BEDMINSTER, N.J. -- President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday that he had "made a couple of deals" after spending the weekend meeting with a long list of potential administration appointees, but he did not reveal any more picks.
Trump and the vice president-elect, Mike Pence, did mention some contenders. Pence said Mitt Romney was "under active and serious consideration" to become the nation's next secretary of state. Trump said retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis was an "impressive" prospect for defense secretary.
"I think we have some really incredible people going to be working for the country," Trump said Sunday evening. "We really had some incredible meetings. You'll be hearing about them soon."
Pence said Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation that Trump was "very grateful" to Romney for meeting with the president-elect in New Jersey on Saturday.
[TRUMP: Timeline of president-elect’s career + list of appointments so far]
"We spent the better part of an hour together with him," Pence said. "And then I know that the two of them actually had some private time together. I would tell you that it was not only a cordial meeting but also it was a very substantive meeting."
After Trump and Pence attended Sunday services at Lamington Presbyterian Church in Bedminster, they began individual meetings with a dozen people at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, billionaire investor Wilbur Ross and retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, the former commander of U.S. Southern Command. Trump spokesman Jason Miller said "there definitely is a possibility" that more Cabinet announcements could be made today.
Trump told reporters Sunday that Giuliani was a prospect for secretary of state "and other things." Giuliani at one point had been considered for attorney general, but Trump nominated Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Other previously announced choices include Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas as CIA director and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser.
Trump is considering Ross to lead the Commerce Department, people with knowledge of the deliberations have said.
"Time will tell," Ross told reporters when asked if he wanted a post.
Trump's transition team said Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and GOP presidential candidate, was expected to meet with Trump today.
Appointees defended
On the Sunday news shows, Pence and Reince Priebus, Trump's pick for chief of staff, were each asked about comments made by Trump's appointees.
Witnesses during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 1986 testified that Sessions once said he had thought the Ku Klux Klan was "OK until I found out they smoked 'pot,'" and that he once told a black staff member to be "careful what he said to white folks."
Priebus said Sessions shouldn't be judged on what he said decades ago, calling criticism of Sessions "very political, very unfair." Priebus said Sessions is an "unbelievably honest and dignified man who started his career working against George Wallace," a staunch proponent of segregation.
Still, minority-group members and civil-rights organizations have raised concerns about Sessions' potential role in the Trump administration. The NAACP called Sessions' selection "deeply troubling," and Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told CNN that "Sen. Sessions has backed Trump's call to ban Muslims from entering the United States."
Jake Tapper, host of CNN's State of the Union, asked Priebus about a February tweet from Flynn, Trump's choice for national security adviser, that said that "Fear of Muslims is rational." Flynn has also said that Islam is a political ideology masked behind a religion.
Priebus said that was not the official policy of the Trump administration, adding that "in some cases, there are radical members of that religion that need to be dealt with, but certainly we make it clear that that's not a blanket statement for everyone. And that's how we're going to lead."
In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, Priebus said Trump believes that "no faith in and of itself should be judged as a whole. But there are some people in countries abroad that ... need to be prevented from coming into this country."
"We're not going to have a registry based on a religion," he said. "But what I think what we're trying to do is say that there are some people, certainly not all people ... there are some people that are radicalized, and there are some people that have to be prevented from coming into this country."
On CBS, host John Dickerson noted that Pompeo, Trump's choice to lead the CIA, supports Trump's position that waterboarding could be reinstated as an interrogation technique against accused terrorists, a practice that Congress made illegal after its use during the George W. Bush administration.
Dickerson showed Pence a video of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speaking Saturday at the Halifax International Security Forum. McCain insisted that any attempt to bring back waterboarding, which simulates drowning, would be quickly challenged in court.
"I don't give a d*** what the president of the United States wants to do or anybody else wants to do. We will not waterboard. We will not torture," McCain said. "My God, what does it say about America if we're going to inflict torture on people?"
Pence said he has "great respect for Senator McCain" but added that "we're going to have a president again who will never say what we'll never do."
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., one of Trump's opponents during the Republican presidential primary, followed Pence on Face the Nation and said he agreed with McCain.
"We should telegraph to the world that we're better than this," Paul said.
Business ventures
Priebus also vowed Sunday that Trump's White House counsel will ensure that Trump avoids all conflicts of interest with his business ventures during his administration.
"Obviously we will comply with all those laws and we will have our White House counsel review all of these things," Priebus said. "We will have every 'i' dotted and every 't' crossed, and I can assure the American people that there wouldn't be any wrongdoing or any sort of undue influence over any decision-making."
Pence agreed, saying on Fox News Sunday that lawyers and experts were working on how to untangle Trump's holdings from the presidency and that "the president-elect of the United States is completely focused on the people's business."
"I'm very confident, working with the best legal minds in the country, that the president-elect and his family will create the proper separation from his business going forward," Pence said.
Critics have said Trump should divest his holdings or set up a blind trust. Among the potential problems is that Trump's company has operations in other countries, often in connection with foreign governments that could steer money toward his family. Critics have expressed concern that Trump's many hotels, condominiums and golf courses could be venues through which people could curry favor with the incoming president. Last week, dozens of foreign diplomats gathered at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, and at least one said it might be considered rude not to stay there.
Trump has said he will allow his adult children to run his business ventures. Last week, the president-elect held a meeting at Trump Tower with three business partners building a Trump property south of Mumbai, India. His daughter Ivanka Trump, a vice president at the Trump Organization and one of the three family members who will be in charge of Donald Trump's businesses after he takes office, attended his meeting last week with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Trump on Sunday revealed other plans for his family. Between conversations in New Jersey, Trump told reporters that his wife, Melania, and their son, Barron, would move to Washington when the school year ends.
"There's obviously a sensitivity to pulling their 10-year-old out of school in the middle of the school year," Miller added, urging that "the same privacy and security considerations given to previous first families with regard to minor children be extended to the Trumps as well."
Melania Trump is the main caregiver for their son, taking him to his private school in Manhattan most days. She is said to be concerned not just about the potential disruption to her son's life, but also about bringing him closer to the news media spotlight. People who know her have said she plans to revisit the issue at the end of the school year.
Donald Trump and his aides have not said whether he plans to move to the White House full time. But he has told aides that he would like to be in New York when he can.
Information for this article was contributed by Catherine Lucey, Laurie Kellman and Jill Colvin of The Associated Press; by David Lauter and Del Quentin Wilber of The Seattle Times; by Maggie Haberman of The New York Times; and by Kristine Guerra, Amy B. Wang, Sari Horwitz, Greg Jaffe, Missy Ryan and Michelle Ye Hee Lee of The Washington Post.
A Section on 11/21/2016