Sen. Bob Corker emerged from an interview Tuesday with Donald Trump and said he believed the president-elect had narrowed the list of candidates for secretary of state to “a very small group.”
The selection process for who will run the State Department in the Trump administration has been grueling, including grumbling among Mr. Trump’s allies about his considering bitter foe Mitt Romney for the nomination.
Mr. Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, described this moment as “the greatest opportunity in modern times to really strengthen our nation’s security interests around the world and help us economically.”
He said that he was honored to be considered for the job.
“It’s been an honor to have the kind of meeting that I had today. We had a very wide-ranging meeting, actually a couple meetings and his instincts on foreign policy are obviously very, very good,” Mr. Corker told reporters at Trump Tower, where Mr. Trump lives and the transition team offices are located.
“I know he has a number of outstanding individuals that he’s talking with. I was glad to be here and glad to see more fully some of what his views about the world are,” he said.
Pressed about when he expected Mr. Trump to announce the nomination, Mr. Corker said they didn’t talk about that in the meeting.
“I think he’ll make the decision when he’s comfortable. My sense is he’s narrowed it down to a very small group of people,” he said.
The president-elect is scheduled to meet later Tuesday with Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and 2012 GOP presidential nominee who harshly criticized Mr. Trump’s during the campaign and worked to prevent him from winning the nomination and the White House.
Other candidates for secretary of state include retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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