What does it say about Trump’s judgement that he hired Tillerson and McMaster
By Caroline B Glick
The Israel angle on McMaster’s purge of Trump loyalists from the National Security Council is that all of these people are pro-Israel and oppose the Iran nuclear deal, positions that Trump holds.
McMaster in contrast is deeply hostile to Israel and to Trump. According to senior officials aware of his behavior, he constantly refers to Israel as the occupying power and insists falsely and constantly that a country named Palestine existed where Israel is located until 1948 when it was destroyed by the Jews.
Many of you will remember that a few days before Trump’s visit to Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – ?????? ?????? and his advisers were blindsided when the Americans suddenly told them that no Israeli official was allowed to accompany Trump to the Western Wall.
What hasn’t been reported is that it was McMaster who pressured Trump to agree not to let Netanyahu accompany him to the Western Wall. At the time, I and other reporters were led to believe that this was the decision of rogue anti-Israel officers at the US consulate in Jerusalem. But it wasn’t. It was McMaster.
And even that, it works out wasn’t sufficient for McMaster. He pressured Trump to cancel his visit to the Wall and only visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial — ala the Islamists who insist that the only reason Israel exists is European guilt over the Holocaust.
In May, Adam Lovinger, a pro-Trump national security strategist on loan from the Pentagon’s office of net assessment was summarily informed that his security clearance was revoked. He was fired and escorted from the White House like a spy and put on file duty at the Pentagon.
Lovinger is a seasoned strategic analyst who McMaster hated because he supported India over Pakistan, among other things.
Lovinger has not been told the grounds for his sudden loss of clearance but Mike Cernovich reported that the grounds were that he traveled to Israel for a family bar mitzvah. In other words, there were no grounds for dismissal. His boss at the Pentagon — unbelievably named James Baker, is an Obama hire who hates Trump and supports Obama’s agenda.
As for Iran, well, suffice it to say that McMaster supports the deal and refuses to publish the side deals Obama signed with the Iranians and then hid from the public.
The thing I can’t get my arms around in all of this is why in the world this guy hasn’t been fired. Mike Flynn was fired essentially for nothing. He was fired because he didn’t tell the Vice President everything that transpired in a phone conversation he had with the Russian ambassador. Whoopdy doo! Flynn had the conversation when he was on a 72 hour vacation with his wife after the election in the Caribbean and could barely hear because the reception was so bad. He found himself flooded with calls and had no one with him except his wife.
And for this he was fired.
McMaster disagrees and actively undermines Trump’s agenda on just about every salient issue on his agenda. He fires all of Trump’s loyalists and replaces them with Trump’s opponents, like Kris Bauman, an Israel hater and Hamas supporter who McMaster hired to work on the Israel-Palestinian desk. He allows anti-Israel, pro-Muslim Brotherhood, pro-Iran Obama people like Robert Malley to walk around the NSC and tell people what to do and think. He has left Ben (reporters know nothing about foreign policy and I lied to sell them the Iran deal) Rhodes’ and Valerie Jarrett’s people in place.
And he not only is remaining at his desk. He is given the freedom to fire Trump’s most loyal foreign policy advisers from the National Security Council.
One source claims that Trump’s political advisers are afraid of how it will look if he fires another national security adviser. But that makes no sense. Trump is being attacked for everything and nothing. Who cares if he gets attacked for doing something that will actually help him to succeed in office? Why should fear of media criticism play a role here or anywhere for this president and this administration?
Finally, there is the issue of how McMaster got there in the first place. Trump interviewed McMaster at Mara Lago for a half an hour. He was under terrible pressure after firing Flynn to find someone.
And who recommended McMaster? You won’t believe this.
Senator John McCain. That’s right. The NSA got his job on the basis of a recommendation from the man who just saved Obamacare.
Obviously, at this point, Trump has nothing to lose by angering McCain. I mean what will he do? Vote for Obamacare?
If McMaster isn’t fired after all that he has done and all that he will do, we’re all going to have to reconsider Trump’s foreign policy. Because if after everything he has done, and everything that he will certainly do to undermine Trump’s stated foreign policy agenda, it will no longer be possible to believe that exiting the nuclear deal or supporting the US alliance with Israel and standing with US allies against US foes — not to mention draining Washington’s cesspool – are Trump’s policies. How can they be when Trump stands with a man who opposes all of them and proves his opposition by among other things, firing Trump’s advisers who share Trump’s agenda?
Hmmm, no wonder he and Bibi are good friends.
All bark and no bite pretty well sums up Bibi’s MO.
I guess the only redeemable takeaway with regards to Trump is that regardless of all of my complaints and disappointments…..he’s still preferable over the evil Clintons.
Donald Trump is a politician with a very loud bark and no bite. He has accommodated the “deep state” in all of his decisions and most of his appointments in the hope of appeasing them, but it hasn’t worked. He backed down completely from his promise to prosecute Hillary Clinton, while permitting the appointment of a special prosecutor to prosecute him and his relatives. While Teddy Roosevelt’s philosophy was “speak softly but carry a big stick,” Trump’s is “Shout at the top of your lungs but don’t carry stick. This is a sure formula for being clobbered. He will either resign soon, or be assassinated, or spend four years in the White House unable to govern. Nothing of the agenda he ran on will be accomplished.
That’s been my question from the start……how can such a savy successful businessman make such disasterous poor judgement choices when hiring for these critical positions? Both Tillerson and McMaster seem completely out of place when listening to Trump’s pre-election rhetoric.
Truly don’t get it, but for Israel’s sake, let alone for America’s sake, i hope these mistakes will be rectified shortly.
Who acquires or keeps a (government!) security clearance frequently has very little to do with that person’s trustworthiness and everything to do with POLITICS.
As if one could trust the crooked politicians — who quickly and automatically receive high security clearance — to oversee (direct!) clandestine operations.
How much did Americans really know about Obama? Who really knows or cares where he was born? I happen to think that both of his parents were CIA operatives.
I’m always reminded of [Jew-] Oppenheimer’s ultimately failed effort to “legally” defend himself against rigged accusations that he was some sort of communist *agent*; his political enemies were probably even more Big Government than he was.
His lawyers were unable to review the “evidence” against him because they did not have (couldn’t get) clearance. Government hack-lawyers hired to “get him” were given high clearances ON-THE-SPOT.
Often, there are no objective reasons to justify the position needing a clearance in the first place. All other things being the same, the chances of a woman receiving a Top Secret clearance are directly proportional to her measurements.
Yep.