Sources: McMasters Report Claims Susan Rice Did Nothing Wrong in Her Unmasking of Trump Campaign Aides

Fancy that.

As for McMaster’s opinion, we have only Lake’s sources as evidence. But it may be no coincidence that he’d been trying for months to get Trump to let him fire Ezra Cohen-Watnick from the NSC and finally succeeded yesterday, during John Kelly’s first week as chief of staff. One theory of McMaster’s hostility to Cohen-Watnick is that the former is an Iran dove while the latter is an Iran hawk, along with the other recently purged members of the National Security Council. See, for instance, this Free Beacon piece citing McMaster critics inside the White House who claim he’s systematically eliminating the natsec people who agree with Trump’s worldview, particularly his skepticism of the Iran nuclear deal, while retaining the Obama holdovers.

He links this Adam Kredo piece about McMasters' endless protection of Obama holdovers and endless purges of Trump loyalists:

The purge is part of a larger drama unfolding inside the administration, between veteran Trump staffers committed to the president's campaign vision of "draining the swamp"‘ in Washington and entrenched bureaucracies seeking to maintain control over policy decision-making, according to these sources, who said that many of these actions against his supporters are being conducted without Trump's knowledge.

The Trump staffers fired by McMaster had repeatedly clashed with career government staffers and holdovers from the Obama administration on issues as diverse as military strategies for Syria and Afghanistan, whether to tear up Obama's landmark Iran deal, the controversial detente with Cuba, the U.S. role in confronting Islamic radicalism, and the Paris Climate Accord, according to these sources.

More purges are said to be on the way, according to multiple insiders who described a list of at least four other senior NSC officials McMaster intends to target. Other sources confirmed the likelihood of more purges, but disputed some details on that list.

"McMaster basically has this list and over the next two weeks he's going to phase out" more senior officials loyal to Trump, said one administration insider intimately familiar with the upheaval occurring at the White House National Security Council....

"McMaster's agenda is different than the president's," said one administration source with knowledge of the situation.

The biggest "flashpoint," Kredo reports, is over the Iran nuke deal. McMasters seems to want to keep it, and he seems to be targeting those who -- like the President's campaign rhetoric promised -- would like to scrap it.

I think some are counting on the idea that a president weakened by scandal-mongering and low approval ratings is in no position to fire his National Security Adviser.

I'd advise the opposite: If you don't use power, then you have no power. You have power if you use power.

Fire him.

posted by Ace at 05:29 PM

| Access Comments