Washington: The transformation of power in Washington begins at President-elect Donald Trump's ear.
There are the intimates: Steven Bannon, the controversial provocateur and keeper of Trump's populist, nationalist flame; Jared Kushner, the unquestionably loyal son-in-law who whispers his machinations; and Jeff Sessions, the firebrand senator from Alabama whose clout is all-encompassing and often unseen.
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The fault lines between Trump and Pence
The long presidential campaign revealed sharp differences between Donald Trump and Mike Pence, which may yet cause difficulties between the now President- and Vice-President-elect.
There are the operators: Reince Priebus, the consummate party man who will manage the White House; Paul Ryan, the wonky House speaker who stands ready to implement a wholesale overhaul of the tax code, health care and regulations; and Mitch McConnell, the wily Senate majority leader who intends to personally tilt the Supreme Court and federal judiciary to the right.
And then there is Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who is positioned to exert sweeping authority on all matters foreign and domestic as Trump's partner in governing.
These seven men, as well as Trump's adult children and a few others, will make up an unusual power grid in a capital city used to a hierarchical structure. Trump is presiding over concentric spheres of influence, designed to give him direct access to a constellation of counsellors and opinions.
Such an approach also risks bringing confrontation or even paralysis as feuding factions work to further their own goals, edge out adversaries or distract Trump - as happened more than once during his presidential campaign.
As president, his associates said, Trump will seek rather than shun competing advice. His presidency will be governance as a series of ongoing conversations.
"He's got this habit where he calls people every day to check in," said Barry Bennett, a former Trump campaign adviser. "He likes a lot of input, multiple, competing voices at the table. So a top-down White House is not him."
So it is that in assembling his White House, Trump announced that his chief of staff, Priebus, and chief strategist and senior counsellor, Bannon, would be "equal partners" - a departure from President Barack Obama's West Wing, where Chief of Staff Denis McDonough stands alone atop the pyramid.
The turbulent first week of Trump's transition has revealed a tendency in the president-elect - one that was evident throughout his business career and during his campaign - to reject rigid chains of command.
So far, Trump has prized loyalty above all else. He demoted New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as transition chairman in favour of Pence. People linked to Christie have been purged from the transition team - including former Michigan congressman and House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers - and acolytes of Sessions were elevated.
Chris Christie was demoted by Trump. Photo: AP
Word has gone out to those interested in serving in the Trump administration that the top positions will almost certainly go to those who supported him during the campaign.
Jason Miller, communications director for the Trump transition, dismissed discussions of the emerging power matrix as "inside baseball, palace intrigue."
"If you know anything about Donald Trump's leadership style, it's that he's the one who's going to set the tone and the pace and the vision for what he wants to accomplish with the government that he's forming," Miller said. "You can talk about all the different people coming on board to help implement that, but there's one person who's ultimately going to be driving it, and that's the next president of the United States."
People involved in the transition said Kushner is orchestrating nearly everything alongside Trump and Pence, from personnel to the administration's initial policy agenda. As quiet and discreet as his father-in-law is loud and combative, Kushner is said to have taken part in the ouster of Christie and the New Jersey governor's network.
It is unclear whether Kushner will have a formal role in the administration or whether he and wife Ivanka will remain in New York, where they run their own businesses and are raising three small children. Regardless, though, Kushner is certain to be a regular sounding board for the new president.
"Jared Kushner's role is to provide advice and counsel as requested by the president-elect, which he does very well," Miller said.
It is unclear what role Jared Kushner will have in the Trump administration. Photo: Bloomberg
Kushner poised to wield clout in presidency
"Honestly, Jared is a very successful real estate person. But I actually think he likes politics more than he likes real estate," Trump said of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, standing to his right during a victory speech after the Indiana party primary election in May. "But he's very good at politics."
Kushner, the slender, clean-cut New Jersey real estate scion who married Trump's daughter Ivanka in 2009, helped guide the Republican Trump to victory last week over Democrat Hillary Clinton and is poised to remain an influential adviser during his presidency.
Kushner emerged as an important voice early in Trump's campaign, launched in June 2015. He was involved in almost every aspect of Trump's campaign, offering advice on key personnel decisions, strategy, speeches, fundraising and other areas.
Late in the campaign, he began laying the groundwork for a possible Trump-run television network, in the event his father-in-law lost, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Kushner spearheads his family's real estate development company, Kushner Companies, and is the publisher of the New York Observer weekly newspaper, which he acquired at age 25.
While a federal anti-nepotism law prohibits a president from hiring family members to serve in his administration, Kushner is set to remain a key insider and trusted confidant.
Reince Priebus, appointed Trump's White House chief of staff on Sunday, told NBC's Today show on Monday that Kushner "obviously" will be very involved in decision-making. Kushner serves on Trump's transition executive committee.
Reince Priebus was appointed Trump's chief of staff. Photo: AP/John Locher
Following in his father's footsteps
Kushner is a Harvard graduate with a New York University law degree and a master's in business administration. Like Trump, Kushner followed in the footsteps of a real estate powerhouse father.
His father, Charles Kushner, is a real estate developer, philanthropist and major Democratic donor whose reputation was left in tatters after a lurid criminal case. He was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty in 2004 to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and making unlawful campaign donations.
During the case, he admitted to smearing his brother-in-law, who had cooperated with prosecutors, by hiring a prostitute to have sex with him in a motel room, then sending a secretly recorded video of the encounter to the man's wife, Charles Kushner's own sister.
In an unusual twist, the man who prosecuted Charles Kushner was Chris Christie, now the governor of New Jersey, who also has served as an adviser to Trump.
Kushner is an Orthodox Jew whose wife, Ivanka, converted to Judaism before they married. The family keeps kosher, observes the Sabbath and attends an upscale synagogue on New York's Upper East Side.
Jared Kushner and wife Ivanka Trump. Photo: AP
Anti-Semitism controversy
Steve Bannon, former head of the right-wing Breitbart News website, took a leadership post in the campaign in August after it became clear that Trump, his children and Kushner trusted his advice and analysis, a source said at the time.
Breitbart News is closely associated with the "alt-right" movement, a loose online group of white supremacists, anti-Semites and others opposed to multiculturalism.
Trump, who takes office on January 20, named Bannon as chief strategist and senior counsellor on Sunday.
Dana Schwartz, a Jewish reporter for Kushner's newspaper, in July criticised Trump for his Twitter post accusing Clinton of corruption using a Star of David image and a background of $100 bills. Schwartz then wrote an open letter to Kushner after being deluged with anti-Semitic tweets.
Schwartz asked Kushner, "how do you allow this? Because, Mr Kushner, you are allowing this. ... When you stand silent and smiling in the background, his Jewish son-in-law, you're giving his most hateful supporters tacit approval."
Kushner responded by writing in the Observer, "In my opinion, accusations like 'racist' and 'anti-Semite' are being thrown around with a carelessness that risks rendering these words meaningless."
He went on to write that his grandmother and grandfather survived the Nazi Holocaust while other relatives did not.
"I know the difference between actual, dangerous intolerance versus these labels that get tossed around in an effort to score political points," Kushner wrote.
Kushner became a major player in real estate in his mid-20s, after his father's conviction. At 26, he orchestrated what was the most-expensive single-building purchase in US history in 2006 with the $US1.8 billion acquisition of a 41-storey skyscraper at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
Kushner told The Real Deal trade magazine afterward, "In New York, you have to act quickly, or else you get left in the dust."
A careful dance on Capitol Hill
On Capitol Hill, leaders are calculating how to take maximum advantage of what they see as a rare opportunity with Republicans controlling both the legislative and executive branches. They believe Trump will put an emphasis on velocity - hoping for a blizzard of accomplishments early on - but focus less on the granular details, which could allow lawmakers to inject their pet priorities into Trump's big-ticket items.
It is a careful dance. While Ryan and McConnell are busily preparing a spate of bills to take up in concert with the White House, they are treading cautiously, wary of getting ahead of the president-elect and cognisant that he is driven more by relationships and instincts than a political ideology.
Mitch McConnell is working along with other Senate Republicans to get Trump prepared to make a round of judicial nominations Photo: Bloomberg
To that end, Ryan is promoting his A Better Way agenda as a guide for Trump on taxes, health care and regulatory issues.
"We're ready to roll in the House with a set of policies that we think Mr. Trump will buy into," said Representative Sean Duffy. "I know he'll want to put his fingerprints on it, but it's almost a plug-and-play scenario."
Ryan or aides speak daily with Trump's team, with Jonathan Burks, the speaker's longtime policy adviser, serving as a liaison. Representative Chris Collins, an early Trump supporter, has also been a bridge between the House leadership and the Trump operation.
Representative Lou Barletta, said he and fellow Trump allies in the House would ensure the president-elect's populist views, as well as his hard-line approach to illegal immigration, are infused in every piece of legislation the body passes.
"For those of us who were with Trump when he had less than a 1 per cent chance of winning, we want him to know that we're here for him to rely on," Barletta said. "We know he won't settle for things being done slowly."
McConnell, meanwhile, is poised to be the ultimate dealmaker, considering how narrow the Republican majority is in the Senate, and already eyeing scores of vacancies in the federal judiciary, chief among them the Supreme Court seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
Senator Orrin Hatch, said he and McConnell are working along with other Senate Republicans to get Trump prepared to make a round of judicial nominations.
"He's working with us, and I suspect we'll do just fine," Hatch said. "He has said he'd accept someone from the Federalist Society list, and we'll be weighing in as he makes his decisions. We know he'll listen, because he knows this issue is one of the reasons why he won the presidency."
Trump's ability to work with Senate Democrats remains a variable, although he and new Minority Leader Charles Schumer - both brash New Yorkers; Trump is from Queens and Schumer from Brooklyn - could find bipartisan bonhomie on economic issues such as infrastructure spending.
"To do big, huge stuff you have to have bipartisan support," said Senator Lindsey Graham. "We have a 52-seat majority in the Senate, a thin margin for majority votes. When it comes to huge things, you'll need 60. His instincts probably get that already, but if you want to move on your issues, that's the reality."
Throughout his life, Trump has followed a pattern, said Tony Schwartz, co-author of Trump's 1987 memoir, The Art of the Deal.
"Trump sees himself as the straw that stirs the drink," Schwartz said. "He has almost no interest in the details of how things happen, but he has an intense interest in being the decision-maker."
A line to the Oval Office
As Trump assembles his White House, he is reimagining the traditional staffing chart in the mold of his personality, with a group of aides and outside confidants expected to have direct lines to the Oval Office, members of his transition team said.
Former GOP presidential rival Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon and a vice chairman of Trump's transition committee, said the incoming team would work in harmony to transform the government.
Steve Bannon's appointment will cause disquiet in Washington and beyond. Photo: AP
"Bannon and Priebus worked very well together during the campaign, so there's certainly no reason to think that they won't work well together here as well," Carson said. "Usually things are dictated by ideology and relationships. With Trump, they will be dictated by common sense, by what's practical and what actually works."
But other Republicans offered warning signs about erecting rival power centres. Patrick Buchanan, a veteran of the Nixon and Reagan White Houses, pointed out that Bannon and Priebus, regardless of their shared allegiance to the president-elect, carry with them different ideologies and experiences.
"Bannon is coming in with very strong views and ideas, and those are not the same ideas that Reince Priebus and Paul Ryan and the others have - on security of the border, on trade deals, on globalisation, on war and peace," Buchanan said. "This is the reality. You're going to have a clash in the White House - and the president is going to have to make the call."
Schwartz, who was a critic of Trump's candidacy and informally advised Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign on her opponent's psychology, said Trump seeks a variety of opinions in part out of necessity.
"He doesn't have a clear set of guiding principles inside him," Schwartz said. "He doesn't have values that he feels compelled to live by. He doesn't have a significant store of knowledge about the subjects he's dealing with. So it would make sense that he's casting around for intelligence, even if he doesn't end up trusting or relying on it."
As with all things Trump, there are always people in his ear. His orbit extends to friends who may not join the government but whom he considers peers: investors Carl Icahn, Andrew Beal and Tom Barrack, and casino magnates Phil Ruffin and Steve Wynn.
Amid this week's hubbub about filling the Cabinet, Icahn took it upon himself to break some news. "Spoke to @realDonaldTrump," he tweeted Tuesday. "Steve Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross are being considered for Treasury and Commerce."
The Washington Post, Reuters