Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., urged President-elect Donald Trump to retain Secretary of Defense Ash Carter "at least for a year."
"One of the names I wish the president-elect would have stuck with is Mike Rogers, and unfortunately we saw him unceremoniously booted out yesterday. I wish he would maybe keep Ash Carter as secretary, at least for a year, at DOD for continuity," Warner said in an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"When I first elected governor I had never served in public office before, moving from running a business to running a government," he continued, "you've got to get people with different types of skills, you need a diversity of views, particularly running the United States government is much different than running any kind of private sector enterprise."
According to the Pentagon, Trump's transition team have yet to contact Carter's office, or anyone else in the Defense Department.
"As of this moment, there's not been any contact from the president-elect's transition team," said Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, according to the Washington Examiner. "We stand ready to assist the president-elect's transition team with a smooth and orderly transition in the interest of national security and for our country."
"I don't know when they'll come. That's entirely up to them," Carter said Monday, the Examiner reports. "They'll arrive when they're ready to arrive. But we'll be ready for them when they do."
"There's a fairly well-understood template," Carter said of the upcoming change in the chain of command. "But the mission on our side is very clear ... We'll try to help them to get all the information and the perspective that will help them to hit the ground running. That's our objective."