It’s being reported that retired Vice Adm. Robert Harward told a friend that chaos and dysfunction in the White House meant that Donald Trump’s offer to make him national security adviser amounted to “a shit sandwich.” Harward turned Trump down Thursday, adding to the pr*sident’s woes in the wake of Michael Flynn’s forced departure from that post.
Fred Kaplan at Slate lays out succinctly where things stand:
The rejection is stunning in several ways that go well beyond the scope of Trump’s personal sensitivities. First, it is very unusual—almost unheard of—for a senior military officer, retired or otherwise, to turn down a request from the commander-in-chief.
Second, and largely for that reason, by rejecting the offer Harward has provided cover to other officers, and to civilian national-security analysts with a similar sense of patriotic duty, to turn down this president, too. Service, in this case, is not its own reward and by no stretch worth the sacrifice.
Third, the Financial Times, Washington Post, CNN, and other news outlets are reporting that Harward turned down the offer in part because Trump wouldn’t let him fire several officials that Flynn had hired for his staff and install his own team instead. [...] The news reports don’t mention whether Harward made demands about Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief political strategist, who wrote the executive order that placed himself on the NSC Principals Committee and has created a parallel NSC structure called the Strategic Initiatives Group, comprised of a few extreme right-wing associates. But any serious person would insist on the dismantling of this weird group as another condition for taking the job.
This refusal from a highly respected Navy veteran who seems wholly unlike Flynn (based on public reports of his background) may prove only mildly damaging for Trump. But the cuts keep accumulating.
A cut was inflicted Thursday when Fox News’ Shep Smith went on a righteous and extended rant about Trump’s pathologically repeating the same debunked lies every time he gets near a microphone as well as his unwillingness to come clean about what his campaign team was doing talking to high-level Russians the same day Russians are said by the CIA to have hacked the Democrats. Smith called Trump’s erratic behavior “crazy.” But, no surprise, he caught grief on Facebook from Fox watchers who viewed him as disloyal.
Reporting on the surreal Thursday press conference of a decidedly truculent Trump, CNN’s John King reported on yet another cut: “I got a text from a Republican senator who said in this text, 'He should do this with a therapist, not on live television’.” It would be surprising if we don’t see more Republicans jumping ship over the next few days and weeks.
Disarray does not come close to describing what we’re seeing unfold day by friggin’ day. We now have the added possibility, based on the press conference, that the “leader of the free world” is teetering on the precipice of a full-blown meltdown, with all its potential for severe collateral damage. We’re moving into unexplored territory. At breakneck speed. Destination: Unknown.
