President Donald Trump will meet with neoconservative Elliott Abrams on Tuesday as Trump decides whether or not to nominate Abrams for a top State Department job, Politico reported.
Abrams, who served in the State Department under President Ronald Reagan and on the National Security Council during President George W. Bush’s administration, criticized Trump during his presidential campaign but is now under consideration to be the deputy secretary of State under Rex Tillerson.
Despite Abrams’s criticism of Trump, Tillerson, who will also be at the meeting, prefers Abrams for the role of deputy secretary of State. The role requires Senate confirmation.
{mosads}White House officials, according to the report, have been vetting Abrams’s previous rhetoric on Trump to decide whether or not he can be trusted in the State Department job.
Abrams, currently a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council of Foreign Relations, is a member of the foreign policy establishment that harshly criticized Trump throughout the presidential campaign.
Trump’s own view on foreign policy includes stark contrasts to this establishment. Trump has defended Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, arguing that though he was a “bad guy,” he also killed terrorists.
“I may be in the same boat in 2016, unable to vote for Trump or Clinton,” Abrams told Politico in May, referencing the 1972 election between President Richard Nixon and George McGovern.
Abrams received two misdemeanor convictions for his role in events surrounding the Reagan administration’s Iran-Contra affair, although he was eventually pardoned.