US President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday made his first cabinet appointment after his decisive election win, while signalling his intent to ditch the outgoing administration’s policies by talking to Vladimir Putin. Trump’s campaign manager Susie Wiles will serve as his White House Chief of Staff, the first woman to be named to the high-profile role and the Republican’s first appointment to his incoming administration.
Trump’s crushing defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris is already shaking up US and world politics, just two days after Election Day and two-and-a-half months before he returns to the White House. Putin, the Russian president, hailed Trump as “courageous” for the way he handled himself following an assassination attempt at a rally in July, and said he was “ready” to hold discussions with him.
Billionaire Trump later told NBC News that he had not talked to Putin, the authoritarian leader whom he has repeatedly praised over the years, since his victory but “I think we’ll speak.” It marked a seismic shift from the icy silence that has existed between Biden and Putin since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and underscored Trump’s criticism of US support for Kyiv. The president-elect has previously said he would push through a peace deal in that conflict — but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who spoke to Trump on Wednesday, said calls for a ceasefire were “dangerous.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping had earlier joined the list of foreign leaders congratulating Trump, who was criticized by Harris during the election campaign for being too friendly with autocrats. Trump doubled down on his plans for mass deportations of undocumented migrants, telling NBC he had “no choice” and that there could be “no price tag” that was too much.
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