WASHINGTON -- President-elect Donald Trump made his first two key personnel appointments on Sunday, naming Republican Party chief Reince Priebus as his White House chief of staff and Breitbart news executive Stephen Bannon as chief strategist and senior counselor.
Priebus, 44, has been chairman of the Republican National Committee since 2011, and he kept the committee supporting Trump over the summer. He is a longtime lawyer with close ties to House Speaker Paul Ryan, a fellow Wisconsinite.
"I am very grateful to the president-elect for this opportunity to serve him and this nation as we work to create an economy that works for everyone, secure our borders, repeal and replace Obamacare and destroy radical Islamic terrorism," Priebus said in the statement announcing his appointment.
Priebus will work to smooth over residual friction from a campaign during which a number of Republicans refused to endorse Trump, reversed their endorsements or stepped away from him during the campaign.
Ryan tweeted: "I'm very proud and excited for my friend Reince. Congrats!" Ryan made no mention of Bannon in that tweet. He earlier told CNN that he didn't know Bannon but said, "I trust Donald's judgment."
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Bannon, 62, will have most of the strategic decision-making powers on Trump's staff while Priebus concentrates on the day-to-day operations of the West Wing, said a person familiar with the arrangements.
Bannon's career before becoming Trump's campaign CEO in August included writing and directing The Undefeated, a 2011 documentary about former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. During Bannon's time as executive chairman of Breitbart News, the site specialized in contentious headlines, including "Inside Paul Ryan's monthslong campaign to elect Hillary Clinton president" and one that called former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., "the gun control movement's human shield."
Bannon once called Breitbart "the platform of the alt-right," a conservative movement that has attracted vocal support from white nationalists.
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"Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory," Trump said. "Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again."
In announcing the appointments, Trump said Priebus and Bannon would work as "equal partners." A senior Trump aide said the idea is to balance two main Republican factions -- those who want to shake up Washington, and those who want a seasoned government insider at the helm.
Trump looked at both Bannon and Priebus for the chief of staff post, considered a Cabinet-rank position. Trump's children are said to have backed Priebus, the less contentious choice.
Continuing protests
Thousands of protesters converged in New York again Sunday. The protesters, chanting slogans including "Donald Trump, go away, racist, sexist, anti-gay," marched peacefully to Trump Tower, escorted by dozens of police officers on motorcycles and on foot. Several groups of immigration advocates chanted in Spanish, holding signs saying, "keep families together."
Several hundred protesters also marched Sunday around Philadelphia's City Hall and then down Market Street to Independence Mall, carrying signs and chanting, "Donald Trump has got to go!" and "This is what democracy looks like."
A few hundred people gathered outside CNN's Los Angeles headquarters, and in San Francisco, hundreds of people, including many families with children, marched from Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach chanting, "Love trumps hate!" On Saturday, an estimated 8,000 marched through downtown.
In Oregon, police said they arrested 71 people late Saturday and early Sunday during anti-Trump protests downtown. The Portland Police Bureau said most protesters were cited for disorderly conduct and failing to obey officers.
Senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway disputed reports that the protests were largely peaceful, saying on Fox News Sunday that many protesters are "there for nefarious reasons -- they're booing us, they're spitting on us, they're causing all kinds of havoc."
She and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Sunday said many of the thousands protesting Trump's victory are "professional" rabble-rousers, and they called on President Barack Obama and Clinton to intervene.
"I'm not sure these are even Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama supporters," Giuliani said on ABC's This Week, citing an instance in which people were "banging on my car."
"These people are, you know, kind of like professional protesters," he said.
Conway said Obama, Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and others on the Democratic side should "come forward and ask for calm and ask for a peaceful transition, and ask their supporters which are masquerading as protesters now -- many of them professional and paid, by the way, I'm sure -- ask them to give this man a chance so that this country can flourish."
Neither Giuliani nor Conway offered evidence that any of the protesters are paid professionals.
When Giuliani was asked whether Trump also has a responsibility to address reports of supporters involved in harassment or other intimidation, he replied, "They shouldn't be doing it either," though he said the "major focus" is the people protesting the president-elect.
In a 60 Minutes interview conducted Friday at Trump Tower in New York and broadcast Sunday, Trump said he hadn't heard of instances of intimidation of Hispanics, Muslims and other groups since the Nov. 8 election, was "saddened" to learn of them, and urged his supporters to "stop it."
"I am very surprised to hear that -- I hate to hear that," Trump said. "I would say don't do it, that's terrible, because I'm going to bring this country together."
"I will say right to the cameras: Stop it," Trump added.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a Facebook post Saturday that his state is a refuge for those who feel they are under attack.
"Whether you are gay or straight, Muslim or Christian, rich or poor, black or white or brown, we respect all people in the state of New York," the Democrat wrote. "It's the very core of what we believe and who we are ... We don't allow a federal government that attacks immigrants to do so in our state."
And Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press that protesters should not turn to "hateful speech" or violate "principles and ideals that are sacred in this country. We need to raise our voices, but we do not need to indulge in hate."
Ryan also struck a conciliatory note.
"As long as protests are peaceful, if people want to express themselves, that's what we can do in this country, that's what the First Amendment is all about," Ryan said on CNN's State of the Union.
Immigration plans
Ryan was among the Republicans on Sunday who seemed to back off Trump's campaign proposals on immigration, rejecting any "deportation force" targeting people who are in the country illegally.
He said "securing the border's our top priority," and that the force, which Trump called for in November 2015 to send as many as 12 million people back to their countries of origin, wasn't a "focus" for Republicans and the White House.
"We are not planning on erecting a deportation force," Ryan said. "Donald Trump's not planning on that."
The No. 2 Republican in the House, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, said on Fox News Sunday that a wall with Mexico must be built, but that "it could be all-virtual with the UAV airplanes as well," using an acronym for unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones.
"That is very do-able and one of the first things that needs to be done," the California representative said, adding that the terrain on the border sometimes makes the building of a physical wall impossible.
Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House and a member of Trump's transition team, told CBS News on Sunday that Trump needs to be aggressive on immigration, citing Trump's guess that 2 million illegal aliens have criminal records.
"They're called criminals. I mean, 2 million people would be a lot of people to deport," Gingrich said. "And if, at the same time, you gain control of the border, and if you pass a guest worker program, you'd be a long way toward then three, or four, or five years from now dealing with the rest of the folks who are here without legal permission."
On other plans for the new administration, McCarthy and Ryan both said a planned replacement for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would preserve the law's mandate that insurers can't deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions and that children can stay on their parents' plans until age 26. That's in line with Trump's comments last week that he wanted to keep those popular provisions.
"We can have a health care system in America where everyone, regardless of income or health condition, can have access to health care," Ryan said. "And you can have this without having a costly government takeover like Obamacare. We can fix what is broken in health care without breaking what was working about health care."
Ryan called for fixing "taxes on border adjustments," saying that changing the tax code was the best way to make American companies more competitive and bring jobs back to the U.S. He reiterated the view that Trump's earlier proposals supporting tariffs would spark "trade wars."
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said on Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures that the U.S. needs "one-on-one agreements" rather than the multilateral trade agreements the nation has signed in several cases.
Chaffetz, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, also said he would continue to investigate Clinton's use of a private email server as secretary of state.
"It's this huge massive mess that has to be cleaned up," Chaffetz said. "We would be remiss if we just dismissed it and moved on."
But McCarthy said that investigating Clinton's emails isn't part of his agenda, which he said will focus on job creation, health care and infrastructure. He said of Clinton's emails that he would "leave that portion to law enforcement."
Trump didn't appear on any of the Sunday talk shows, though he wrote several posts on Twitter. He criticized The New York Times as being "dishonest" and "highly inaccurate," and he noted that critics and GOP rivals John Kasich, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush had sent their congratulations.
Trump also told 60 Minutes that he would eschew the $400,000 annual salary for the president, taking only $1 a year.
Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Lemire, Laurie Kellman, Julie Pace, Richard Lardner, Jill Colvin, Kathleen Hennessey and staff members of The Associated Press; by Ros Krasny, Jennifer Jacobs, Scott Lanman, Erik Larson, Susan Decker and Ben Brody of Bloomberg News; and by Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Kristine Guerra, John Wagner, Katie Zezima and Amy Wang of The Washington Post.
A Section on 11/14/2016