Trump chooses lawyer to serve as adviser to the president

Washington-

US President-elect Donald Trump announced Sunday that he has chosen Alina Habba, his personal lawyer, to serve as his advisor.

Trump, in an article on his Truth Social website, called Habba a “tireless advocate for justice.”

“She demonstrated unwavering loyalty and unparalleled determination – she supported me through numerous trials, battles and countless days in court,” Trump said. “Few people understand the weaponization of the system of ‘injustice’ better than Alina.”

Trump announced several other planned additions to his administration, including Christopher Landau as his pick for deputy secretary of state. Landau was the U.S. ambassador to Mexico during Trump’s first term.

Trump also said that former National Security Council spokesperson Michael Anton would serve as director of policy planning at the State Department, while Michael Needham would serve as State Department advisor.

Earlier Sunday, Trump pledged to make rapid, sweeping changes when he takes office on Jan. 20, expelling millions of migrants in the country illegally, imposing tariffs on imported goods that could raise prices for consumption for Americans and pardoning the rioters who tried to upend his 2020 re-election loss.

Six weeks before he takes office for another four-year term in the White House, Trump appeared emboldened by his victory last month, making him only the second U.S. president elected to a second non-consecutive term after Grover Cleveland in the years 1890.

“People love me now, you know?” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview conducted Friday in New York and broadcast Sunday.

“It’s different from the first time – you know, when I first won (in 2016), I wasn’t that popular,” he said. “And one thing that’s very important, in terms of elections, I like to have won the popular vote, by a wide margin,” with a margin of about 2.3 million votes in his loss to the vice president Kamala Harris on the 155 million. ballots that have been cast.

But Trump, a Republican, also fell back into familiar grievances, refusing as he has for four years to admit that he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden because of unfounded allegations of voting and counting fraudulent. Asked by NBC anchor Kristen Welker how she thinks Democrats were able to steal this election but not the one a month ago, Trump responded: “Because I think it was too much big to be faked.”

Trump blamed Biden for the country’s political division and insulted his perceived enemies, including the nine-member House committee that spent more than a year examining the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters trying to block lawmakers. to certify that Biden had won the 2020 election.

He called the seven Democrats and two Republicans on the investigating committee “political thugs and, you know, scumbags.” Honestly, for what they did, they should go to jail.

Trump said that on his first day in office, he would “move very quickly” to pardon many of the more than 1,200 people convicted of a range of offenses related to the Capitol riots. Many of them have already served their prison sentences while others still have years to serve or face trial. He called those imprisoned “hostages” and called them “patriots.”

“These people are going through hell,” he said.

Still, Trump said he would not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden. “I’m not looking to go back to the past,” he said. “Retribution will come through success.”

But he said that if the Senate confirms its choices of former Florida state Attorney General Pam Bondi as attorney general and her loyal political supporter Kash Patel as FBI director, they would have the autonomy to decide what to investigate and pursue. Trump called special counsel Jack Smith, who indicted him twice, “very corrupt.”

Trump focused much of his campaign on closing the U.S. southwest border with Mexico and said mass expulsions would begin quickly. First in line will be convicted felons, he said, while other new Trump officials said those who received deportation orders will also be among the first to be deported.

“I think it has to be done, and it’s a difficult thing – it’s very difficult to do. It’s… but you have to have, you know, you have rules, regulations, laws. They entered illegally,” he said.

Trump made no exceptions for families with mixed immigration status, where some family members are in the United States legally and others illegally. “I don’t want to break up families, so the only way to not break up the family is to keep them together and send them all away,” he said.

Trump said the cost and logistical complexity of such a massive deportation plan did not bother him.

“You have no choice,” he said. “First of all, they cost us a fortune. But we start with the criminals, and we must. And then we start with the others, and we’ll see how it goes.

But he said he would try to work with Democratic lawmakers to exempt from deportation so-called “dreamers,” young children brought to the United States illegally by their parents and who have few ties to their country. ‘origin.

He also said he would attempt to end U.S. citizenship, now enshrined in the country’s Constitution, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born on American soil, regardless of their parents’ legal status in the United States.

Trump said he would keep his campaign promise to impose tariffs on imports from the United States’ largest trading partners, including China, Mexico and Canada. He acknowledged that he could not “guarantee that American families will not pay more” because of his plan.

“I can’t guarantee anything,” Trump said. “I can’t guarantee tomorrow.”

He said he was actively trying to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, “if I can.” He said kyiv may not benefit from as much military assistance under his administration as it did under Biden. During a policy debate in September, Trump refused to say he wanted Ukraine to win the war.