Week 5, Monday
Trump named Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his new National Security Adviser. Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who has been acting NSA, will be chief of staff on the National Security Council. McMaster is well-respected and has been a vocal critic of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. It isn’t immediately clear how he will get along with the administration given his commitment to the notion that military leaders must tell uncomfortable truths to civilian leaders.
The New York Times and Washington Post both reported this weekend that Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and a shady former business associate, Felix Sater, met last month with a member of the Ukrainian parliament to discuss a peace plan that could be a huge windfall for Russia, allowing for long-term control of Crimea and a lifting of U.S. sanctions. Cohen admitted that the meeting took place and that he left the meeting with a copy of the peace plan but now denies that he gave the document to Michael Flynn or anyone at the White House; the NYT reported that he previously told them he delivered the plan to Flynn and they stand by their story.
In Brussels this weekend, Vice President Mike Pence has made a number of comments that seem to run in direct opposition to President Trump’s comments on the same issues. For example, he said that the administration is committed to “cooperation and partnership with the European Union” while Trump has repeatedly praised Britain’s decision to leave the EU. Similarly, both Pence and Defense Secretary Mattis worked hard to calm European fears about Trump’s commitment to NATO; while Trump has recently called NATO “obsolete,” Pence and Mattis tried to outline a more traditional way forward for the organization (though both also pointedly noted that European partners must meet defense spending guidelines).
Trump attempted to explain his baffling comments at his Saturday rally about something that happened “last night” in Sweden. The remark was made in the context of pointing out all the terrible things that have occurred as a result of allowing Middle Eastern refugees and immigrants into various European nations, but nothing happened in Sweden. On Sunday and Monday, Trump took to Twitter to issue multiple tweets that tried to explain what he was talking about. First he said he was referring to a piece on a crime wave purportedly perpetrated by immigrants in Sweden that he saw on Fox News. He later wrote that any media reports suggesting that immigration is working out well are fake news.
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