The war on White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster continues, with allies of Steve Bannon using sympathetic media outlets to push a narrative that McMaster is thwarting the will of President Donald Trump. Senior White House aides now wonder among each other whether Bannon himself and/or his deputy, Sebastian Gorka, are helping feed the rash of anti-McMaster stories.
McMaster recently fired two National Security Council staff members—Derek Harvey and Ezra Cohen-Watnick—in part because both aides regularly met with Bannon without notifying McMaster. Bannon is senior counselor to the president and initially had a seat on the National Security Council before President Trump removed him in April. A third Bannon ally at the NSC, Rich Higgins, was fired by McMaster’s deputy Ricky Waddell.
Soon after the firings, the critical articles and posts about McMaster ramped up, several of which have White House sourcing. Caroline Glick, a conservative columnist at the Jerusalem Post, posted on her Facebook page late on August 2 that McMaster is “deeply hostile to Israel and to Trump” and implied he was sympathetic to Islamist ideology. Citing senior White House officials “aware of his behavior,” Glick wrote that McMaster “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.”
At Circa on August 3, Sara Carter provided a leaked copy of a letter McMaster sent to Obama national security adviser Susan Rice notifying her that her security clearance had been extended. Carter quoted an unnamed “senior West Wing official” who said the letter “in effect is a White House pardon” for Rice’s possible violations of unmasking guidelines. But it turns out McMaster signed similar letters for other living national security advisers from both parties, a pro-forma practice to allow the former officials to legally discuss classified information with current government officials. Sources told the Daily Beast, and I have confirmed, that Cohen-Watnick was the person who earlier this year provided McMaster with these letters for his signature. Only the Rice letter was leaked. A White House source told the Beast “Cohen-Watnick’s office did not handle such matters, and that his office would not have had access to such a letter regarding Rice” but I’m told by two sources that Cohen-Watnick was the NSC staffer who got McMaster to sign the letters.
The Daily Caller published an article the night of August 3 quoting “two former NSC officials” extensively. “Everything the president wants to do, McMaster opposes,” one of the former NSC officials told the Caller. One of the officials said McMaster was “subverting” Trump’s foreign policy and that the “Trumpian view” of Afghanistan was “shut down” by McMaster and his supposed band of Obama-era holdovers.
Several articles at Breitbart, meanwhile, have published what reads like opposition research on McMaster, including an August 6 piece that reported the Army general advised a British national-security think tank that counted as one of its donors the pro-Iran-deal Ploughshares Fund. The front page of Breitbart has featured critical stories about McMaster for several days. Bannon was the chairman of Breitbart before joining the Trump presidential campaign last year.
And blogger Mike Cernovich spends much of his Twitter feed blasting McMaster and NSC aides for their transgressions. Cernovich references many of these aides, who have no public profile, by name. The website McMasterLeaks.com is a collection of links to speculative stories about McMaster’s disloyalty to Trump or undermining of Trump’s agenda. The site also encourages readers to “post your leaks” about McMaster in the comments. Cernovich constantly tweets out links to McMasterLeaks.com and did not respond when I asked him if he’s behind the site.
The onslaught was enough to prompt the White House to issue a statement of support for McMaster from Trump on Friday. “General McMaster and I are working very well together. He is a good man and very pro-Israel. I am grateful for the work he continues to do serving our country,” Trump said.
Mark It Down—“Generally speaking, reporters who publish information are not committing a crime. But there might be a circumstance where they do.” – Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general, on the DOJ’s plans on prosecuting leakers, August 6, 2017.
So does President Trump deserve the credit for the good economy, or does President Barack Obama? My colleague Tony Mecia considers the question on the occasion of Friday’s impressive jobs report.
“Trump fans would say that the economy is adding jobs in response to a big rollback in regulations on business and rising optimism that the country is on the right track,” Mecia writes. “Trump detractors would counter that the administration inherited a strong economy from Obama and that the economy is coasting as Trump has proven unable to win major legislative victories.”
“Both views have some merit,” Mecia concludes. Read more about the jobs report here.
Trump Tweet of the Day
Just completed call with President Moon of South Korea. Very happy and impressed with 15-0 United Nations vote on North Korea sanctions.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2017
Iran is providing more assistance to the Taliban in Afghanistan as the American presence in the latter country shrinks. A deep look at the issue in Sunday’s New York Times is revealing as to how the Shiite regime in Tehran is finding common cause with the Sunni Taliban in order to exert Iranian influence in the region. Iran-supported activity—from bombings to propaganda—is concentrated so far along the Afghanistan border, in the Farah and Herat provinces.
What most struck me in the Times was the assessment from an Afghan political observer that “America created this void.” Not because of our presence in Afghanistan, the observer said, but by the lack of action. “The Syria issue gave confidence to Iran and Russia, and now that confidence is playing out in Afghanistan,” he said.
Mueller Watch—White House officials insist that President Trump is not considering firing special prosecutor Robert Mueller. But a bipartisan group of senators has introduced legislation to make sure.
Republican senator Thom Tillis on Sunday defended a bill, co-sponsored by Democrat Chris Coons, that would check the White House’s ability to fire a special counsel by making that decision subject to review by a judicial panel.
“This is something that I talked about last year, under the Obama administration,” Tillis said on Fox News Sunday. “What this legislation does is codify the current procedures within the Department of Justice. The only thing it adds is a review after the fact, after a special counsel has been removed, subject to a three-judge panel, so that we can make sure it was done for proper cause.”
The White House insists there’s been no discussion of firing Mueller. But Tillis said that the legislation is important even if Trump doesn’t try to sack the special counsel.
“It’s an important part of what we need to do to reestablish the public trust in the Department of Justice,” he said. “That’s why I’m taking the opportunity to do it now, because I know the very people on my side of the aisle who have some concerns with it would be pounding the table for this if we were talking about a President Hillary Clinton and similar circumstances and an investigation that may or may not involve her.”
Élyseé Palace Watch—“Emmanuel Macron’s honeymoon didn’t last long . . . Less than three months after his election, France’s energetic and image-conscious president has seen his popularity drop after announcing budget cuts, launching a divisive labor reform and engaging in a damaging dispute with the military.”
Song of the Day—“When the War Came” by the Decemberists.
