Trump’s Secretary of State Will Have to ‘Clean House’

President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of state will depend in no small part on his ability to remove the anti-Israel people in the department, according to Marc Zell, Chairman of the Republican Party in Israel.

Zell told Arutz Sheva on Thursday that “[Trump] needs a secretary of state who can clean house in the department in Washington, which is currently filled with Arab supporters. In order to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Yerushalayim, you need to neutralize these people — which means firing them. Only people like Giuliani and Bolton are able to do that.”

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, also on the short list for the key post, according to media reports, is at a disadvantage in this respect, said Dell, who noted Romney’s establishment orientation, which would make it hard for him to get rid of officials who would be out of sympathy with Trump’s agenda. The State Department has consistently opposed moving the embassy to Yerushalayim.

“At present, there are officials in the State Department who are working to undermine this [move]. In Washington there are some 4,000 political appointments that need to be filled, including in the State Department, and the president has the right to fire them [those remaining from the past administration],” said Zell.