Trump names new senior aides who are a sharp contrast

WASHINGTON (AP) — With his first two key personnel appointments, President-elect Donald Trump made an overture to Republican circles by naming GOP chief Reince Priebus as his White House chief of staff and fired a shot across the Washington establishment's bow by tabbing Breitbart News executive Stephen Bannon as chief strategist and senior counselor.

Bannon, meanwhile, helped transform the Breitbart News site into the leading mouthpiece of the party's anti-establishment wing, which helped fuel the businessman's political rise.

Chiefs of staff in particular play a significant role in policymaking, serving as a liaison to Cabinet agencies and deciding what information makes it to the president's desk.

Trump's adult children, who serve as influential advisers to the president-elect, are said to have been concerned about having a controversial figure in the chief of staff role and backed Priebus for the job.

John Weaver, a Republican strategist who worked for Ohio Gov. John Kasich's presidential campaign, tweeted, The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office.

Bannon, who became campaign CEO in August, pushed Trump to adopt more populist rhetoric and paint rival Hillary Clinton as part of a global conspiracy made up of the political, financial and media elite, bankers bent on oppressing the country's working people — a message that carried Trump to the White House but to some, carried anti-Semitic undertones.

The appointments came after a day in which Trump's tough-talking plan to rein in illegal immigration showed signs Sunday of cracking, with the president-elect seemingly backing off his vow to build a solid wall along the southern U.S. border and Ryan rejecting any "deportation force" targeting people in the country illegally.