Here Are the Names in the Running for Trump’s Foreign Policy Team

President-elect Trump wants to put familiar faces on his national security team after being burned during his first term.

Sources said Trump doesn’t want former generals on his national security team and prefers businessmen and CEOs — but he’s also considering a line-up of loyalists in prominent D.C. positions.

• Trump said several times in his campaign that during his transition he would begin pushing for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to end the war.
• He also signaled in public and in private that he wants to see the wars in Gaza and Lebanon end by the time he is inaugurated.

Here are the top contenders, based on people close to this process:

State Department: A top candidate for Secretary of State is former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, two sources said.

• The sources said Grenell advised Trump on foreign policy during the campaign and would likely focus on Russia-Ukraine diplomacy.
• Republican control of the Senate neutralizes any difficulty Grenell could have had in being confirmed.

Two other candidates for the Secretary of State job are Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), who served as ambassador to Japan during Trump’s first term, and Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien.

• Former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus is also often mentioned for a senior State Department position in D.C. or a key ambassador post.
• Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) is a leading name for U.S. Ambassador to the UN.

Defense Department and intelligence agencies: Several names have been floated for Defense Secretary, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.).

• Waltz could also be considered for CIA director, in addition to John Ratcliffe, who briefly served as the Director of National Intelligence under Trump.
• Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) was also mentioned for top defense or intelligence roles but Axios’ Stef Kight reports he told Trump’s team he wouldn’t be accepting any cabinet roles.
• Another former Trump official who could get a senior foreign policy and national security position in the new administration is Brian Hook, who was Trump’s Iran envoy and will lead the new administration’s State Department transition team. Hook could end up in a senior position at the department, a source said.

Grenell and Waltz are also potential candidates for national security adviser in the next Trump White House.

Reality check: A former senior Trump administration official told Axios it’s hard to predict who Trump decides to appoint.

• At the start of Trump’s first term, “Rex Tillerson wasn’t in the first 3,000 people who were mentioned as candidates for Secretary of State,” the former official said.
• The official said the most important thing is that Trump’s new national security team helps him implement his policy rather than trying to obstruct him like his team did at the beginning of his first term.
• Tillerson and the Secretary of Defense James Mattis objected to several of Trump’s initiatives.

During Trump’s previous term, the Middle East file was mostly run by his senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who drafted an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan and negotiated the Abraham Accords between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.

• Kushner has said publicly several times during the campaign that he isn’t interested in going back to government.
• But Trump’s victory, the current crisis in the Middle East and the opportunity to get a Saudi-Israeli peace deal might change his mind.

Others to watch: Avi Berkowitz, who worked with Kushner on the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan and on the Abraham Accords, could also make a comeback and be part of Trump’s Middle East team.

• David Friedman, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Israel during Trump’s first administration, could go back for another term in this post.
• Trump’s former envoy Jason Greenblatt and Friedman’s chief of staff Aryeh Lightstone might also return to government to work on the Middle East.

Source: Axios