The following article by James Hohmann with Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve was posted on the Washington Post website August 10, 2017:
THE BIG IDEA today is by Robert Costa. James returns next week.
Remember this scene?
“These are central casting. If I’m doing a movie, I’d pick you general,” a smiling President Trump said months ago (see the video above) during his inaugural luncheon at the Capitol, pointing at Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. “And General Kelly,” he added, gesturing toward John F. Kelly, his pick to run the Department of Homeland Security.
Those were simpler times. Now, it’s August and as he works from his golf course in Bedminster, N.J., President Trump is facing one of the biggest crises of his presidency: escalating hostility from North Korea, which intelligence reports show has miniaturized a nuclear warhead.
Lawmakers and world leaders are on edge as Trump navigates the challenge and ratchets up his rhetoric, warning Pyongyang of “fire and fury” if it keeps threatening the United States. And they all want to know how the men Trump has called “my generals” are guiding him behind the scenes.
North Korea presents a crucial test not only for the president but for this group of seasoned military figures in the administration. Many foreign-policy voices have hopedthey would provide the president with steadiness and order as he deals with matters of war and peace. They have Trump’s reverence — he has been enamored of the military since he was a teenager at New York Military Academy. But will they spend that capital to deeply shape the administration’s response? Will they try to rein in Trump or just echo him?
So far, events this week have provided a murky answer. Trump has Kelly — his new chief of staff — at his side in New Jersey. Mattis is playing a leading role in figuring out a strategy, as is national security adviser H.R. McMaster, a three-star Army general. Yet when Trump made his initial comments on Tuesday, he did so extemporaneously. He had been briefed on the latest North Korean developments but the fiery words that inflamed the standoff were his own, according to White House officials who spoke with The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker. The generals remained largely out of sight.
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According to CNN, Kelly spoke with Trump before bringing in the press, updating the president on “the Korea peninsula, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson piped in on the phone.” But as with Trump’s continued and confrontational use of Twitter, there were “few signs that his presence around Trump has tempered a mercurial and uncensored commander in chief.”
Meanwhile, Trump critics underscored that the generals were the key players to watch.
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My sources inside the West Wing shrugged off the president’s improvising by saying that the statement was typical of how Trump works: he prefers to come up with a message that fits his style rather than read from talking points he finds staid. Still, Trump’s words were unsettling to even some Republicans, such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who called them provocative.
“I don’t know what he’s saying and I’ve long ago given up trying to interpret what he says,” McCain told a radio station. “It’s not terrible but it’s kind of the classic Trump in that he overstates things.”
Tillerson played down Trump’s comments on Wednesday, saying he had “no concerns about this particular rhetoric of the last few days. I think the president, again, as commander-in-chief, I think he felt it necessary to issue a very strong statement directly to North Korea.”
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Mattis struck a similar tone to Trump, telling North Korea in a statement that it “should cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.”
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In a Tuesday interview with Fox News, Kelly dismissed the suggestion that the generals and others around Trump were “yes men” or enablers of the president’s combative instincts. “Jim Mattis defines speaking truth to power in my view,” Kelly told Chris Wallace. “I like to think I do as well.”
Kelly also defended McMaster, who has been under siege from some Trump supporters for advocating a bolstered U.S. presence in Afghanistan — a position at odds with White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, a Navy veteran and the former chairman of Breitbart News.
“Every day I see him speak truth to power to me in my current position,” Kelly said of his fellow general.
Of course, the lingering question is what speaking truth to power looks like when Mattis, Kelly and McMaster are huddled around Trump in some back room at the golf club, plates of burgers and glasses of Coca-Cola nearby. What are the generals telling the president and is he listening?