One Trump transition aide confirmed that Richard Haass is under consideration for a senior-level position at the State Department. | Getty Richard Haass under consideration for State Department deputy

As President-elect Donald Trump fills out his national security and foreign policy team, among the names being circulated as the potential No. 2 at the State Department: Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass, according to two senior transition aides.

Haass, a veteran of both Bush administrations, has served as director of policy planning at the State Department and as a senior director on the National Security Council.

He was in Trump Tower last Friday, the day before Trump met with Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson and finalized his plan to nominate him as secretary of state, and spent an hour last summer briefing Trump on foreign affairs.

Trump has praised Haass, who is a regular presence on one of his favorite television programs, MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “I respect Richard Haass, who’s on your show a lot,” Trump told the show’s hosts in May. “And I like him a lot. I have a few people that I really like and respect.”

Haass also met with Trump privately in 2015 in Trump Tower to brief him on global issues. “I've spent an hour with him there. I've seen him a few times on and off golf courses,” Haass told NPR.

In that same NPR appearance, Haass said of Trump, “We obviously have areas of, you know, some disagreement, to say the least, on policy,” citing his support for free trade.

On Thursday, Trump began building out his national security team, adding retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg as chief of staff and executive secretary of the National Security Council and former Fox News commentator Monica Crowley as senior director of strategic communications for the NSC. There’ll, they’ll join incoming national security adviser retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and his principal deputy, former Fox News commentator K.T. McFarland.

Haass is also an acquaintance of his potential boss. He hosted Tillerson at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2012 for a conversation in which the Exxon CEO delivered extended remarks on energy security and climate change. Tillerson landed the nomination on the recommendation of former Bush national security officials Bob Gates and Condoleezza Rice, who also happen to be former colleagues of Haass, who worked for Gates at the National Security Council in the George H.W. Bush administration and remains a personal friend of Rice’s. (Gates and Rice have done consulting work for Exxon.)

Transition aides emphasized that Tillerson and the Trump team have yet to reach a decision on the matter. Other names under consideration for the post include former Bush NSC aide Elliott Abrams and former United Nations ambassador John Bolton.

One Trump transition aide confirmed that Haass is under consideration for a senior-level position at the State Department, but said that Bolton remained the most likely choice for the deputy secretary position. CFR declined to comment.

Trump’s choices for the deputy post come from different wings of the Republican foreign policy establishment -- the CFR chief representing the its realist wing, and Abrams and Bolton its more hawkish, conservative faction. Among Republicans, a choice from either camp is likely draw opposition from the other side.