***NEWS RELEASE***
Swamp Creatures
National Security Advisor’s Hires, Purges Leaving President Trump Surrounded by Unreliable and Hostile NSC Subordinates
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Center for Security Policy today launched a new “Swamp Creatures Series” to identify individuals in the national security establishment, starting with the National Security Council (NSC) itself. National Security Advisor (NSA) H.R. McMaster has repeatedly hired, retained and promoted staff whose records suggest their hostility towards President Donald Trump’s policies.
The first example is Dina Habib Powell, an Egyptian-American who—despite her lack of foreign policy and defense experience and her close friendship with deeply problematic Obama advisors Valerie Jarrett and Huma Abedin—was tapped by McMaster to be his deputy.
Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney unveiled the new series in an interview with Breitbart Radio host Raheem Kassam this morning. He warned that, when combined with NSA McMaster’s rank insubordination (for example, his rejection of President Trump’s term “radical Islamic terrorism”) and his serial and often public repudiations of the President’s policies (notably, with respect to Iran, Qatar, Syria, Afghanistan, Israel and the Muslim Brotherhood), McMaster is surrounding President Trump with individuals on the NSC who oppose the Trump agenda—and purging those who support Trump—amounts to a “coup d’etat with respect to foreign and defense policy.”
With the release of the first installment in the “Swamp Creatures Series,” Gaffney announced, “President Trump ran for office on a platform that is, in important respects, at odds with the views of Lt. Gen. McMaster and virtually all of those now populating the National Security Council staff. Ronald Reagan understood that ‘personnel is policy.’ If those who are nominally Mr. Trump’s personnel actually support policies he ran against, the people who elected him will be grievously disappointed—and disserved. So will Donald Trump.”
The Center intends to provide on an ongoing basis evidence of the degree to which President Trump has been saddled with staff who may be loyal to McMaster’s vision and priorities and, for example, those of former President Barack Obama, but would be hard-pressed faithfully to advance those of the incumbent Commander-in-Chief.
An example of how this works in practice can be found in the disagreement between Trump and McMaster regarding the Obamabomb deal with Iran. Trump has repeatedly reviled what then-Secretary of State John Kerry finally confessed was just a “political understanding” as the worst agreement ever negotiated.
McMaster, nonetheless, has aggressively supported continued U.S. adherence to the Iran Deal. In April, the president reportedly ordered his subordinates to prepare for him an alternative to certifying that Iran was in compliance with the deal and that it is in the interest of the United States. He is said to have been furious when no such option was provided 90 days later, compelling him once again to affirm such an inaccurate certification.
Follow the Center’s “Swamp Creatures Series” at www.SecureFreedom.org. For more information on Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy, visit www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org or follow the Center on Facebook or Twitter @securefreedom.
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