.

The New Yorker’s David Remnick likewise spoke with a number of anonymous attendees, who were quick to paint the mercurial businessman not as a authority figure “dressing down” the assembled media elites, but a “blustering blowhard” petulantly firing off a “stream of insults and complaints.”

Remnick writes:

The over-all impression of the meeting from the attendees I spoke with was that Trump showed no signs of having been sobered or changed by his elevation to the country’s highest office.

Trump met as scheduled with The New York Times this afternoon — despite abruptly cancelling the meeting earlier today and lambasting the Times on Twitter.

Trump confessed ‘sexual attraction’ to teenage Ivanka, according to Washington Post column draft

In a rough draft of his nationally syndicated opinion column, the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen included a shocking allegation from an unnamed source: President-elect Donald Trump confessed to being “sexually attracted” to his daughter Ivanka Trump. The accusation — included as a lengthy aside during an unrelated sentence about Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner — reads as follows:

“Can I ask you something?” Trump asked someone I know, about his then-13-year-old kid, “Is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to your own daughter than your wife?”

The column draft, which was sent out to several publications who syndicate Cohen’s work, was subsequently excised of the claim.

This isn’t the first time such speculation has swirled around Trump, who has never been shy about discussing his daughter’s good looks. In a 2015 Rolling Stone article, then-candidate Trump quipped, in innuendo-laden fashion, about having a physical relationship with his daughter.

More recently, following on the heels October’s “Access Hollywood” scandal, scores of old Howard Stern interviews resurfaced in which Trump had objectified his daughter. In one such clip, Trump expressed approval when Stern asked if he could call Ivanka “a piece of ass.”

The Trump team has not yet responded to BuzzFeed’s requests for comment.