Monthly Archives: May 2017

Updated | Is H.R. McMaster, the White House national security adviser, on the way out? By some signs, he is: President Donald Trump not only excluded him from a key meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his national security adviser Monday night in Jerusalem, he was kept outside the King David [Hotel] room during the course of the entire meeting, according to an eye-catching Israeli account.

Taken alone, the perceived shaming wouldnt amount to much: Trump has a habit of slighting his aides in public. But the incident came only days after a report in The New York Times that McMaster had fallen out of favor with the president. Trump had complained that General McMaster talks too much in meetings, and the president has referred to him as a pain, The Times said in a report that was not challenged by the White House. By the time Trump left Israel for his meeting in Rome with the Pope, right-wing news sites closely allied with the so-called nationalist wing of the White House were serving up full throated criticism of McMaster, a distinguishedArmy general.

Gen. McMaster Squanders Tremendous Capital Trump Earns in Saudi Arabia, screamed a headline at Frontpage, a web site that has championed the presidents travel ban and other anti-Muslim themes. McMaster acknowledged that the President had used the term Islamic terrorism in his speech in Riyadh, the news site complained, then immediately tried to back away from it. The general had returned to the Obama-era white-washing of Islam [and] bending over backwards out of fear of offending Muslim leaders whose support we need to fight ISIS, it claimed.

Subscribe to Newsweek from $1 per week

Breitbart News Network, formerly edited by Trumps chief strategist Steve Bannon, went further, inviting anti-Muslim gadfly Frank Gaffney onto its Sirius XM radio show to blast McMaster as one of the leading voices in the Trump administration seeking to divorce Islam from terrorism.

Likewise, Mike Cernovich, a blogger with a large far-right following, has been running a campaign against the general, accusing him of manipulating intelligence reports and plotting how to sell a massive ground war in Syria to President Trump with the help of disgraced former CIA director and convicted criminal David Petraeus, who mishandled classified information by sharing documents with his mistress.

Even before McMaster left on Trumps foreign trip, writers from the Washington establishment were urging him to resign before he lost the last shreds of his dignity under the erratic president. Twenty years ago, H.R. McMaster authored a cautionary tale, Washington Post columnist Carlos Lozada wrote, referencing the generals acclaimed book on how U.S. military leaders enabled bad decision-making by President Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War. Now he risks becoming one.

Related: How H.R. McMaster became a soldier's soldier

U.S. National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., May 16, 2017. SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty

Another writer at the liberal-leaning Foreign Policy web site quoted from McMasters book, Dereliction of Duty, to suggest he risked grave injury to his reputation if he stuck around much longer. Richard Miles, who served on President George W. Bushs White House National Security Council, noted that McMaster opened one of the chapters in his book with a quote from Admiral David McDonald, chief of naval operations from 1963 to 1967: Maybe we military men were all weak. Maybe we should have stood up and pounded the table....I was part of it and Im sort of ashamed of myself too. At times I wonder, why did I go along with this kind of stuff?

Ironically, themultiple new bombshells on the Trump-Russia front breaking Fridaynightmay strengthen McMasters hand, should he decide to stick around. With new revelations that Trumps son-in-law and senior aide Jared Kushner sought to establish a back channel with the Kremlin through its embassy in Washington, allegedly bypassing U.S. intelligence communications systems to discuss a quid-pro-quo to benefit Trumps friends when the president lifted American sanctions on Russia, McMaster suddenly looks like a towering figure of virtue in a widening pool of sleaze.

If so, it would be quite a reversal of fortune for the much maligned retired general. Many of McMasters friends and admirers were dismayed when Trump sent him out to explain away reports of his boss sharing above-top secret intelligence about an allied source of informationsaid to be Israelon the Islamic State militant group with Russias foreign minister and ambassador to Washington. Some saw it as a deliberate act of humiliation. John Nagl, who had worked with McMaster on U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, told NPR he was in an absolutely impossible situation. And many of us, his friends, were concerned that something like this was going to happen when he took this job working for this administration.

The president Nagl said, expects him to defend the indefensible.

While McMaster sat outside the Jerusalem meeting with Netanyahu and his aides, the president included two officials with zero diplomatic experience in the Middle East, his son-in-law and senior aide Jared Kushner and a longtime Trump Organization employee, Jason Greenblatt. A year ago, Greenblatt was the chief attorney overseeing large transactions for the Trump Organization, including any involving Trump family members, Politico reported. Now hes in the White House as the presidents lead envoy in the Middle East David Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer and the presidents newly appointed ambassador to Israel (who has long helped fund illegal Israeli settlements), rounded out the Trump entourage at the Netanyahu meeting.

Critics pounced.

There has been a lot in the press about Trumps growing antipathy to McMaster, though its hard to know how much of it is true and how much of it is the result of intramural smear jobs from the warring White House factions, says Daniel Benjamin, who was ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department in the Barack Obama administration. Whatever the story may be there, if Trump doesnt take his national security advisor into a meeting with another head of government, hes again being reckless and foolish beyond belief, added Benjamin, now director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College.

Its not goodand rarefor a national security adviser to be left out of a meeting like this, Loch Johnson, the eminent intelligence historian at the University of Georgia, tells Newsweek. The position depends on good chemistry between the president and the national security adviser and this event would suggest that the key elements of this relationship are already evaporating in the Petri dish.

The absence of McMaster was not so important as long as the ambassador is there, says Evelyn Farkas, a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration. But she wondered whether an experienced diplomatic note-taker was there, because...the rest of the interagency [national security team] needs to be told what happened. Not just that, says Benjamin. The national security advisor, or some other senior professional staffer, as opposed to an amateur like Kushner, is there to keep the president from straying into areas that he doesnt know and preventing commitments that he doesnt understand. According to the Israeli insider blog Kafe Knesset, at some point, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was invited to join the expanded meeting. But even then, McMaster was left out.

All this is just the latest example of a dysfunctional White House with a broken staff system, says Chris Whipple, author of The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency. An empowered White House chief would... make sure McMaster is in the room for important meetings with heads of state. But Reince Priebus is not and has never been empowered. And Trump has no idea why that is essential to his success.

Of course, if this is a sign that McMaster is out of favor, well, God help us, says Daniel Benjamin, who in the 1990s served on President Bill Clintons national security council.McMaster doesnt have a lot of expertise in Europe, Asia, diplomacy or economics, but he seems to have his head screwed on right, which cant be said of many of the other members of the White House inner circle.

This article has been updated with the news reports lateFridaythatJared Kushner sought to establisha back channel with the Kremlin.

Jeff Stein can be reached somewhat confidentially via spytalk@hushmail.com and on Signal.

View post:

Donald Trump and the Agony of HR McMaster: Will the President Dump His Second National Security Adviser? - Newsweek

Donald Trump will no longer host a major rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Thursdayhis first of the campaign-style events scheduled since his international trip to the Middle East and the G7 summit in Sicily.

The Trump administration had only just announced on Wednesday the rally would take place after the president returns to Washington, following his first trip abroad as commander-in-chief.

President Donald Trump arrived to pose for a family photo with participants of the G7 summit during the Summit of the Heads of State and of Governments of the G7, the group of most industrialized economies, plus the European Union, in Taormina, Sicily, Italy, May 27, 2017. Reuters

Subscribe to Newsweek from $1 per week

Related:Experts Upgrade Donald Trump's Impeachment Odds

"Due to an unfortunate change in President Trumps schedule, we will need to unfortunately postpone the previously scheduled rally in Cedar Rapids,"a White House statement released Saturday announced. "President Trump will see you in Iowa very soon."

Its unclear what got in the way of Trumps surprise rally in Iowa: The president does not currently have any upcoming speeches or events listed on the White House website other than planned remarks to military personnel at the Sigonella Naval Air station in Sicily on Saturday. Trump is scheduled to return to the capitol on Sunday afternoon.

Perhaps he's planning on taking some time to settle back into the White House and get to work on the commitments he made across the globe during his first trip abroad as president. Trump returned totweeting his morning thoughts on Saturday for the first time since embarking on his international voyage.

"Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in- NATO will be much stronger,"Trump wrote Saturday. "I will make my final decision on the Paris Accord next week!"

The last rally Trump hosted was held April 29the same night of the annual White House Press Correspondents Dinner.

Original post:

Donald Trump Suddenly Cancels Surprise Rally in Iowa - Newsweek

Forbes

Oh, Lord, Why Won't Donald Trump Buy Me A Mercedes Benz? Forbes Well, if Donald Trump has his way, no Americans would be allowed to buy a Mercedes or any other German car. Der Spiegel reported that during Donald Trump's recent trip abroad he told European Union officials: The Germans are bad, very bad. Look at the ... Can Donald Trump "stop" BMW sales in the US?CBS News Donald Trump: 'The Germans Are Bad, Very Bad' on TradeBreitbart News President Trump calls Germans 'very bad' and promises to stop car imports: reportUSA TODAY Jalopnik -Bloomberg all 256 news articles »

Original post:

Oh, Lord, Why Won't Donald Trump Buy Me A Mercedes Benz? - Forbes

President Donald Trumps proposed 2018 federal budget is monstrous and barbaric. It was not released to the public. It escaped.

Despite the administrations denials and evasions, Trumps proposed budget is a wish list of wanton cruelty hiding behind a mask of compassionate conservatism. That cruelty is directed toward anyone who is not rich, white and male.

When viewed on the broadest level, this budget is an act of political sociopathy that is bereft of any human decency or empathy.

Its specific horrors include the fact that Trump and the Republican Party want to steal food from the hungry, deny shelter to the elderly and poor, deprive the sick and needy of medicine and other health care and take schooling away from children and young people in order to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the rich and the powerful.

Ultimately, a countrys budget is a type of moral accounting. A budget is also a statement of political values and philosophy. If evaluated on those terms, what is the political ideology and worldview being offered by Donald Trump and the Republican Party?

Government is a tool for confronting problems that individual people cannot effectively resolve on their own. Trump and the Republican Party believe that government should be extremely limited with the exception of the military and police and financial protections for the rich and corporations. Trumps proposed budget channels Steve Bannons wicked dreamof destroying the state: I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of todays establishment.

Political systems reflect basic assumptions about human nature. Donald Trump and the Republican Party believe that human beings should have no social obligations to one another beyond their own small tribe and kin group. As conservatives, they also believe in a type of crude social Darwinism where the strong flourish while the weak are left to suffer and eventually perish. Trumps 2018 federal budget uses government (or the lack thereof) to accelerate this outcome by further tearing apart the social safety net and redistributing resources upward to the very rich.

Politics has been described as a question of who gets what, when and how.Trump and the Republicans want to transfer resources and money away from the poor, the elderly, children, the sick, nonwhites, immigrants and women to give hundreds of billions, if not trillions, to the very richest Americans and corporations. The very richest 0.1 percent of Americans roughly 350,000 people already own 90 percent of the individual wealth in the United States. And corporations in the United States are now considered personsunder the law, making money a type of protected speech. Corporations use this power to wield almost unchecked power over almost every aspect of society. Many of Americas largest corporations do not pay any taxes and are subsidized by public tax dollars in their too bigto fail gangster capitalism. Trumps proposed budget reinforces and strengthens this dynamic.

Politics can also be understood as the study of the affluent and the influential. Donald Trumps proposed 2018 budget (and the Republican Partys policies in general) reward the rich and the powerful and punish the poor and the working classes. This budget assumes that the masses of people who are hurt and disempowered by it will not resist. It is a plutocratic and anti-democratic document.

A healthy democracy nurtures and protects the commons, meaning public lands, roads, resources and spaces, as well as goods and services that should be wholly and equally owned and enjoyed by all members of society. Donald Trump and the Republican Party consider thevery concept ofpublic goods and the commons to be enemies of their extreme right-wing agenda. All aspects of American social and political life are to be privatized and dictated by the predatory and destructive rules of the market. To that end, Trumps budget will sell off public lands and resources to the highest corporate bidder, privatize air traffic safety and other infrastructure, and end environmental rules and regulations. Donald Trump even proposes allowing thousands of wild horses to be killed in order to save the federal government $10 million a year.

Trumps 2018 budget reflects his plutocratic, authoritarian and fascist values. It surrenders even more power to corporations; gives more money to an already bloated military-industrial complex; curtails public education and the arts; expands policing, mass incarceration and the surveillance state; and (in theory) funds the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Trumps budget also awards public money to himself, his family, his businesses and his political allies through changes in the tax code such as ending the estate tax and repealing the Affordable Care Act.

Conservatives are obsessed withnegative liberty. They view government as the enemy and reject most arguments that individual freedom and the good life can be encouraged and protected by the state. Liberals and progressives offer a different vision. They believe in positive liberty and in the idea that under democracy the government must protect and nurture human freedom and dignity. In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a Second Bill of Rights that would have included:

Donald Trump and the Republican Party view such a humane society as anathema to their political goals.

What of practical politics? Donald Trumps proposed 2018 budget has been pronounced as dead on arrival by many voices in Congress and the corporate news media. This conclusion is premature. Republicans in Congress can feign disapproval at this cruel and monstrous budget while cherry-picking the parts they like best. In essence, the Republican Party will separate the bad from the truly horrific and then champion themselves as being reasonable for doing so. As they often are, Democrats will likely be outflanked by this dishonest and cunning (albeit obvious) maneuver.

What about Donald Trumps voters? The white working-class voters in Rust Belt America who gave Trump the White House (along with assistance from Vladimir Putin and Russias spies) will be severely hurt by his 2018 federal budget. The butchers bill has come due again with a usurious amount of interest. Trumps voters will be made to suffer. This is their reward for supportinghim.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump readhis voters fables that convinced them he could make America great again. They were hoodwinked. In reality, Trump was reading from a cookbook and his working-class supporters blinded by racism, sexism and nativism did not realize that they would be served up as one of the main courses.

See original here:

What is the political vision behind Donald Trump's proposed 2018 budget? Wicked, cruel and ugly - Salon

New York Times

The Awkward Body Language of Donald Trump New York Times Body language both his and that of the pitiable people around him is telling the story of Donald Trump's foreign adventure better than anything else. When I say pitiable, I'm thinking about the pope, of course, and the first lady, naturally ... Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron just exchanged a white-knuckled handshakeCNN Emmanuel Macron's French Lessons for Donald TrumpThe New Yorker Emmanuel Macron Swerves Donald Trump To Hug Angela Merkel InsteadHuffPost CNBC -The indy100 all 797 news articles »

Original post:

The Awkward Body Language of Donald Trump - New York Times