HEAVEN HELP US LIVE THROUGH TRUMP’S TIME IN OFFICE

…Former US General, John Kelly, Trump’s new Chief-of-Staff

 

What are Trump’s generals telling the president, and does he even listen?

 

The former US General and current White House Chief-of-Staff, John F. Kelly said the following to a talking head at Fox News about the current National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster.  “Every day I see him speak truth to power to me in my current position,” Kelly said this of his fellow US general.

 

That may all be well and good, but my question is, what does speaking “truth to power” look like when the former generals, Mattis, Kelly and McMaster, are all huddled around Trump in some back room at Trump’s New Jersey golf club?  What are the generals telling the president and is he even listening?

 

It doesn’t appear that, as usual, Trump isn’t even trying to listen.

 

As Trump works from his golf course in Bedminster, N.J., due to his own big mouth, he is now facing one of the biggest crises of his presidency.  The escalating hostility from North Korea, which our own intelligence reports it has been able to miniaturize its nuclear warheads to fit on their new ICBM’s .

 

Today, North Korea presents a crucial test, not only for the president, but for the group of seasoned military figures in his administration. Many foreign-policy voices have hoped these men would provide the president with steadiness and order as he deals with matters of war and peace. These former generals have Trump’s personal reverence as he has long been enamored of the military since he was a teenager at the New York Military Academy. (However, he used many deferments in order to avoid serving in the military in the 1960’s.)

 

But will these former US Generals spend their vast military capital to deeply shape the administration’s military response? Will they seriously try to rein in Trump or will they just echo him?

 

It is looking more like the later, instead of the former.

 

When Trump made his initial comments against the Dictator Kim Jong Un, he did so extemporaneously.  Yes, he had been briefed on the latest North Korean developments, but the fiery words that inflamed the standoff were all from his own gut.  This is according to White House officials who spoke with The Washington Post’s, Philip Rucker. The generals have remained largely out of sight.

 

So far, the general’s actions have provided a very murky view. Trump has had Kelly, his new chief of staff, at his side in New Jersey.  Mattis is playing a leading role in figuring out some kind of overall military strategy, as is his National Security Adviser McMaster, the former three-star Army general.

 

According to CNN, Kelly spoke with Trump just before bringing in the press to the meeting on the Opioid Crisis.  He updated the president on “the Korea peninsula, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who had piped in on the phone.” But, as with Trump’s continued and confrontational use of Twitter, there were “few signs that Kelly’s presence around Trump has tempered the mercurial and uncensored commander in chief.”

 

Sources inside the West Wing did not understand the seriousness of what the president said as they just shrugged off the president’s improvisation.  They said that the statement was typical of how Trump works: He prefers to come up with a message that fits his style rather than read from the talking points he finds boring.  So, he instead would prefer to use words that were unsettling to even some Republicans, such as Sen. John McCain (AZ), who called the comments highly provocative.  “I don’t know what he’s saying and I’ve long ago given up trying to interpret what he says,” McCain told a local radio station. “It’s not terrible but it’s kind of the classic Trump in that he overstates things.”

 

To make things worse, Secretary Tillerson played down Trump’s comments on Wednesday, saying he had “no concerns about this particular rhetoric of the last few days. I think the president, again, as commander-in-chief, I think he felt it necessary to issue a very strong statement directly to North Korea.”  Advisor Mattis struck a similar tone to Trump, telling North Korea in a statement that it “should cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.”

 

Sounds to me like they are all just bowing to their boss to keep him from attacking them on Twitter. 

 

In the interview with Fox News, Kelly just dismissed the suggestion that the generals and others around Trump were “yes men” or enablers of the president’s combative instincts.

 

Kelly also defended McMaster, who has been under siege from some Trump supporters for advocating a bolstered US presence in Afghanistan, a position at odds with White House Chief Strategist, Stephen Bannon, a Navy veteran and the former chairman of Breitbart News.

 

So, the generals are sticking together, but what are they doing to protect the American people from their less than capable and lack of knowledge boss?

 

No one in the administration seems to be taking what the president has said seriously, even though it has caused every publication across the world to sit up and take notice.

 

God help us live through this man’s time in office.

 

Oh, and let’s make that time in office as short as possible.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017