“All of my Cabinet nominee are looking good and doing a great job. I want them to be themselves and express their own thoughts, not mine!” President-elect Donald Trump tweeted. | Getty Trump: I want my Cabinet picks to 'express their own thoughts, not mine'

Donald Trump tweeted his support of his Cabinet nominees early Friday morning after multiple news organizations highlighted the different stances between the president-elect and some of his picks, writing that they should feel free to express views different from his own.

“All of my Cabinet nominee are looking good and doing a great job. I want them to be themselves and express their own thoughts, not mine!” Trump tweeted a little before 6 a.m., the first in a series of messages he posted.


POLITICO, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have published stories recently noting that some of his nominees this week staked out positions that vary from the president-elect's.

Trump’s nominees have indeed put some daylight between themselves and the man they hope to serve. Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), picked by Trump to lead the CIA, said he was reasonably certain that Russia had sought specifically to aid the president-elect’s candidacy with its campaign of election-year cyberattacks, a point Trump himself has taken particular objection to.

Rex Tillerson, Trump's secretary of state pick and one of the more controversial cabinet picks, seemingly broke with the president-elect on a handful of key issues. The Exxon-Mobil CEO said he does not oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal Trump railed against on the campaign trail, and affirmed that he believes in the science supporting climate change, which the president-elect has at times derided as a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese government to hurt American businesses.

Tillerson also condemned the Russian military’s incursion into eastern Ukraine, labeling it an “illegal action.” Trump has offered a much softer stance on Russia, suggesting over the summer in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “not going to go into Ukraine, all right?” Pressed by Stephanopoulos, Trump said that Putin was “there in a certain way, but I’m not there yet.”

Trump later sought to clean up that comment on Twitter, where he wrote “When I said in an interview that Putin is ‘not going into Ukraine, you can mark it down,’ I am saying if I am President. Already in Crimea!” The president-elect has also said that he would consider officially recognizing Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea away from Ukraine, something most Western nations have refused to do.

Gen. James Mattis, Trump’s pick to be secretary of defense, also broke with the incoming president on the issue of Russia, stating during his confirmation hearing that he would support a permanent U.S. military presence in the Baltic states to serve as a deterrent to Russia. He also said that the U.S. should leave in place the Iran nuclear deal, an agreement Trump opposed during the campaign.