Man, I love PDJT… Quickly clearing up issues with who will not be in his cabinet!
MIKE CHECK:
MIKE CHECK:
Gen. Mike Flynn did you get the memo?
President-elect Trump wants to put familiar faces on his national security team after being burned during his first term.
Why it matters: Sources said Trump doesn't want former generals on his national security team and prefers businessmen and CEOs — but he's also considering a line-up of loyalists in prominent D.C. positions.
Trump said several times in his campaign that during his transition he would begin pushing for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to end the war.
He also signaled in public and in private that he wants to see the wars in Gaza and Lebanon end by the time he is inaugurated.
Zoom in: Here are the top contenders, based on people close to this process:
State Department: A top candidate for Secretary of State is former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, two sources said.
The sources said Grenell advised Trump on foreign policy during the campaign and would likely focus on Russia-Ukraine diplomacy.
Republican control of the Senate neutralizes any difficulty Grenell could have had in being confirmed.
Two other candidates for the Secretary of State job are Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), who served as ambassador to Japan during Trump's first term, and Trump's former national security adviser Robert O'Brien.
Former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus is also often mentioned for a senior State Department position in D.C. or a key ambassador post.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) is a leading name for U.S. Ambassador to the UN.
Defense Department and intelligence agencies: Several names have been floated for Defense Secretary, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.).
Waltz could also be considered for CIA director, in addition to John Ratcliffe, who briefly served as the Director of National Intelligence under Trump.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) was also mentioned for top defense or intelligence roles but Axios' Stef Kight reports he told Trump's team he wouldn't be accepting any cabinet roles.
Another former Trump official who could get a senior foreign policy and national security position in the new administration is Brian Hook, who was Trump's Iran envoy and will lead the new administration's State Department transition team. Hook could end up in a senior position at the department, a source said.
The White House: Grenell and Waltz are also potential candidates for national security adviser in the next Trump White House.
Reality check: A former senior Trump administration official told Axios it's hard to predict who Trump decides to appoint.
At the start of Trump's first term, "Rex Tillerson wasn't in the first 3,000 people who were mentioned as candidates for Secretary of State," the former official said.
The official said the most important thing is that Trump's new national security team helps him implement his policy rather than trying to obstruct him like his team did at the beginning of his first term.
Tillerson and the Secretary of Defense James Mattis objected to several of Trump's initiatives.
Zoom in: During Trump's previous term, the Middle East file was mostly run by his senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who drafted an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan and negotiated the Abraham Accords between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
Kushner has said publicly several times during the campaign that he isn't interested in going back to government.
But Trump's victory, the current crisis in the Middle East and the opportunity to get a Saudi-Israeli peace deal might change his mind.
Others to watch: Avi Berkowitz, who worked with Kushner on the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan and on the Abraham Accords, could also make a comeback and be part of Trump's Middle East team.
David Friedman, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Israel during Trump's first administration, could go back for another term in this post.
Trump's former envoy Jason Greenblatt and Friedman's chief of staff Aryeh Lightstone might also return to government to work on the Middle East.
https://www.axios.com/2024/11/07/trump-national-security-foreign-policy-team
A former aide to the District of Columbia National Guard general who was in command during the 6 January insurrection has accused two top Army officers — including the brother of disgraced Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn — of lying to Congress in an attempt to blame DC national guard officials for delays in response to the worst attack on the Capitol since the 1814 Burning of Washington.
The accusations against General Charles Flynn, who served as the Army’s deputy chief of staff for operations on 6 January, and then-Army staff director Lieutenant General Walter Piatt, were laid out in a memorandum authored by Colonel Earl Matthews, who was the top military legal aide to Major General William Walker that day.
The 36-page document, the existence and contents of which were first reported by Politico, is a rebuttal to a report the Defence Department’s inspector general issued last month. That report accused General Walker of not immediately following an order to deploy troops to repel the horde of then-president Donald Trump’s supporters who’d stormed the Capitol in hopes of preventing congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s electoral college victory. General Walker, who since 26 April has served as the House of Representatives’ Sergeant-at-Arms, has denied the allegations and called for the report to be retracted.
The memorandum by Col Matthews, a Harvard and Georgetown University-educated lawyer who served in top Pentagon and National Security Council roles during the Trump administration and holds graduate degrees from the National Intelligence University and Army War College, supports Gen Walker’s version of events, which match a Defence Department chronology compiled by Army notetakers.
The memorandum alleges that the inspector general’s report is “replete with factual inaccuracies” and singles out Generals Flynn and Piatt as “absolute and unmitigated liars” who “repeatedly and deliberately made false statements under oath” during a 15 June appearance before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
In his June testimony, Gen Piatt recounted a conversation which he said occurred between then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Gen Walker during a conference call in which Mr McCarthy allegedly ordered him to prepare a “quick reaction force” of soldiers to aide capitol police at 2.30 pm that day.
“Immediately upon hearing the frantic request for assistance, [Mr McCarthy] asked [Gen Walker] how quickly the 40-member QRF could respond; [Gen Walker] stated the QRF could be ready to move in 20 minutes. [Mr McCarthy] directed {Gen Walker] to prepare to move the QRF to the Capitol Building and support the USCP, but to remain at the Armory until he confirmed approval from [Mr McCarthy],” Gen Piatt recalled.
According to Col Matthews — who still serves in the DC National Guard’s Office of the Staff Judge Advocate — Gen Piatt’s recollection was “drawn from whole cloth and did not occur,” and was one of many repeated “false or misleading or statements” he made during his appearance before the committee that day.
Col Matthews also drew attention to a statement from Gen Flynn’s testimony, in which the general told committee members that he directed a group of “40 officers and noncommissioned officers” who “immediately worked to recall the 154 D.C. National Guard personnel from their current missions, reorganize them, reacquaint them, and begin to redeploy them to the Capitol”.
“[Gen] Flynn’s sworn statement is so astounding on its face that it defies reason. If it does not constitute the willful and deliberate misleading of Congress, then nothing does,” Col Matthews wrote. He explained that the 154 guard members in question were already on duty, trained to deal with civil disturbances, and were properly outfitted and familiar with Washington, DC, but were delayed only “because of inaction and inertia at the Pentagon”.
Continuing, Col Matthews also took issue with statements both generals made in written responses to questions from House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney on the matter of whether either officer expressed any concern with “optics” — the potential fallout from having images of soldiers in riot gear guarding the Capitol — during the attack.
According to former US Capitol Police chief Steven Sund, Gen Piatt’s initial response to his 2.30 pm plea for national guard assistance was: “I don’t like the visual of the National Guard standing a police line with the Capitol in the background.”
Sad people put their hope in Democrat political leaders…
RFKJr had a great post yesterday!