President-elect Trump’s meetings on Friday will include a Democratic senator who will soon be up for re-election in a deeply red state, a retired Navy admiral with experience in the Department of Homeland Security and a dark horse candidate for the secretary of state position.
Transition officials said Thursday that Trump will welcome Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., to Trump Tower later this week for a meeting. Jason Miller, spokesman for the transition team, said during a conference call with reporters that the one-term Democrat “would be an asset in any role or capacity.” He did not specify the position for which Trump is considering her.
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Heitkamp is one of several Senate Democrats who could face a tough battle to hold onto her seat in 2018 given the Republican leanings of her state and the fact that she and the other red-state Democrats who will be up next cycle won their tickets to Washington in a presidential year when the popular President Obama was on the ballot. There will be no such coattails in 2018.
Amid an increasingly bitter and public debate over who Trump should select as his secretary of state, the president-elect will meet with former Ambassador John Bolton on Friday.
Bolton, a Fox News contributor and Bush administration alumnus, has been mentioned as a potential contender for the State Department post, although he is seldom included among the top four candidates on Trump’s list.
Trump will also meet two Republicans who were loyal to him during the campaign: Georgia Sen. David Perdue and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Although Trump’s relationship with Bondi came under scrutiny during the presidential race given the timing of a political donation Trump’s charity had given to her in 2013, his transition team praised Bondi on Thursday as a supporter who has been a “friend for a long time.”
Perdue’s meeting with Trump will come days after his cousin, former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, met the president-elect. Perdue’s background as a business executive who led Dollar General and Pillowtex made him a natural ally to Trump during the campaign.
Also on Friday, Trump will meet retired Adm. Jay Cohen, former undersecretary of homeland security for science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security.
His meetings will come after he returns Thursday from the first stop of a “thank you” tour through states that delivered him the presidency. Trump will travel to Cincinnati, Ohio on Thursday to hold the first rally of the tour.
