Trump's team of rivals: Discordant notes in the amen chorus

Some of the incoming president's most important Cabinet choices are at odds with him on matters that were dear to his heart as a campaigner and central to his promises to supporters.

[...] despite that breezy dismissal, the differences laid bare in a week of confirmation hearings raise questions about whether Trump will roll over his Cabinet on immigration, Russia, national security and more, bend to his top advisers' stated convictions or watch them backtrack from pronouncements that may be helping them win Senate approval.

Trump's nominees to run the CIA, State Department and Justice Department gave credence to U.S. intelligence assessments on Russian hacking that the president-elect ridiculed for weeks before he grudgingly accepted it Wednesday.

Kansas Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo, nominated as CIA director, said the report concluding that Russia interfered in the U.S. election trying to help Trump win was "an analytical product that is sound."

Rex Tillerson, nominated as secretary of state, told senators it's a "fair assumption" the hacking couldn't have happened without Russian President Vladimir Putin's approval.

Trump has declared the focus on Russia and the election a "political witch hunt," while acknowledging this week that Russia was probably behind the hacking of Democrats during the campaign.

Trump's national security and diplomatic leaders have voiced sharp skepticism about the prospects for a warmer relationship with Moscow despite Trump's praise of Putin.

The proposals then evolved into one that would halt immigration from countries linked to terrorism, though Trump never explicitly took a Muslim ban off the table, nor renounced the registry advocated by some who supported him.

Retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, nominated to lead the Homeland Security Department, also weighed in: "I don't agree with registering people based on ethnic or religion or anything like that."

Mexico is a "long-standing friend and neighbor of this country," he added, offering a diplomatic bow to a country that Trump says has been taking advantage of weak U.S. leadership.

If you are to build a wall from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, you'd still have to back that wall up with patrolling by human beings, by sensors, by observation devices.