America is this close to neighbor turning in neighbor

 

UPDATE 04/11/2025:

And so it begins...

Bolton's new chief of staff: another racist

National Security Adviser John Bolton’s new pick to be the National Security Council chief of staff has served for the last five years as the Senior Vice President for Policy and Programs at the Frank Gaffney-founded Center for Security Policy, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group that espouses anti-Muslim conspiracy theories.

Gaffney and the group have for years promoted anti-Muslim beliefs, including accusing government officials of being aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Center for Security Policy’s website features a congratulatory post published Tuesday, confirming Fred Fleitz’s tenure.

  TPM

I'm guessing no one is surprised.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  From the Anti-Defamation League:

The last of the rats are leaving the sinking ship

Former national security adviser H.R. McMaster's No. 2 is exiting the White House, a spokesperson confirmed Thursday, marking the fourth senior staffer to unveil plans to leave the National Security Council as John Bolton takes over.

  Politico

I assume Iran is battening down the hatches.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Dropping Like Flies

Is somebody keeping a head count?

Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior intelligence director for the White House’s National Security Council, was fired Wednesday.

  TPM

"At National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster’s behest."

Cohen-Watnick was reportedly involved in the summary dismissal of the CIA’s liaison to the White House. Later that month, he reportedly played a role in providing House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) with classified intelligence reports purportedly demonstrating that Trump and members of his transition were incidentally caught up in U.S. surveillance of foreign nationals.

[...]

“General McMaster is confident that Ezra will make many further significant contributions to national security in another position in the administration.”

There might be a job opening at Energy.

Cohen-Watnick, dubbed “the man McMaster couldn’t fire,” was a protégé of ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and ally of White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

McMaster reportedly tried to fire him in March after replacing Flynn, but Bannon and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, intervened in Cohen-Watnick’s favor.

General Kelly's in town now. However, McMaster had been cleaning house pretty thoroughly on his own.

McMaster [...] replaced Fox News commentator K.T. McFarland as his deputy in May, reportedly without seeking White House approval first. He also reportedly fired Rich Higgins, a staffer who worked in the council’s strategic planning office on July 21, after Higgins authored a memo claiming Trump was under attack by “globalists and Islamists” and “cultural Marxists.” McMaster also fired Derek Harvey, Trump’s top Middle East adviser, in late July.

Rearranging the National Security Furniture

K. T. McFarland has been asked to step down as deputy National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump after less than three months and is expected to be nominated as ambassador to Singapore, according to a person familiar with White House personnel moves.

The departure of the 65-year-old former Fox News commentator comes as Trump’s second National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, puts his own stamp on the National Security Council after taking over in February from retired General Michael Flynn.

McFarland proved not to be a good fit at the NSC, the person said, adding that Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly was involved in the decision as well.

Her removal follows a reorganization of the NSC in the past week that removed Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor, from the principals committee, the Cabinet-level interagency forum that advises the president on pressing security matters.

Other officials, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were brought back onto the committee as “regular attendees,” reversing a move made in January.

  Bloomberg

Somebody must have told Little Lord Fauntleroy that there would be no help from the generals if they were forced to keep his unqualified personnel appointments in national security positions.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12/2/17:

That may not be the reason at all. We have, since the Special Prosecutor investigation into Trump collusion with Russia to win the US presidency, just seen the plea deal Mike Flynn made with Mueller, and found Ms. McFarland in the middle of it.

Where's Steve Bannon?

I spy.



That was some demotion, eh?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Is This Good? Or Just Different?

President Trump's decision to remove chief strategist Steve Bannon from the National Security Council's principals committee suggests a potentially significant change in the power balance among the four top White House advisers.

  CNN

I'm not sure. If he removed Bannon because Bannon did something to piss him off, then, yes, it probably changes the power balance. If he removed him so that people would shut up about Bannon being in a position he should never have been allowed to be in, but still deals with him directly, then, meh.

The removal of Bannon from the NSC comes in the wake of a series of other moves -- most notably the arrival of Trump's daughter, Ivanka, in the West Wing -- that suggest that the president is moving away (at least for the moment) from the more hard-line ideological bent of Bannon.

That would be good if Trump himself weren't a hard-line ideologue.

To be clear: Bannon will remain in the White House -- and in a senior role. But the diminution of his power -- and in such a public way -- is a clear sign that a shakeup in the Trump power structure is under way.

Meh.

The shift was orchestrated by Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who was tapped as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser after the resignation of Michael T. Flynn, who stepped down in February.

[...]

The original setup made Mr. Bannon, the former chairman of Breitbart News, a member of the principals committee that typically includes cabinet-level officials like the vice president, secretary of state and defense secretary. The original order also made the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence only occasional participants as issues demanded.

  NYT

And some immediate and serious military action followed by dire events in Syria have probably made it obvious even to Old Lard Ass that he needs to let the Joint Chiefs and NID handle national security.

[The order] removes Mr. Bannon from the principals committee, restores the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and intelligence director and also adds the energy secretary, C.I.A. director and United Nations ambassador.

[...]

In addition to the changing membership of the principals committee, the new order also puts the Homeland Security Council under General McMaster rather than making it a separate entity, as Mr. Trump’s original order had done.

So I wouldn't count Bannon out yet. Just moved. These people don't know what they're doing. It's probably going to be a while before everybody is settled in - if they ever get to that point.

Members of Mr. Trump’s team said they did not mean to downgrade [the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and national intelligence director]; they simply took Mr. Bush’s original order and cut and pasted language into theirs, not realizing that the two officials had been upgraded under Mr. Obama.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 4/6:

UPDATE 4/8:

Yep, there he is.

How Long Will He Last?

President Trump’s newly appointed national security adviser has told his staff that Muslims who commit terrorist acts are perverting their religion, rejecting a key ideological view of other senior Trump advisers.

[...]

Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, told the staff of the National Security Council on Thursday, in his first “all hands” staff meeting, that the label “radical Islamic terrorism” was not helpful because terrorists are “un-Islamic,” according to people who were in the meeting.

[...]

“This is very much a repudiation of his new boss’s lexicon and worldview,” said William McCants, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of “The ISIS Apocalypse.”

[...]

But Mr. McCants and others cautioned that General McMaster’s views would not necessarily be the final word in a White House where Mr. Trump and several of his top advisers view Islam in deeply xenophobic terms. Some aides, including the president’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, have warned of a looming existential clash between Islam and the Judeo-Christian world.

  NYT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.