While Vice President-elect Mike Pence busies himself taking selfies, the transition team he’s currently heading for his boss, President-elect Donald Trump, isn’t doing so hot. Recent reports suggest the team is already a month behind schedule and, with the recent resignation of F.B.I. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, more positions are beginning to open that the Republican victor’s people don’t seem prepared to fill. But never fear, for America’s fearless new leader and his public relations team already have a plan in place to reassure the nation that — despite all signs to the contrary — they are ready for the next four years.
In other words, a “victory tour.” According to The Hill, Trump campaign advance team director George Gigicos revealed on Thursday how the next President of the United States would visit many of the states he won, and flipped, during the weeks after the Thanksgiving holiday:
“We’re working on a victory tour now. It will happen in the next couple of weeks,” Gigicos said at Trump Tower, according to a pool report.
Asked where Trump would go, Gigicos responded: “Obviously to the states that we won and the swing states we flipped over.”
The news comes less than a week after the Associated Press reported the president-elect and his team were planning some kind of “victory tour to states that elected him.” A Trump aide holed up with the transition team in Trump Tower allegedly leaked the then-unconfirmed rumor on Saturday, though if the White House pool report’s direct quotes from Gigicos are any indication, then said tour is actually going to happen sometime in late November or early December.
Los Angeles Times reporter Chris Megerian noted on Twitter the victory tour’s proposed rallies “could become like Chris Christie town halls in New Jersey — a permanent campaign-like feature of his administration.” Plus, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton had similarly suggested she would host regular town hall-style meetings if she were elected president. Though as Politico’s Gabriel Debenedetti remarked, “There’s a big difference [between] those and big rallies.”
(Via The Hill)