On Monday, President Donald Trump insisted on Twitter that there was no “turmoil” in the White House and that any suggestion otherwise was just more misinformation from the “Dishonest Media.”
And then on Tuesday, that internal chaos of the administration poured out into public.
It began, as it so often does, with a Trump tweet. He revealed that National Security Adviser John Bolton, a controversial figure for decades, is no longer a part of the administration:
Donald J. Trump
✔
I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore….
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
….I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.
But just an hour before the announcement, the White House announced that Bolton would be appearing at a 1:30 p.m. news conference alongside Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. If Bolton was on his way out as of Monday night, why did the White House press office not seem to know about it at 11 a.m. Tuesday?
View the complete September 10 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.
President Trump announced he had fired national security adviser John Bolton in a pair of tweets on Tuesday, ousting the high-profile officials just days after he canceled a planned meeting with Taliban representatives at Camp David.
Trump said in a series of tweets that he told Bolton on Monday night “that his services are no longer needed at the White House,” citing disagreements with many of Bolton’s suggestions, though he didn’t provide specific details.
The president also said that “others in the administration” disagreed with Bolton’s suggestions, a wording that hinted at the level of acrimony in the split.
As the president’s top aides prepared for a high-stakes meeting on the future of Afghanistan earlier this month, one senior official was not on the original invite list: national security adviser John Bolton.
The attendance of the top security aide would normally be critical, but the omission was no mistake, senior U.S. officials said. Bolton, who has long advocated an expansive military presence around the world, has become a staunch internal foe of an emerging peace deal aimed at ending America’s longest war, the officials said.
His opposition to the diplomatic effort in Afghanistan has irritated President Trump, these officials said, and led aides to leave the National Security Council out of sensitive discussions about the agreement.
Officials within Donald Trump’s administration are expressing frustration and anger at the president’s inability to focus on how to handle Iran and vented about what one called “absolute amateur hour” at the White House to The Daily Beast.
According to the report, “The Trump administration keeps sending conflicting and contradictory messages to Iran about its terms for new negotiations,” adding that “For several months, the United States has been actively attempting to pass messages, via allies, to the Iranians in an effort to move closer to beginning formal diplomatic talks with Tehran. ”
The report notes that internal squabbles about what to do — with National Security Adviser John Bolton on one side uring military solutions and Trump on the other side not wanting to enter into a military conflict — is sending mixed messages to allies and intermediaries alike.
View the complete August 14 article by Tom Boggioni from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.
Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, blasted the prospect of former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton replacing General H. R. McMaster as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser — a prospect that came to fruition Thursday.
“John Bolton was by far the most dangerous man we had in the entire eight years of the Bush Administration,” Painter tweeted last Friday. “Hiring him as the president’s top national security advisor is an invitation to war, perhaps nuclear war.”
Painter ended his post with a blunt and stark sentence: “this must be stopped at all costs.” He also linked to an article in the Atlantic titled “Hiring John Bolton Would Be a Betrayal of Donald Trump’s Base.”
View the complete March 22, 2018, commentary by Ben Brimelow on The Business Insider website here.
President Donald Trump often says he listens to military generals more than anyone else, and, as the White House prepares to send 1,500 soldiers to the Middle East, that claim is being tested by a Friday letter from the American College of National Security Leaders.
The letter, which is signed by 76 retired generals, admirals, ambassadors, and diplomats, was published Friday morning by War on the Rocks. The letter asks the administration not to pursue war with Iran, mainly for strategic reasons.
“A war with Iran, either by choice or miscalculation, would produce dramatic repercussions in an already destabilized Middle East,” reads the letter, “and drag the United States into another armed conflict at immense financial, human, and geopolitical cost.”
View the complete May 25 article by Eoin Higgins from Common Dreams on the AlterNet website.
Democrats force votes on approving war with Iran, but come up short in the SenateDemocrats on both sides of Capitol Hill have been forcing votes on President Donald Trump’s military powers this week amid the ratcheting up of tensions with Iran, getting predictably disparate results.
In the latest test, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday turned back a Democrat-led effort to move legislation designed to thwart preemptive military action against Iran.
On a 9-13 vote, with only Republican Rand Paul crossing party lines in support, members of the committee rejected an amendment to Syria-related legislation offered by Tom Udall of New Mexico with the backing of Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut.
View the complete May 22 article by Niels Lesniewski on The Roll Call website here.
President Donald Trump’s erratic Iran policy has left America more isolated and less safe. In his first week in office, he alienated Iranians by banning them from America. Then he ignored the warnings of the world, nuclear experts, and his own national security team to shred a functioning nuclear agreement. For all Iran’s continued destabilizing behavior, President Trump’s actions have made America the instigator of the current crisis in the eyes of the world. He has ratcheted up tensions with no plan for success.
Even now, there remains a serious risk that Trump and his team will blunder into a preventable and unnecessary war. Trump’s clumsy attempts at diplomacy with Iran are likely to fail—just as they have with North Korea. The chaos is obvious, and productive results are nowhere to be seen.
Below is a list of President Trump’s 10 worst moments regarding Iran.
In a contentious exchange on CNN Wednesday, National Security Advisor John Bolton claimed CNN’s John Berman was “missing the point” of an interview he gave earlier on Fox News where he appeared to say there’s a scheduled phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The back-and-forth began when Berman asked what Trump has “said to Vladimir Putin on this subject” of Venezuela. Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro was prepared to flee the country until the Kremlin advised him not it. The U.S. has pledged to support an uprising against the Maduro regime.
“We’ve made it clear to the Russians in a lot of conversations and a lot of different levels, some of which are going to continue today, why we think this behavior is unacceptable to us,” Bolton replied.
View the complete May 1 article by Elizabeth Preza on the AlterNet website here.
