That first meeting between Robert Mueller’s folks and Reince Priebus should be interesting… more on The Real Animal Husbands of the Trump White House.
Because it’s Das Love Boot… and Reince will not be the next ambassador to Greece, but there does seem to be a junta coming into focus at the WH.
Trump has a thing for generals. He routinely refers to them as “my generals” and brags about them looking like they’re from “central casting.” Kelly was the third general the president named to a senior position after Secretary of Defense James Mattis—who had served so recently that he required a special waiver from Congress in order to take the job—and National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who Trump reportedly asked to wear his uniform to work despite the fact Flynn had retired from the service. (The retired Kelly also does not wear his uniform to the workplace.) When Flynn was forced to resign over contacts with Russia, Trump replaced him with another general, H.R. McMaster, who has the advantage of still being in the military, meaning he can wear his uniform around the office….
Despite Trump’s professions of love and admiration for his generals and his claim that he’s giving the military “total authorization,” the president doesn’t always seem to care about what they have to say. He ignored Mattis’ plan for fighting ISIS for months. He’s widely known to be frustrated with McMaster, particularly the national security adviser’s desire to commit more troops to Afghanistan. And despite his claim that he’d decided to ban transgender people from the military after consultation with “my generals,” the Pentagon had no idea the announcement was coming. Mattis was apparently only informed the day before and was on vacation. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford says he’s not going to implement the ban until he receives an official order.
Before Kelly moves into his new role, then, particularly given that his new brief will involve more than just national security issues, he should keep in mind that Trump is often less interested in heeding his generals’ wisdom than he is in using them as props.
In retaliation for new U.S. sanctions, Russia announced Friday that it is reducing the number of U.S. diplomats in the country and shutting down the U.S. Embassy’s recreational retreat outside Moscow. It will now cap the number of U.S. diplomats allowed in the country at 455, though it’s not immediately clear how many are currently there...
The (mostly accurate) line in Moscow now seems to be that because of the Russia investigation and U.S. domestic politics, Trump is powerless to deal with Russia the way he’d like to. "What we are seeing [in the U.S.] is merely anti-Russia hysteria," Putin told CNN this week in Finland, adding, "It is a great pity that Russian-American relations are being sacrificed to this domestic, internal American issue." Another Russian official told NBC’s Richard Engel that they view Trump as "a prisoner in the White House."