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Trump praises Obama, but his picks have attacked president’s policies

Donald Trump reportedly has tapped retired Marines General John Kelly as homeland security secretary. European Pressphoto Agency file

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump lavished praise on President Obama on Wednesday and said he is taking his guidance on political appointments, but it seems unlikely he followed any specific advice from the president in his most recent Cabinet picks.

People familiar with the transition confirmed Wednesday Trump has chosen Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

Pruitt, who has written that the debate on climate change is “far from settled,” is among a group of attorneys general who sued to block the EPA’s implementation of the Clean Power Plan, an Obama effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector.

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He’s also joined states in suing the EPA over rules to curtail the emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from the oil and gas sector. Oklahoma’s economy is highly dependent on the petroleum industry.

Trump, according to people familiar with the transition, has also decided to nominate retired Marine General John F. Kelly as his homeland security secretary.

Kelly, a blunt-spoken border security hawk who clashed with the Obama administration over women in combat and plans to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would inherit a massive and often troubled department responsible for overseeing a controversial part of Trump’s agenda: a proposed crackdown on illegal immigration.

The news about Kelly, who retired in February as chief of US Southern Command, followed the revelation that Trump had selected Terry Branstad, the long-serving Republican governor of Iowa, as ambassador to China.

Earlier in the day, during an interview with NBC’s ‘‘Today’’ show, Trump said he liked Obama and they had ‘‘good chemistry,’’ a turnaround from Trump’s strategy of stoking political division with anti-Obama rhetoric on the campaign trail.

‘‘I have now gotten to know President Obama. I really like him. . . . We have a really good chemistry together,’’ Trump said, adding that he has solicited Obama’s input on personnel during his transition to the presidency. ‘‘I take his recommendations very seriously,’’ Trump said. ‘‘And there are some people that I will be appointing — and in one case have appointed — where he thought very highly of that person, yes.’’

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The ‘‘Today’’ interview focused on Trump’s selection as Time magazine’s ‘‘Person of the Year.’’ But he took aim at Time for also labeling him ‘‘President of the Divided States of America.’’ He told ‘‘Today’’ host Matt Lauer the term was ‘‘snarky’’ and his campaign, often criticized for its heated and partisan tone, was not responsible.

“When you say divided states of America, I didn’t divide them. They’re divided now,’’ Trump said. ‘‘. . . I'm not president yet. So I didn’t do anything to divide.’’

Trump also tried to clarify Tuesday’s surprising news that he sold all of his shares in companies in June, a move that could have created a cash windfall as he ramped up to begin a costly general election presidential campaign. Experts said the sell-off could help address conflict-of-interest worries about his stock portfolio, a sizable part of Trump’s financial life. Trump said that, indeed, was his primary consideration.

‘‘I was never a big stockholder, but I bought a lot of different stocks,’’ Trump said. ‘‘I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to be owning stocks when I’m making deals for this country that maybe will affect one company positively and one company negatively. So I just felt it was a conflict.’’

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Trump also selected former wrestling executive Linda McMahon to his Cabinet as leader of the Small Business Administration.

McMahon and her husband, Vince, founded and built World Wrestling Entertainment Inc., now a publicly traded company. She stepped down as the company’s chief executive officer in 2009 in a failed bid to win election to the US Senate from Connecticut. In recent years, she began a startup to encourage more women business owners.

‘‘Linda is going to be a phenomenal leader and champion for small businesses and unleash America’s entrepreneurial spirit all across the country,’’ Trump said in a statement.

As he is prone to do, Trump also teased the possibility of other major transition developments in the coming days. ‘‘I have some other big announcements coming up today and actually tomorrow,’’ he told NBC, adding that he is closing in on perhaps his biggest selection of all: Who will represent the United States overseas as secretary of state?

The prestigious post has been the subject of an extraordinary battle, with some Trump advisers publicly bashing one of the leading candidates, 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, and urging Trump to instead select former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Other candidates include retired Army general and former CIA director David Petraeus; Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee; and an unorthodox possibility cited by Trump in the NBC interview: ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson.

‘‘We have a great, great gentleman, the head, the boss over at Exxon, and, you know, he’s built a tremendous company over 30 years with great style,’’ said Trump, who said he is likely to announce his nominee for secretary of state next week.

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Asked whether he is publicly dangling Romney as revenge for his stark criticism of Trump during the campaign, the president-elect said Romney remains under consideration.

‘‘I’ve spoken to him a lot, and we’ve come a long way together. We had some tremendous difficulty together, and now I think we’ve come a long way,’’ Trump said. ‘‘. . . It’s not about revenge. It’s about what’s good for the country. And I'm able to put this stuff behind us.’’

The day began with news of Branstad being chosen to represent the nation in Beijing. The Iowa governor has extensive ties to China and a decades-long personal friendship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The move, confirmed by a transition official, could help assuage concerns raised by Trump’s phone call Friday with Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan, which China considers a rogue province.


Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.