Glenn Thrush of The New York Times has a very interesting article out on Paul Manafort. It contains no one blockbuster piece of information. In fact, it is oddly understated, leaving it to the reader to draw what I think is a fairly straightforward conclusion. The article is based on access Thrush received to a series of emails and memos Manafort prepared for Trump (Glenn, WTF? Please publish the actual memos and emails.)
The upshot is that Manafort aggressively courted Trump for the job, sold himself creatively and – key for Trump, one imagines – offered to work for free.
According to the AP, President Trump is ditching his tax plan and starting the search for a tax plan he can pass.
Here’s notable news this morning. K.T. McFarland, a key Flynn holdover at the NSC and a comically unqualified Fox News National Security ‘analyst’, has been fired as the number two person at the National Security Council. This is more house-cleaning by National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster. (Initials and Irish surnames? No, no idea. Maybe there’s a Times trend piece.)
Mike Allen likely has as good a sources as anyone for the White House Game of Thrones story. He says this morning that Priebus will now be allowed to stay. He is “‘with the program’ of a more inclusive style, and will stay.”
It is worth noting here that Priebus was a job-seeker convert to Bannonism in the first place. Now he’ll unconvert to keep his job. Bannon too might get to stay. But only at a steep price. As Allen puts it, “Either Steve becomes a team player and gets along with people, or he’ll be gone.” To render this in the alt-Trump creole, Bannon can stay if he agrees to go cuck.
All signs suggest we’re now in the “President Trump has full confidence in Michael Flynn” phase of Steve Bannon’s tenure in the Trump White House. I don’t know whether this is some moron genius dialectic on Bannon’s part or just Karma. But can we miss that the man who gave coherence and verve to Trump’s campaign against the ‘globalists’ and unrooted cosmopolitan elites is about to be booted by the President’s Jewish tycoon son-in-law and a group of bankers (yes, Jewish bankers) from Goldman Sachs? These are I confess uncomfortable observations, but consider this …
TPM is hiring. We are currently hiring for a Newswriter to work from our New York office (listing after the jump). We are also currently hiring for three investigative reporters for our New York and Washington, DC offices. Newswriter listing after the jump.
Donald Trump has said all manner of contradictory things about Syria and unilateral airstrikes. He said Obama shouldn’t attack in 2013 and insisted he needed congressional authorization to do so. Now he is contradicting both points. But whether or not Trump is hypocritical is not a terribly important point at the moment. Whether he’s changed his position isn’t that important. But the rapidity and totality with which he’s done so is important. There are compelling arguments on both sides of the intervention question. But impulsive, reactive, unconsidered actions seldom generate happy results.
As you’ve likely already seen, the US tonight launched a significant aerial attack on targets in Syria. The AP reports that about 60 Tomahawk missiles fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea struck a Syrian air force base.
A key question will be the fate of Russian military and/or civilian personnel in Syria, which have become closely integrated with Syrian regime military personnel in recent years. Obviously Russian lives are no more important than Syrian lives. But the geopolitical consequences of Russian casualties or fatalities could be severe.
Every ‘chemical weapons are horrible, but …’ post is perilous and difficult to write. But there are some important points to be discussed here. President Trump has spent two years arguing that Syria is not our fight. We don’t really care about human rights issues in Syria or who runs Syria. We care about ISIS. Days ago his Secretary of State said whether Bashar Assad stays in power isn’t our concern. Now we’re talking about military action and ousting him from power.