The internecine wars amongst Trump cronies and family members are starting to resemble nothing so much as a daytime soap opera. At last glance, after a week into the administration, Steve Bannon pulled off a major coup being named to the National Security Council, the first time ever for someone with his job title, completely unsettling both the intelligence community and the military. Bannon wasted no time making the Council his own.
An intelligence official who spoke to Foreign Policy magazine painted a picture of a White House that was in disarray and being run without checks and balances or even a complete paper trail.
Even before he was given a formal seat on the National Security Council’s “principals committee” this weekend by President Donald Trump, Bannon was calling the shots and doing so with little to no input from the National Security Council staff, according to an intelligence official who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution.
“He is running a cabal, almost like a shadow NSC,” the official said. He described a work environment where there is little appetite for dissenting opinions, shockingly no paper trail of what’s being discussed and agreed upon at meetings, and no guidance or encouragement so far from above about how the National Security Council staff should be organized.
The official further elaborated:
The official said that the National Security Council staff had been cut off from reviewing White House executive orders, which has been the practice in previous administrations.
Additionally, Bannon is insisting that the National Security Council make its recommendations without producing a traditional paper trail, known as a “summary of conclusions” (SOC).
“Under [President George W. Bush], the National Security Council was quite strict about recording SOCs,” Matthew Waxman, a former member of Bush’s National Security Council, told Foreign Policy. “There was often a high level of generality, and there may have been some exceptions, but they were carefully crafted.”
According to the intelligence official, the Trump White House generated no SOCs during its first chaotic week. The lack of a paper trail is also helping Bannon concentrate power, the official said.
“He who has the pen has the authority to shape outcomes.”
The source revealed that Bannon is conducting a “witch hunt” to find out who is leaking proposed executive orders to the press.
“There is zero room for dissenting opinion,” the official explained.
That would be an interesting observation in any event, but when the major dissenting opinion on Steve Bannon's methods is coming from Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, dissent takes on new meaning. Vanity Fair reported recently that a number of inflammatory events, precisely the kind that Jared and Ivanka are onboard to throw ice water on, have taken place when the Kushners were observing the Sabbath. Could it be just coincidence?
Kushner, along with his wife, Ivanka Trump, is also an orthodox Jew who observes Shabbat. From sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday, the couple abstains from technology and work. And early in the incipient Trump administration, that brief period has been unusually fraught. Last week, the president personally called the Park Service on the morning after his inauguration to inquire about the size of the crowds who came to watch him take the oath of office.
He subsequently delivered a widely derided speech at C.I.A. headquarters that afternoon, during which he blathered on about the media’s treatment of him and his inaugural crowd size. He then sent his press secretary, Sean Spicer, into the briefing room to falsely claim that it was the largest audience for an inauguration in history. During the tumult, some noticed the conspicuous absence of Kushner’s allegedly calming presence. “He wasn’t rolling calls on Saturday when this happened,” one person close to Kushner told me last week. “To me, that’s not a coincidence.”
The timing of Trump’s executive order on Friday, just moments before sundown, meant that Kushner would not be in the West Wing to absorb another cataclysmic Saturday. Indeed, Kushner observed the Sabbath as thousands of people protested outside airports across the country, children waited for their detained parents, lawyers rushed to federal court rooms, taxi drivers went on strike, and one Democratic leader broke down in tears on live television.
While all this was going on, Ivanka, in her inimitably oblivious style, posted a photograph of herself wearing a silver lame dress on social media, on the arm of her be-tuxed husband, Jared, also obliviously fondling her posterior in the mirrored reflection of said photograph. Quite the pair, Bannon must have gotten a chuckle out of that. But wait, there's more. Check out this meme that quickly circulated of Ivanka in her silver gown next to a photo of a young Syrian refugee child wrapped up in a silver emergency blanket. Wheeee, isn't silver purty? It goes without saying that on a social consciousness poll that Ivanka and Jared finished somewhere after Marie Antoinette that night.
Jared Kushner has reportedly been wan and pale and has lost between seven to ten pounds since the inauguration, Politico Playbook reported. It may be a compilation of things, or the straw that broke Jared's back may have been the cancellation of the meeting with Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto. Vanity Fair said this:
Last week, Kushner spent 24 hours trying to broker a meeting between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. The source said that Kushner was even considering flying to Mexico in order to convince Peña Nieto, who had butted heads with Trump over various issues, to travel to the White House. Ultimately, Peña Nieto agreed—a feat Kushner presented to his father-in-law on Wednesday night. It was his first real victory in the West Wing in his role as senior adviser, and it would be a major step toward turning one of Trump’s main campaign promises into a reality.
Less than 12 hours later, though, it all fell apart. After Peña Nieto reiterated that Mexico does not plan to pay for Trump’s proposed wall, Trump tweeted that if Mexico is “unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.” Just like that, the meeting was canceled. “Kushner was fucking furious,” the source told me. “I’d never once heard him say he was angry throughout the entire campaign. But he was furious.”
The philosopher Cato said, "The first time is happenstance. The second time is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." Jared Kushner has seen enough since the inauguration to realize that Steve Bannon is the puppeteer pulling Trump's strings. If Kushner does not realize that, then he is the only one. Bannon is indeed running a cabal and he will keep populating the government with the citizens of his own private Trojan horse. He's got two advisors from Breitbart coming into key White House positions. Julia Hahn will be Bannon's aide, and Sebastian Gorka, will serve on retired Gen. Mike Flynn’s National Security Council. Steve Bannon is stacking the deck and he’s just getting started. Bannon is the personification of the worst angels of our nature.