CABINET/CONFLICT OF INTERESTS: "SPEAKER- 'What is your response to your critics that say not only you, but also your Cabinet is filled with conflicts of interest and do you plan to set an example in the future to make sure your Cabinet and everyone throughout your administration is –'
DONALD TRUMP- 'I really think that when you watch was going on with — what's happening — I was is watching, as an example, Rex Tillerson. I think it's brilliant what he's doing and what he’s saying. I watched yesterday, as you know, our great senator who is going to be a great Attorney General. And he was brilliant. And what people don't know is that he was a great prosecutor and Attorney General in Alabama. And he was brilliant yesterday. So I really think that they are — I think we have one of the great cabinets ever put together. And we’ve been hearing that from so many people — people are so happy. You know, in the case of Rex, he ran incredibly Exxonmobil. When there was a find, he would get it. When they needed something, he would be there. A friend of mine is very, very substantial in the oil business – Harold Hamm — big supporter — he said there's no one in the business like Rex Tillerson. And that's what we want. That's what I want to bring to government. I want to bring the greatest people into government because we're way behind. We don't make good deals anymore. I say it all the time at speeches. We don't make the deals anymore. We make bad deals. Our trade deals are a disaster. We have hundreds of billions of dollars of losses on a yearly basis — hundreds of billions with China on trade and trade imbalance, with Japan, with Mexico, with just about everybody. We don't make good deals anymore. So we need people that are smart. We need people that are successful. And they got successful because, generally speaking, they’re smart. And that’s what I put. I'm very proud of the cabinet. I think they’re doing very well. It's very interesting how it's going, but I think they're doing very, very well.' "
– “Donald Trump’s Press Conference, Annotated,” NPR.org, Jan. 11, 2017, Donald Trump, Transcript, 1/11/2017