STATE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Former Fox News contributor Morgan Ortagus, the expected pick to become the next State Department spokesperson, repeatedly criticized President Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, a CNN review found. Ortagus publicly lambasted then-candidate Trump over what she called his ‘isolationist foreign policy approach,’ and blasted behavior she qualified as ‘disgusting’ and ‘not serious.’ However, she quickly reinvented herself as a vocal Trump supporter after he secured the party’s nomination and has remained a key TV surrogate for the administration over the last two years. Ortagus would bring deep foreign policy experience to the job. While she is perhaps best known for her appearances on Fox News, the active Navy Reserve officer previously served as a Treasury Department intelligence analyst during the Obama administration and a spokesperson with the US Agency for International Development under President George W. Bush. That experience sets her apart from former spokesperson Heather Nauert in the high-profile State Department position, allies say.”
–Zachary Cohen and Andrew Kaczynski, “She blasted Trump as ‘disgusting’ in 2016. Now she may join his administration.,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, April 2, 2019 10:53 pm