Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is the top pick to be Secretary of State in President-elect Trump’s administration, a senior transition official told the Associated Press.
Many thought Giuliani would be a good pick for attorney general given his background as a former federal prosecutor, but Giuliani himself said that wouldn’t be the case.
According to the source there wasn’t much competition for the role of secretary of state and that if Giuliani wanted it, it was his for the taking. But another official cautioned that former Ambassador to the UN John Bolton was still in the running.
A senior source told Fox News that Giuliani was being considered for the secretary of state job, but said the choice was not locked in. The source added that Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., one of Trump's earliest Washington supporters, was getting a lot of say in the selection of officeholders. […]
Giuliani, 72, would be an out-of-box choice to lead the State Department due to his lack of extensive foreign policy experience. Known for his hard-line law-and-order views and brusque manner, he would set a very different tone than previous holders of the job, including Trump's ex-rival Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.
Bolton has years of federal government experience, but he has also raised eyebrows with some of his hawkish stances, including a 2015 op-ed in The New York Times in which he advocated bombing Iran to halt the country's development of nuclear weapons.
Giuliani said he thought Bolton “would be a very good choice” for the position, Fox News reports, but when asked if there was anyone better out there, he replied with a smile, “Maybe me, I don’t know.”