Best At Belittlement

"I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me," bragged Donald J. Trump in November, 2015.

Once President, he proceeded to nominate retired US Marine Corps general John Kelly to be secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, retired Marine general James Mattis for Secretary of Defense, and retired US Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn as his national security advisor.

Flynn was not fired until 18 days after the White House learned that he had lied to the Vice-President about his contacts with Russian ambassador Kislyak.  He was replaced by Army Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster. It's clear that he (and even more so he and Mattis) have a great deal of influence over the Administration's foreign policy, especially given that it has not been as bizarre as expected of a President who admires Russia's Vladimir Putin and other strongmen, and knew upon being elected less about foreign affairs than a fifth grader.

Military scholar and author Thomas E. Ricks notes that Mattis on May 25

appeared before cameras at the White House to respond to a Washington Post article reporting that the president had shared sensitive intelligence about terrorism with Russian visitors. This information was sufficiently detailed, some intelligence officials feared, that it might enable interested parties to determine the source of that intelligence.

Not so, said General McMaster. “The story that came out tonight as reported is false,” he stated emphatically.

The next day, he appeared again before the cameras. This time his line was: “the premise of that article is false—that in any way the president had a conversation that was inappropriate or that resulted in any kind of lapse in national security.” That’s what people in Washington say when they can’t dispute the facts in a given article, but still dislike it.

On the president’s first foreign trip, McMaster has continued to defend Trump, for example, expressing over the weekend a lack of concern about reports that Trump’s son-in-law and confidant Jared Kushner sought to establish a secret, back-channel line of communication to the Russian government that would be hidden from the U.S. national security apparatus.

“We have backchannel communications with a number of countries,” McMaster said during a press availability in Italy. “What that allows you to do is communicate in a discreet manner, so I’m not concerned.”

Therefore, Ricks believes, McMaster should resign because he has not been a check on the President's foolish behavior as Trump

continues to stumble through his foreign policy—embracing autocrats, alienating allies and embarrassing Americans who understand that NATO has helped keep peace in Europe for more than 65 years.

Thinking over this, I worry that having people like McMaster around Trump simply enables Trump. Mature national security specialists seasoned in the ways of Washington simply lend an air of occasional competence to an otherwise shambolic White House. By appearing before the cameras, looking serious and speaking rationally, they add a veneer of normality to this administration. 

And yet, as of now, the military troika of McMaster, Mattis, and Kelly remains in power. If I didn't know any better, I might think that President Trump is enamored of generals.

Or maybe not.  The key lies in Ricks' observation that McMaster is not "improving Trump. Rather, what I have seen so far is Trump degrading McMaster."

Like a raccoon eating garbage or a mother calling at the worst time, it's what he does.  In early December, The New Republic's Alex Shepard and Laura Reston wrote

Few people know how to humiliate like Donald Trump—he told his Twitter followers to check out a sex tape; he instructed Chris Christie to stop eating Oreos and forced him to assume the role of doting butler—but even fewer take humiliation as personally as Trump does. For eleven months, the Hillary Clinton campaign—as well as almost the entire Republican establishment—waged a war against Trump by attacking and undermining his claims that he was rich and smart and had a working penis. But you have to have shame to be humiliated, and Trump lacks it completely. The only thing these attacks achieved was the inevitable retaliation.

Trump gets a perverse sense of satisfaction from deflating his opponents—especially the heirs of the two great political dynasties from the last four decades, both of whom he gave demeaning nicknames. (Crooked Hillary! Low-Energy Jeb!) He made his humiliations as personal as possible, and the sheer number of people belittled, debased, and embarrassed in the crossfire was breathtaking. 

H.R. McMaster has the title, the medals, the bearing, and the respect (so far, anyway) of colleagues and of Washington .  If Trump keeps it going, humiliating a general can be akin to the cherry on top of the cake, perhaps even better than debasing blowhard Christopher J. Christie.

Now on his third marriage, Donald Trump appears to have been a bad husband; with his bankruptices, a bad businessman; with his failure thus far to ban Muslims, get tax cuts for the wealthy, or make ISIL and Kim Jong Un bow down to him, an impotent President.  But just as Rick and Ilsa will always have Paris, Donald J. Trump- real estate swindler, President, or ex-President- will always have someone to humiliate. It's what he does.

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A Fine Reputation, Once

When a juvenile is accused of breaking the law, people near to him may utter something like "he was such a good kid. It must be the crowd he got into." In a best-case scenario, Lt. General H.R. McMaster is suffering the same fate, for David Frum tweets "one of the finest reputations in the US military is not an asset to be cast away in this manner."

That has been manifested twice rently.  Reuters reports

Asked about reports that Donald Trump's son-in-law had tried to set up a secret channel of communication with Russia before the president took office, U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said that so-called "back-channeling" was normal.

McMaster declined to speak specifically about the case of Jared Kushner, who serves as a senior adviser to Trump, but when asked if it would concern him if someone in the administration tried to set up a back channel with the Russian embassy or the Kremlin, he replied "no".

"We have back-channel communications with any number of individual (countries). So generally speaking, about back-channel communications, what that allows you to do is communicate in a discreet manner," McMaster said.

"So it doesn't pre-expose you to any sort of content or any kind of conversation or anything. So we're not concerned about it."

When the content of the meeting is kept secret for approximately three months- as this one did- blackmail becomes plausible. Of course, that would have been less likely had Kushner tried to set up such "back-channel communications" with, say, the Netherlands rather than a geopolitical enemy such as Russia.  It also may have been helpful had it occurred after his father-in-law had actually become President or if someone had informed the NSA or the CIA of the scheme.

Former FBI agent and fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute Clint Watts argues "The idea of using Russian facilities to skirt Russian surveillance in the U.S. would either be a serious attempt to hide something or the actions of a young amateur."  A real estate tycoon arguably worth nearly a billion dollars, Kushner is no amateur.






McMaster's lack of concern, given the paucity of detail about the incident, should be troubling. Nonetheless, at least he (presumably) didn't lie there, unlike when

"I think it's extraordinary that there would be an expectation that the president would have to say explicitly that he supports Article 5. Of course he does," McMaster told reporters at the end of a Group of Seven summit in Sicily.

"He did not make a decision not to say it," McMaster continued. "It was implicit in the speech. There was no decision to not put it in there. It is a matter of fact that the United States, the president, stands firmly behind our Article 5 commitments under NATO."

In his speech in Brussels, the President noted that after the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 "Our NATO allies responded swiftly and decisively, invoking for the first time in its history the Article 5 collective defense commitments."

But this was not the USA standing behind its own commitments to NATO, but rather those nations standing behind their commitment on behalf of  America. Trump added

.... grave security concerns are the same reason that I have been very, very direct with Secretary Stoltenberg and members of the Alliance in saying that NATO members must finally contribute their fair share and meet their financial obligations, for 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they’re supposed to be paying for their defense.

This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States...

This was less an implicit recognition by the President of his nation's commitment to Article 5 than an implied threat that if other nations don't pony up the dough, he may have to reconsider the USA's posture. It was a shout-out to  the isolationists who were energized by the candidate who criticized US military intevention abroad, yet stated of ISIS “I would bomb the shit out of them. I’d just bomb those suckers. I’d blow up the pipes, I’d blow up the refineries, I’d blow up every single inch—there would be nothing left.” And of course take their oil, because we're the biggest, the best, and always entitled.

Of giving Kushner a pass, Malcolm Nance tweets "McMaster headed to disgrace. He's willfully ignorant of allegations or willing to risk our national security. Either one is disqualifying."

There, the National Security Advisor blew smoke up our backside, as he did commenting on Trump's NATO speech.   Lieutenant HR McMaster is in with a bad crowd, and it's up to him to start leveling with the American people or get out..





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