http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/u...r=rss&emc=rss&smid=nytpolitics&smtyp=cur&_r=0
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition operation plunged into disarray on Tuesday with the abrupt resignation of Mike Rogers, who had handled national security matters, the second shake-up in a week on a team that has not yet begun to execute the daunting task of taking over the government.
In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Rogers, a former congressman from Michigan who led the House Intelligence Committee, said that he was “proud of the team that we assembled at Trump for America to produce meaningful policy, personnel and agency action guidance on the complex national security challenges facing our great country,” and that he was “pleased to hand off our work” to a new transition team led by Vice President-elect Mike Pence.
Mr. Pence took the helm of the effort on Friday after Mr. Trump unceremoniously removed Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who had been preparing with Obama administration officials for months to put the complex transition process into motion. Now the effort is frozen, senior White House officials say, because Mr. Pence has yet to sign legally required paperwork to allow his team to begin collaborating with President Obama’s aides on the handover.
An aide to Mr. Trump’s transition team who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters said that the delay was taking place because the wording of the document was being altered and updated, and that it was likely to be signed later Tuesday.
Beyond that, a summary of some comments that I am seeing, not that I necessarily agree with all these assessments. Those of you who think might enjoy this food for thought. The rest of you can just go ahead and post some childish shmaltz. I don't care.
The Republican foreign policy establishment is having a miserable day, after almost convincing themselves it wouldn’t be so bad last week.
1. First, Rogers was considered knowledgeable about defense and intelligence agencies and a reasonable person (from a conservative standpoint). He was just about the *only* senior transition person who fit that description. Now he’s out.
2. For SecState, both Bolton and Guliani are unpleasant options — even fellow neocons tend to think Bolton is too aggressive (!!!), too disliked abroad, and too much of a total impossible a-hole of a manager to be an effective SecState. Guliani, of course, is taken to be as much of a bad joke as you’d expect among the foreign policy establishment.
3. For Secretary of Defense, it seems to be narrowing onto Sessions. Sessions has Armed Services experience but basically was a non-entity on that cmte, his heart was in Judiciary (immigration). Importantly to the GOP security establishment, Sessions is *against* raising the defense budget, or at least is clear he cares more about the deficit than the size of the Navy. Sessions is not at all thought of the same way as say, Ayotte or McCain.
4. Gen. Flynn, the guy who is Vladmir Putin’s BFF and who led maniacal “USA!” chants at the convention, seems like he is in fact headed to by White House National Security. This scares the crap out of the whole GOP foreign policy establishment.
5. The Bannon pick is not going over well at all in the GOP foreign policy wing (nor at AIPAC, though they are swallowing their anger)
6. Add 1 — 5 together, and the mumbling coming out of the GOP foreign policy establishment is that if things are indeed going down as they appear, no way would they be willing to work in a Trump DoD, State Dept, or intel community.
7. As an example, last week Johns Hopkins prof and conservative foreign policy scholar Elliot Cohen encouraged GOP policy wonks to be willing to work with Trump — though with caution — for the good of the country. Based on recent developments and his own efforts to reach out to Trump being rebuffed, Cohen now says, “stay away!”:
https://twitter.com/EliotACohen
Cohen is the single most prominent grad-school mentor of conservative national security policy officials there is. This tweet of his is reverberating very loudly.
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition operation plunged into disarray on Tuesday with the abrupt resignation of Mike Rogers, who had handled national security matters, the second shake-up in a week on a team that has not yet begun to execute the daunting task of taking over the government.
In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Rogers, a former congressman from Michigan who led the House Intelligence Committee, said that he was “proud of the team that we assembled at Trump for America to produce meaningful policy, personnel and agency action guidance on the complex national security challenges facing our great country,” and that he was “pleased to hand off our work” to a new transition team led by Vice President-elect Mike Pence.
Mr. Pence took the helm of the effort on Friday after Mr. Trump unceremoniously removed Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who had been preparing with Obama administration officials for months to put the complex transition process into motion. Now the effort is frozen, senior White House officials say, because Mr. Pence has yet to sign legally required paperwork to allow his team to begin collaborating with President Obama’s aides on the handover.
An aide to Mr. Trump’s transition team who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters said that the delay was taking place because the wording of the document was being altered and updated, and that it was likely to be signed later Tuesday.
Beyond that, a summary of some comments that I am seeing, not that I necessarily agree with all these assessments. Those of you who think might enjoy this food for thought. The rest of you can just go ahead and post some childish shmaltz. I don't care.
The Republican foreign policy establishment is having a miserable day, after almost convincing themselves it wouldn’t be so bad last week.
1. First, Rogers was considered knowledgeable about defense and intelligence agencies and a reasonable person (from a conservative standpoint). He was just about the *only* senior transition person who fit that description. Now he’s out.
2. For SecState, both Bolton and Guliani are unpleasant options — even fellow neocons tend to think Bolton is too aggressive (!!!), too disliked abroad, and too much of a total impossible a-hole of a manager to be an effective SecState. Guliani, of course, is taken to be as much of a bad joke as you’d expect among the foreign policy establishment.
3. For Secretary of Defense, it seems to be narrowing onto Sessions. Sessions has Armed Services experience but basically was a non-entity on that cmte, his heart was in Judiciary (immigration). Importantly to the GOP security establishment, Sessions is *against* raising the defense budget, or at least is clear he cares more about the deficit than the size of the Navy. Sessions is not at all thought of the same way as say, Ayotte or McCain.
4. Gen. Flynn, the guy who is Vladmir Putin’s BFF and who led maniacal “USA!” chants at the convention, seems like he is in fact headed to by White House National Security. This scares the crap out of the whole GOP foreign policy establishment.
5. The Bannon pick is not going over well at all in the GOP foreign policy wing (nor at AIPAC, though they are swallowing their anger)
6. Add 1 — 5 together, and the mumbling coming out of the GOP foreign policy establishment is that if things are indeed going down as they appear, no way would they be willing to work in a Trump DoD, State Dept, or intel community.
7. As an example, last week Johns Hopkins prof and conservative foreign policy scholar Elliot Cohen encouraged GOP policy wonks to be willing to work with Trump — though with caution — for the good of the country. Based on recent developments and his own efforts to reach out to Trump being rebuffed, Cohen now says, “stay away!”:
https://twitter.com/EliotACohen
Cohen is the single most prominent grad-school mentor of conservative national security policy officials there is. This tweet of his is reverberating very loudly.
