Press conference video at bottom of page.
Watching the five national security chiefs at the press conference yesterday it occurred to me that there had to be more to the timing of this than coincidence. After all, Sarah Sanders had a press conference the day before. Two press conferences two days in a row is unusual.
This is how CNN put it this morning:
The dramatic and unified comments Thursday from the nation's top national security officials to warn of a pervasive Russian effort to undermine US democracy also highlighted one of the most puzzling contradictions of the current presidency.
Often, President Donald Trump's own administration adopts rhetoric, positions and interpretations of facts that directly conflict with the views and stated beliefs of the President himself, raising doubts about the unity and coherence of White House strategy on key issues -- including addressing election interference, broader foreign policy and domestic issues such as immigration or avoiding a government shutdown.
This strange duality (emphasis added) played out Thursday as the intelligence and foreign policy chieftains mustered in the White House Briefing Room to promise what FBI Director Christopher Wray said would be "fierce determination and focus" to thwart Russian meddling in the midterm elections.
But the absence of the President and his relentless past efforts to undermine assessments of Russian interference by his own intelligence agencies, plus his failure to publicly confront President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki last month, cast a huge cloud* over the gathering. (emphasis added)
*(By coincidence I choose the image of a castle on a cloud to illustrate this article last night.)
If there’s any further proof needed that there is, to put it mildly, a “strange duality” between what Trump believes and what his intelligence chiefs know to be true,
consider this, also from CNN:
Here’s my flight of fancy, or if you will, an exercise in wishful thinking.
My hunch is that Chief of Staff John Kelly, Secretary of State Pompeo, CIA director Gina Haspel, DNI Dan Coats, FBI Director Christopher Wray, National Security Advisor John Bolton, NSA Director GeneralPaul M. Nakasone, Homeland Security Director Kristjen Nielsen, and Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis became alarmed by Trump's becoming psychologically unbalance and unpredictable and/or that they had information that he has been conspiring with Vladimir Putin.
I think that there may be people close to the president who have essentially been acting as undercover agents for one or another intelligence agencies, most likely the FBI. Some of them may have been expressing alarm about the president’s erratic behavior to John Kelly.
I wouldn't be surprised if the intelligence chiefs, at least those who trusted each other to maintain secrecy, have been meeting in secret at least since the Helsinki summit. If there really is a deep state as Trump maintains, the NSA or CIA may have had a recording of the conversation between Trump and Putin. If Trump committed treason they would know it. Note that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said he "is not in a position or understand fully" to talk about exactly what went on during the private meeting. He didn’ t say that he knew exactly what went on in the meeting, and he may. See my post-Helsinki diary: Besides Russia who else knows what happened in Helsinki? We should know, but we may not.
It’s possible that another impetus to calling the press conference yesterday was that Dan Coats who was the most vocal about being kept out of the loop about what transpired between Trump and Putin learned Trump was about to fire him.
If my fanciful scenario is true the press conference makes sense. They would have arranged for it on the pretext that this would be good optics showing that Trump took the threat of interference in the election seriously.
I do not think they would have communicated to Trump or his communications office with new Communications Director Bill Shine and Sarah Sanders, sycophants both, that they would be intending to put the blame squarely on the Russians, thus contradicting the president. From the look on Sarah Sanders’ face, it seemed she was taken aback by what the intelligence chiefs said. After the intelligence chiefs left the briefing room Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggested that the focus on Russia was misplaced, saying “our intelligence shows that there are a number of others” seeking to meddle in U.S. elections. Politico The chiefs may have told her they planned to support the president’s contention that the election interference could have been Russia or it could have been someone else so she probably was attempting damage control.
By refusing to address reporters questions about Trump's suggesting that it might not be Russia, and his not confronting Putin about this in the post-summit press conference, they sent the message that Trump is at odds with the entire intelligence establishment more dramatically than ever before.
I think we will discover evidence that this may have happened if Trump takes to the road for more and more rallies and that his Tweets become more and more angry and threatening.
If this isn't just a flight of fancy and I am correct, Trump will remain as president thinking he is still in total control. His narcissism won't allow him to believe otherwise.
He’ll hang on enjoying the cheers of his rally crowds until the Mueller report provides compelling reasons for impeachment, a set of facts so damning that with a Democratic House he would be impeached, or its possible the House would impeach him even before the Mueller report, and that public opinion against Trump would be so overwhelming that there would be 67 votes in the Senate to find him guilty.
Meanwhile, last night at his rally, Trump was still calling the investigation into Russian interference in our election a hoax. He may have come home to the discovery that his intelligence chiefs had pulled the rug out from under him.
His impulse might be to fire them. But he can't fire all five. They know this. In fact, this may be why they decided to hold the press conference together.