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Narjas Zatat
Nov 16, 2016
Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
On Tuesday Eliot A Cohen, a Republican who served as Councillor of the State Department from 2007 to 2009, had some harsh words of advice for budding conservatives wishing to serve in Donald Trump’s administration: Don’t do it.
Despite the fact that the John Hopkins lecturer begrudgingly recommended conservatives to volunteer in the new administration, after interacting with the transition team, he changed his mind.
Of the interaction, he tweeted:
He continued that ‘normal’ transitions of power tended to have a level of expected disorder. The problem with Trump’s transition team, he argued, is that the Republican President-elect was "not a normal candidate, the transition is not a normal transition, and this will probably not be a normal administration".
Looking at his top picks for advisors confirms the theory: Mike Pence - who previously expressed his support of gay conversion therapy - took up the mantle of Vice Presidency, and Stephen K Bannon, executive chairman of right-wing publication Breitbart News is set to be his Chief Strategist. The media executive has been accused of anti-semitism and racism.
And the team hasn't even been finalised.
In fact, Cohen's sentiments were summed up in the following op-ed passage in the Washington Post:
I am a national security Never-Trumper who, after the election, made the case that young conservatives should volunteer to serve in the new administration, warily, their undated letters of resignation ready. That advice, I have concluded, was wrong.
More: 2016, in one word
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