Trump appoints contentious trio and agrees lawsuit pay-off as Pence booed

DONALD TRUMP has generated widespread consternation after announcing three key cabinet picks that will “undo decades of progress” according to rights activists.

The appointments of Jeff Sessions as attorney general, Mike Pompeo as CIA chief and Michael Flynn as national security adviser suggest that Trump intends to surround himself with far right-leaning minds in his cabinet.

All three have previously made inflammatory statements regarding race equality, immigration, Islam and the use of torture in US national security operations.

Elsewhere, incoming vice-president Mike Pence was roundly booed as he attended a performance of hit hip-hop musical Hamilton in New York on Friday, November 18.

At the end of the show one of the actors, Brandon Dixon, called Pence back into the auditorium, where he read a message which caused rising cheers to break out.

“Mike Pence, we welcome you here. We are the diverse Americans who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights … we hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us.”

Meanwhile, the New York Attorney General has announced that Trump has settled three Trump University lawsuits for around €23.5 million.

He had previously repeated that he had no intention of settling the class-action claims, after hundreds of former students sued the president-elect having each paid €33,000 in order to obtain real-estate “secrets” from his “hand-picked” instructors.

Trump University has been called “a fraud from beginning to end” since its closure in 2010.

The tycoon has attracted further criticism after he allowed his daughter Ivanka and her increasingly influential husband, Jared Kushner, to join him in a meeting with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday, November 17.