If I recall, it was a joke made while the press conference was still going on, and I was struck by all the flags around him and the scripted questions early on. It was his first real press conference as president-elect, and it was all show and campaign-style rhetoric, despite the large backlog of important policy questions that he faced. To be fair, he actually did answer a few questions that weren’t staged, which never would have happened in the USSR. But while all traditional politicians understand the importance of messaging and perception, they realize that avoiding substantive questions only leads to more of them. During the campaign, and during his presidency, Trump has attempted—with considerable success—to transcend that norm, as with so many others. He responds instead with counterattacks and bold statements and accusations, knowing they will get more attention than subsequent fact-checks. It’s one of many ways that Americans are learning from Trump that much of their democracy was run on the honor system, on agreed standards, not laws, and now there’s someone who isn’t going to play by those rules.
PM Netanyahu vows to change name of Yasser Arafat Street
Have you heard of Yasser Arafat Street? Have you heard of [Palestinian nationalist leader and Nazi collaborator] Haj Amin al-Husseini Street? In the name of ‘proper representation,’ streets have been named after mega-terrorists who spilled Jewish blood as if it were water and whose ideologies still feed into Palestinian nationality,” she wrote.
“Unless we take the right steps now, we are destined to lose our way and end up on Ismail Haniyeh Street or Nasrallah Street,” she added, referring to a top Hamas official and the Hezbollah leader.
General H.R. McMaster Fans Say They Would Follow Him Anywhere
Those who have served with and worked alongside Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s new national security adviser, describe a brilliant leader and military strategist they would follow anywhere.
.. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who recommended McMaster for the position, also served under him in Iraq. Cotton submitted his resignation from the army in 2007, partly because he was passed over for a promotion to a one-star general. He later rescinded that resignation to deploy to Afghanistan.
“H.R. McMaster is one of the finest combat leaders of our generation and a great strategic mind. He is a true warrior scholar, and I’m confident he will serve both the president and the country well,” he said.
.. Friends also say he is honorable.
“He is brilliant and principled. He speaks truth to power and that has occasionally rubbed some of his peers and superiors the wrong way,” said Collins.
.. McMaster wrote the book on military commanders speaking truth to power, which some say could cause him to collide with others at the White House.
.. “He has a forceful personality. He doesn’t suffer fools well. If he thinks somebody’s wrong, he won’t hesitate to say so,” Fitzpatrick added.
.. Fitzpatrick predicts McMaster will get along with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who reportedly had battled over political appointments with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a retired army lieutenant general.
“They’re kind of birds of a feather. … I think he’ll play well with [Secretary Rex] Tillerson at the State Department. But others in the White House — that’s the big question. How well they play with him is maybe the question.”
.. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-AZ) said in a statement, “I could not imagine a better, more capable national security team than the one we have right now.”
Former CIA chief: Trump’s travel ban hurts American spies — and America
President Trump’s executive order on immigration was ill-conceived, poorly implemented and ill-explained. To be fair, it would have been hard to explain since it was not the product of intelligence and security professionals demanding change, but rather policy, political and ideological personalities close to the president fulfilling a campaign promise to deal with a threat they had overhyped.
.. Paradoxically, they pointed out how the executive order breached faith with those very sources, many of whom they had promised to always protect with the full might of our government and our people. Sources who had risked much, if not all, to keep Americans safe.
..But as a former station chief told me, in the places where intelligence officers operate, rumor, whisper and conspiratorial chatter rule people’s lives. It doesn’t take paranoia to connect the action of the executive order with the hateful, anti-Islamic language of the campaign. In the Middle East, with its honor-based cultures, it’s easier to recruit someone we have been shooting at than it is to recruit someone whose society has been insulted.