Meanwhile, the new Washington Residents are.....................

The Trump picks so far.....


James N Mattis (Defence), 66, retired marine corps general. Hawkishness especially on Iran put him at odds with the Obama administration. Has called for a “new security architecture for the Mideast built on sound policy … Iran is a special case that must be dealt with as a threat to regional stability, nuclear and otherwise”.. Nicknamed “Mad Dog”.

Verdict: I'm a marine and I'm put on this earth to kick ass!

John F Kelly (Homeland Security), 66, retired marine corps general. Has warned about border security.

Verdict: Homeland Security, a product of utter paranoia following 9/11. Billions wasted on a risk that is infinitesimal relative to the greater world. More risk in your average neighbourhood gun shop.

Mike Pompeo (CIA), 52, a third-term congressman from Kansas. After the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, Pompeo falsely claimed that US Muslim organisations and religious leaders had not condemned terrorism. He called those at the CIA who participated in torture “heroes, not pawns in some liberal game” Opponent of closing the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, a vocal critic of the Iran nuclear deal and a supporter of NSA bulk data collection. Has called for “the traitor Edward Snowden” to be executed.

Verdict: start dusting down those waterboards folks!

Steven Mnuchin (Treasury), 53, campaign finance chairman. Former Goldman Sachs, hedge funder. Swooped on doomed IndyMac bank as it sunk in the 2008 housing crash, acquired it and scored when the federal government bailed out the bank. They call him the “foreclosure king”. Democratic senator Sherrod Brown said: “This isn’t draining the swamp – it’s stocking it with alligators.” Announced he would oversee “the largest tax change since Reagan” and said his “No 1 priority is tax reform”.

Verdict: Munchkin? More like Wicked Witch of the West


Jeff Sessions (Attorney General), 69, US senator from Alabama in his fourth term. Former US attorney, state attorney general. An immigration hardliner. Sessions’ last confirmation hearing, for a federal judgeship under Ronald Reagan in 1986, was derailed when former colleagues testified that he used the N-word, called a black assistant US attorney “boy” and joked that he thought the Ku Klux Klan were “OK until I found out they smoked pot”. Has emphasised “law and order”, seen by some liberals as a coded phrase for discriminatory policing of minorities.

Verdict: Now where's those Stars and Bars for my Washington Office?


Andrew F Puzder (Labour), 66, restaurant executive operating fast-food chains including Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s. Vehement critic of government regulation and staunch opponent of minimum wage laws and the Fight for $15 movement. Blames Obamacare for increased labor costs and has diagnosed a “government-mandated restaurant recession”.

Verdict: "Let them eat cake from my dining emporia": preferably rich in monosodium glutamate that costs me nothing to produce in Mexico

Tom Price (Health), 62, six-term Republican congressman from Georgia. Orthopaedic surgeon staunchly opposed to Obamacare. Became chair of the House budget committee in 2015. Attempted in 2015 to defund Planned Parenthood through a budget maneuver. Seen as opponent of women’s health programs. Described as having “a 100% pro-life record”.

Verdict: Will dine regularly with the VP; it isn't recorded if he has daughters himself.

Ben Carson (Housing), 65, retired paediatric neurosurgeon. Carson, a critic of government welfare, has called for private charities to shoulder welfare needs. A purveyor of bizarre conspiracy theories and a provocateur who compares abortion to slavery and same-sex marriage to paedophilia.

Verdict: was rumoured to be on the same bus that taped p ussy-gate; gays and blacks to the front of the housing lists....for deportation to Detroit (Alternatively, "come back Johnny/Willie, all is forgiven)

Scott Pruitt (Environment), 48, Oklahoma state attorney general. A climate change denier and longtime enemy of the EPA, whose rule he has called “unlawful and overreaching”. Part of legal action waged by 28 states against the EPA to halt the Clean Power Plan, an effort by Barack Obama’s administration to curb greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. On the overwhelming scientific evidence that human activity is causing the planet to warm: “That debate is far from settled,” he said in May. “Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.” Environmental groups say that Pruitt has been a “puppet” of the fossil fuel industry.

Verdict: claims to have a large penis because he has spectacles with magnifying power


Wilbur Ross (Commerce), 79, billionaire investor known for aggressive moves to agglomerate and sell failing steel- and coal-industry interests. Net worth of $2.9bn, according to Forbes. Dubbed a “vulture” and “king of bankruptcy” because of his knack for extracting a profit from failing businesses. Helped Trump keep control of his failing Taj Mahal casino in the 1990s by persuading investors not to push him out. An explosion at a mine in West Virginia, which his company had bought a few weeks earlier, killed 12 miners in 2002.

Verdict: what's the old age pension in America these days?


Elaine Chao (Transport), 63, former secretary of labour and deputy secretary of transportation. Married to the senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell. Daughter of a shipping magnate, she made more than $1m from serving on the boards of News Corp, Wells Fargo, Ingersoll Rand and Vulcan Materials in 2015.

Verdict: My favourite "shipping magnate" daughters are Mz's Niarchos and Onassis respectively. The latter recently shelled out €12m for a show-jumper. Rumoured to have an admirer in Rupert Murdoch; I say impossible as she's too old for the centenarian.

Nikki Haley (U.N.), 44, governor of South Carolina. Youngest governor in the country, first woman and first Indian American to hold the job in the Palmetto state. Fluctuating popularity. Praised for signing legislation to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state capitol and for leadership after 2015 mass shooting at a historic African American church in Charleston. Endorsed Marco Rubio in the Republican primaries and jabbed at Trump in a reply to the State of the Union address she delivered for the Republican party in January 2016.

Verdict: Do they have Sioux chefs in Red Indian restaurants?


Betsy DeVos (Education), education secretary. Daughter-in-law of Richard DeVos, co-founder of marketing company Amway. The family has a net worth of $5.1bn, according to Forbes. Her lobbying for school vouchers has been criticised for undermining public sector schools (which critics note neither she nor her children attended). DeVos’s brother is Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, a private security contractor notorious for its lucrative and deadly role in the Iraq war.

Verdict: never trust a woman called Betsy; she undid me in my pubescent days thanks to Harold Robbins


Michael Flynn (NSA), 57, retired US army general and former director of the defense intelligence agency. A close Trump adviser known for his scandalously broad-brush criticism of Islam and flirtation with conspiracy theories. A vocal critic of the Obama administration. Flynn has falsely claimed that Sharia law is spreading across the US and that the nation is in the midst of a world war with radical Islamists. “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL,” he tweeted earlier this year. Son recently booted from the Trump transition team after tweeting credulously about fake news.

Verdict: scandalous that they don't mention his career as a National Hunt jumps jockey; does he not know that capital letters represent SHOUTING? (You can retire from the army is Ireland on full pension at about 40 years of age: why no future politicians amongst them?_

Reince Priebus (Chief Of Staff), 44, chairman of the Republican national committee. Wisconsin native and a steady hand when things get weird. Once criticized for a failure to stand up to Trump, in retrospect praised for winning over his party’s insurgent and ascendant president-elect.

Verdict: a name to go with Fletcher Christian. Mrs Susan (Sue! to me) Magnier should enlist mom on the horse-naming panel.

Steve Bannon (Chief Strategist), 63, campaign CEO, former chairman of Breitbart News. Harvard, Goldman Sachs. Boasted that he made Breitbart the “platform for the alt-right”, in reference to the far-right movement in the US. His web site was a clearinghouse for hate speech of all kinds including white nationalism, anti-semitism, immigrant-hatred and misogyny.

Verdict: as they say in the bible: keep the best swine for last.