Rudy Giuliani won’t be Donald J. Trump’s secretary of state.
The former New York City mayor and current Republican rabble rouser has pulled himself out of the running. It might have been the questions over his foreign-government contacts that persuaded him he might not have been confirmed by the Senate, even with all those fellow Republicans running the place.
So …
Who will get the nod at State?
Mitt Romney might be the frontrunner. Then again, it might be someone else.
I’m kinda pulling for Mitt, although I cannot yet define my reasons why I am.
He once led the Never Trump movement. He made that extraordinary 17-minute blistering of Trump, calling him a “fraud, phony and con man.” He was so tough that Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, has lobbied publicly against her boss even considering him for the State job. Imagine that!
Why should Mitt get the job? He’s got street cred among foreign leaders. He’s a reasonable GOP conservative.
It appears he has been served his share of humble pie at that dinner date he had with Trump. The men must have talked about the State job and Mitt must have told Trump that he didn’t really and truly mean all those things he said. “I mean,” he could have said, “emotions were running high and it was, after all, a political speech. Politicians often say things they don’t really and truly mean, you know.”
I’m glad Rudy is out of the State Department picture, or so he says.
This is where I perhaps ought to caution everyone that Dr. Ben Carson — the renowned pediatric brain surgeon and former GOP presidential campaign rival of Trump’s — once declared he wasn’t qualified to run a federal agency.
So what did the president-elect do? He named him as the next housing and urban development secretary.
Let’s all stay tuned, shall we?