Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s interview with Andrea Mitchell is still on-going. But the gist of the interview confirms what national security experts are saying, which is that what Rice is alleged to have done is entirely normal. But I would say the buried lede in this interview is that during the transition period the Intelligence Community was sending top national security intelligence consumers an increasing volume of reports of surveillance of foreign persons in which top Trump advisors kept coming up, either as the subjects of discussion or actually talking to the people in question. It’s quite unlikely that courtesy calls or general discussions of policy priorities would be included in those reports.
Let’s say this is not helpful news for the Trump team.
What to make of the latest revelation – that Blackwater founder Erik Prince, a major funder to the Trump campaign, buddy of Stephen Bannon, and brother of Education Secretary and Trump donor Betsy DeVos met secretly in the Seychelles Island with a Russian representative apparently to arrange a backchannel between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin? It would be a mistake to file it immediately under Trumputingate. It’s more interesting than that.
One of the abiding mysteries of the Trump saga is just who those five initial foreign policy advisers were, the ones he announced at an editorial meeting with The Washington Post on March 21st, 2016. It was an odd group: five guys, half with sordid pasts and others no one had ever heard of. One of them actually had Model UN work listed as one of his job qualifications! They weren’t sending their best!
This was at the point when Trump had no foreign policy advisers and he’d recently said he got his ideas on the topic from watching generals on the cable networks. Because of all this, it’s always been plausible that the whole question of how these guys were picked is radically over-determined: maybe the list was just five guys someone grabbed off their rolodex in a panic in time for the Post editorial board meeting. Who knows?
One more point about the ‘un-masking’ story, picking up on my piece from last night. You’ll remember that early on, Chairman Nunes told Speaker Ryan and others that his source was a “whistleblower-type person.” This always struck most people as rather ridiculous, and rightly so: People at the White House leaking pro-White House information really don’t qualify as “whistleblowers.” But again, I would suggest that this bit of weirdness fits perfectly with the scenario I set out last night.
My read on Eli Lake’s story about Susan Rice ‘unmasking’ Trump transition officials is that it’s a rather elaborate attempt to make a scandal out of something that isn’t scandalous at all. Given what we know just about Mike Flynn’s activities in November and December of 2016 alone, Rice’s alleged actions don’t seem that surprising at all. National security experts seem to agree.
But here’s something in the story that got my attention.
Read this paragraph, the third graf down in the story.
We’re seeing a slow but now steady stream of stories suggesting that Trumpcare may not be dead after all. They’re working on it in the background, making progress, getting ready for even more winning.
Put me down as quite skeptical.
Professor Amr Amr will join us in the Hive for a chat about archeology and his latest project, The Day After, which works to cut down on looting of ancient artifacts in Syria. Feel free to drop questions at any time or join us on Wednesday at 2 p.m. If you’d like to participate but don’t have TPM Prime, sign up here.
President Trump’s dismal poll numbers continue to be one of the few sources of joy and mirth in the bleak political hellscape his presidency has created. From a low of 35% a week ago in the daily Gallup Approval tracking poll, his approval number perked back up to 40%, only to fall back this weekend to 38%. Sad!, as they say.
Trumpers looking for ways to sideline intelligence community and gain access to raw intel as they monitor Trump/Russia probe.