“The acting DNI broke the law when he decided to basically intercept the Inspector General’s report… There’s nothing in the statute that gives the DNI the authority to do what he did. And the American people should be worried about that.”
— Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), on MSNBC.
“The Pentagon warned of dire outcomes unless Congress paid for urgently needed military construction projects nationwide — the same projects that have now been canceled to fund President Trump’s border wall,” the Washington Post reports.
“The warnings are contained in Defense Department budget requests sent to lawmakers in recent years. They include potentially hazardous living conditions for troops and their families, as well as unsafe schools that would impede learning. In numerous cases, the Defense Department warned that lives would be put at risk if buildings don’t meet the military’s standards for fire safety or management of explosives.”
President Trump picked Robert O’Brien, who is the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs at the State Department, to be his new National Security Adviser, the Washington Post reports.
“We have to stop. No. The military is going to be stronger and bigger and more modernized than ever before. The military is so important. That’s number one, two and three on my list. We have to, we need security in this country, especially now with what’s going on.”
— Donald Trump, in a 2016 Newsday interview, when asked if he would redirect military funds to build infrastructure.
“President Trump’s plan to pay for his proposed border wall by taking funds from more than four dozen Air Force military construction projects poses various national security risks for the U.S. armed forces, according to a report compiled by the U.S. Air Force,” NBC News reports.
“The report details the importance of each of the 51 military projects chosen by the Trump administration to lose their funding, including construction of a new gate to address a growing security concern at an overseas U.S. base, projects to build facilities to safely store more than $1 billion in munitions overseas, and even replacing a boiler whose failure is ‘imminent’ and could cause the evacuation of an entire base in Alaska.”
President Trump on Thursday shot down rumors that he might name Mike Pompeo as national security adviser while also keeping him as secretary of State, Politico reports.
Said Trump: “I think he’s fantastic. But I actually spoke to Mike Pompeo about that. He decided — I get along with him so well. We have a lot of the same views and a couple of a little different views. But he likes the idea of having somebody in there with him, and I do, too.”
Politico: “The U.S. government concluded within the last two years that Israel was most likely behind the placement of cell-phone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington, D.C.”
“But unlike most other occasions when flagrant incidents of foreign spying have been discovered on American soil, the Trump administration did not rebuke the Israeli government, and there were no consequences for Israel’s behavior.”
“The miniature surveillance devices … mimic regular cell towers to fool cell phones into giving them their locations and identity information … they also can capture the contents of calls and data use.”
“The devices were likely intended to spy on President Trump… though it’s not clear whether the Israeli efforts were successful.”
“Just one day after President Trump dismissed national security adviser John Bolton, administration officials are discussing the possibility of replacing Bolton with his chief rival, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,” CNN reports.
“Under this scenario, the country’s top diplomat would absorb the national security adviser role and do both jobs.”
“That would make Pompeo the second person in history to have both jobs at the same time. The first, Henry Kissinger, was already President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser when he was appointed secretary of state in 1973, and filled both roles for two years.”
Susan Glasser: “The spectacle of the Trump Presidency often overwhelms our ability to process the stakes of any individual episode. But the firing of John Bolton was not just another Washington farce in what the President himself has now started calling, as he did the other day, on Twitter, ‘the Age of Trump.’ Bolton’s exit serves as a reminder that the intensive national-security decision-making process of previous Presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, has been abandoned by Trump, subverted to the Presidential ego, and will not return for the duration of his tenure.”
“It’s worth remembering that, as all this played out inside the White House, the Taliban almost showed up at Camp David, in time to mark the eighteenth anniversary of 9/11. Bolton, who evidently made his vocal opposition to the idea known to the media in a way that likely hastened his firing, didn’t stop Trump from hosting them. Nor, for that matter, did Pompeo, whose State Department team has been overseeing the talks. In the end, it was only the Taliban’s decision to continue killing American soldiers while simultaneously negotiating with the United States that provided the pretext for Trump to put a stop to his own hastily conceived idea. Trump will now become the only President ever to have had four national-security advisers in three years, but he might as well consider not having one at all.”
CNN: Trump makes clear he’s calling the foreign policy shots post Bolton.
President Trump blasted former national security adviser John Bolton, saying he had been fired after making “some very big mistakes” and that he did not get along with others in the administration, The Hill reports.
He added: “And it set us back, and frankly he wanted to do things — not necessarily tougher than me — You know John’s known as a tough guy. He’s so tough he got us into Iraq… but he’s actually somebody I had a very good relationship with. But he wasn’t getting along with people in the administration that I consider very important.”
John Gans, author of White House Warriors: “Mr. Bolton’s legacy is not of destruction overseas, but dysfunction in Washington. To pursue his own policy agenda and serve an erratic president, in just 17 months Mr. Bolton effectively destroyed the National Security Council system, the intricate structure that governed American foreign policy since the end of World War II. Mr. Bolton’s most lasting legacy will be dismantling the structure that has kept American foreign policy from collapsing into chaos, and finally unshackling an irregular commander-in-chief.”
Bloomberg: “Pompeo is now without peer on Trump’s national security team. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is weeks into his job, there’s no confirmed director of national intelligence and United Nations Ambassador Kelly Craft was confirmed on Tuesday. Among the president’s advisers, Pompeo will have the biggest sway on decisions about brokering a deal with Iran, restarting talks with North Korea and finding a way to draw down forces in Afghanistan.”
New York Times: “No other president has had four national security advisers in his first three years in office.”
“As President Trump began losing confidence in national security adviser John Bolton, whom he fired on Tuesday, he reached out to the man he had fired to give Bolton the job: retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster,” NBC News reports.
“Trump’s contacts with McMaster perhaps presaged his decision Tuesday to unceremoniously fire Bolton. They also marked a significant a remarkable shift for the president that is emblematic of how much Bolton fell out of favor since Trump welcomed him into the White House 17 months ago. At that time, Trump was barely speaking to McMaster and regularly did derogatory impressions of him in his absence.”
“A federal judge on Tuesday set sentencing for Dec. 18 for President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn as prosecutors warned they reserved the option to recommend prison time instead of probation for Flynn,” the Washington Post reports.
“Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Van Grack issued the notice as the government and Flynn’s new defense team escalated their legal fight in Washington over Flynn’s request that a court throw out his prosecution because of alleged misconduct by prosecutors in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.”
“President Trump has privately and repeatedly expressed opposition to the use of foreign intelligence from covert sources, including overseas spies who provide the U.S. government with crucial information about hostile countries,” CNN reports.
“Trump has privately said that foreign spies can damage relations with their host countries and undermine his personal relationships with their leaders.”
Said one source: “The president believes we shouldn’t be doing that to each other.”
President Trump claimed in a tweet that he knew “nothing” about Air Force crews lodging at his Scotland resort while refueling at an airport in the area.
Said Trump: “I know nothing about an Air Force plane landing at an airport (which I do not own and have nothing to do with) near Turnberry Resort (which I do own) in Scotland, and filling up with fuel, with the crew staying overnight at Turnberry (they have good taste!). NOTHING TO DO WITH ME.”
Axios: “Trump’s tweet comes less than a week after House Democrats opened an inquiry on the use of tax dollars at Trump properties and as the House Judiciary Committee plans to vote this week to formalize an impeachment inquiry.”
“The U.S. Air Force has ordered a world-wide review of how it chooses overnight accommodations on long flights following revelations that air crews had occasionally stayed at President Trump’s Scotland resort while refueling at a small commercial airport nearby,” Politico reports.
“The review comes as news outlets including Politico uncover additional instances of military personnel staying at Trump properties. And the C-17 crew’s overnight stay at Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland earlier this year, first reported by Politico on Friday, was was not an isolated incident.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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