I do not always give direct attribution to my memo readers and friends who send me so many of these cartoons and various links but thanks and keep doing so. I do not post all of them but try to be selective depending upon what I am writing.
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Lynn complains I spend too much time writing memos and sending/replying to e mails. I sent her these pictures to remind her how dangerous it is to be outside.
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This was sent by a friend and fellow memo reader and though he nor I wrote it, I wish I had.( This was excerpted from Rabbi Lewis's sermon which I posted earlier.) (See 1 below.)
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Peggy Noonan and Bob Corker turn psychiatrist.
Either General Kelly is also insane, a liar or a master at what he does. Anyone who listened to Kelly's press conference has to believe the latter.
I have no doubt some of what we read and hear about Trump from, 2d to ?, unknown sources and reported by our increasingly unschooled/biased mass media 'youth' contains a modicum/kernel of truth. I have no doubt Trump will never make the full transition from a brawling New York, (not cigar smoking, drinking) real estate developer all the way to The White House as a traditional politician. (With all due respect, like lawyers, we have enough central casting politicians.)
I, too believe, as with all humans, Trump is his own worst enemy and his tweeting is mostly counterproductive, his narcissistic tendency to fight back at opponents, via name calling, is both effective, at times, and childish, at times, but also totally irregular. (Truman defended his daughter and it was refreshing. Though she really did not have a great voice.) What I find refreshing is when Trump tells us, in no uncertain terms, what we know is the truth as he recently did regarding Puerto Rico, The Iran Deal, NFL kneelers, defunding un-Democratic U.N Agencies etc. We are not used to a president telling us what is on his mind and often contemporaneously.
Furthermore, I have no doubt he is irascible, not easy to control and finds his role of wearing a presidential straight jacket uncomfortable and ill fitting and he may never adjust or even be able to. This is why we can take some comfort in the fact that he has surrounded himself with able people who are willing to serve and eventually his Cabinet will find common cause for the good of the nation
Finally, Trump went to military school and achieved officer rank among the corps, played sports and then went to a decent business school,(my own, Wharton). With help from his father, he became a "uge" success as a developer and the rest is history. (More than we know about Obama, I might add and why Hillary did not win because we knew too much.)
I suspect we will get through the Trump trials and tribulations and in the process will stand up against nations rather than apologize to them, the economy will grow rather than remain anemic, people will get re-employed and American will be greened again, as companies return to make things here,needed tax revision and simplification after over 30 years might happen, even Obamacare might be remodeled so it runs, the military will rebuild and some of our problems will be resolved favorably and new problems will arise.
Trump made one comment, when he spoke at the Value Conference, that I want to repeat because it rings so true. "Americans worship God not government."
I believe Trump is not a religious person but has a good heart and he understands the special meaning of what it is to be an American and because so many fear we are allowing that unique feeling to slip away, to morph into garbage because of PC'ism etc. it took someone like Trump to get us back on track. Down the road we might discover "right man at the right time."
And
Yes, we might even find ourselves involved in war(s) with renegade nations like N Korea, Iran and yes, we might have to stand up to Putin and China but none of these circumstances were of Trump's making. He inherited this mess because others shrank from their responsibilities and chose to kick cans and now those tin pigeons have come home. (See 2 and 2a below,)
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Trump decided it was time to quit certifying a lie and being uncomfortable so he threw the ball to Congress as required by the terms of Obama's desire to go around our Constitution. Obama claimed his Iran Deal was not a treaty so did not need to be confirmed by The Senate, knowing it would not have been and then he paid Iran off in billions, some of which was delivered in cash. Yet, he had the chutzpah to deny it was ransom. More lies from Pinocchio?
Obama, with the Iran deal, gave legal permission for Iran to go nuclear and he claimed that was a victory for freedom. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Do you think The "Harvey" Hurricane matter has revealed the hypocrisy of the woman's movement?
While the mass media hounds Trump for his Puerto Rico comments , Harvey and his former playmates at Weinstein Brothers may be headed for RICCO charges. (RICCO was legislation intended to allow the government to go after The Mob for multiple charges but was allowed to morph into being misapplied, in my opinion, for non-Mob crimes.)
Many woman, who stand for women's rights, apparently knew, did not speak out because it would impact their personal status, income and careers
I have always believed breaking the glass ceiling was good but limited to those who could and the rest of the women/mothers had to work to support their families and their ceilings were made of concrete as the family was ripped apart by liberal legislation and their own skills and opportunities were minimal.
The single family mom is one of America's great tragedies.
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Finally, I challenge you to click on Rob Jones' Journey.Com
If you do, perhaps you will feel a little better about the fact that we are defended by volunteers who sacrifice and then, when they suffer personal injuries, pick themselves up and respond by more exemplary sacrificing.
I understand the problems with and downside of a non-volunteer military. What bothers me, just as with the fact that less than 50% pay direct income taxes, is when so many benefit from the sacrifices of others yet, have no skin in the game, I fear, eventually what they have will not remain important, will be wasted and/or thrown away.
This is what is happening in our country, from my perspective. Those who enjoy freedom of speech want to deny it to others, those who benefit from our Bill of Rights have never read the documents of our Founding Fathers and, even if they have, do not understand their subtleties.
I am concerned about the spread of identity politics and the politicization of everything. For those who still care about our nation and do not use our freedoms to take cheap shots at others or wrap themselves in the mantel of hypocrite concerns, our plate is full and there is much about which to be legitimately concerned.
I also believe we are not handling our concerns in a judicious manner, in keeping with our traditions. There is much evil in the land and it is being perpetrated by those who hate our country, hate what it stands for, hate what we have been to the world and who want to bring it to its knees. They are a growing number of anarchists among us who benefit from chaos. Tragically, we are increasingly ill prepared to respond because we have allowed ourselves to be dumbed down by PC'ism, messages from false gods and self-dealers in and out of politics.
Yes, the enemy remains US.
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Dick
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2) What Bob Corker Sees in Trump
His concerns are widely shared. The senator deserves credit for going on the record with them.
By Peggy Noonan
It was my impression the senators were not fully receptive to my thought. Everyone was polite but things were subdued, and I wondered later if I’d gone too far, been too blunt, or was simply wrong. Maybe they knew things I didn’t. Since then I have spoken to a few who made it clear they saw things as I did, or had come to see them that way.
I jump now to the recent story involving Sen. Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. In August he said publicly that Mr. Trump had not yet demonstrated the “stability” and “competence” to be successful as president. Last weekend Mr. Trump, in a series of tweets, mocked the senator, calling him gutless and “Liddle Bob Corker.” Mr. Corker tweeted in response: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”
After that he turned serious, in an interview with Jonathan Martin of the New York Times.
Mr. Martin asked if Mr. Corker was trying to “sound some kind of alarm” about the president. Mr. Corker said “the president concerns me.” He likes him, it isn’t personal, but “I know for a fact that every single day at the White House it’s a situation of trying to contain him.” He said there are “some very good people” around the president, “and they have been able to push back against his worst instincts. . . . But the volatility is, to anyone who has been around, is to a degree alarming.” In particular, he observed: “The tweets, especially as it relates to foreign policy issues, I know have been very damaging to us.”
Mr. Martin asked if Mr. Corker has Senate colleagues who feel the same way. “Oh yeah. Are you kidding me? Oh yeah.”
Mr. Martin asked why they did not speak out. Mr. Corker didn’t know: “Look, except for a few people, the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here. There will be some—if you write that, I’m sure there will be some that say, ‘No, no, no I don’t believe that,’ but of course they understand the volatility that we are dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes from people around him to keep him in the middle of the road.”
Among them are Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Chief of Staff John Kelly : “As long as there’s people like that around him who are able to talk him down, you know, when he gets spun up, you know, calm him down and continue to work with him before a decision is made. I think we’ll be fine.” He said of the president: “Sometimes I feel like he’s on a reality show of some kind, you know, when he’s talking about these big foreign policy issues. And, you know, he doesn’t realize that, you know, that we could be heading towards World War III with the kinds of comments that he’s making.”
This is all pretty striking from a sitting senator, even one not running for re-election.
At roughly the same time, some sharply critical pieces on the president were coming from the nation’s newspapers. The Los Angeles Times had a story on Mr. Trump’s reaction to Mr. Kelly’s efforts at imposing order on the White House: “The president by many accounts has bristled at the restrictions.” The article quotes allies of the president describing him as “increasingly unwilling to be managed, even just a little.” A person close to the White House claimed Messrs. Kelly and Trump had recently engaged in “shouting matches.” In the Washington Post, Anne Gearan described the president as “livid” this summer when discussing options for the Iran nuclear deal with advisers. He was “incensed” by the arguments of Mr. Tillerson and others.
Also in the Post, Michael Kranish interviewed Thomas Barrack Jr. , a billionaire real-estate developer and one of the president’s most loyal longtime friends. Mr. Barrack delicately praised the president as “shrewd” but said he was “shocked” and “stunned” by things the president has said in public and tweeted. “In my opinion, he’s better than this.”
Thursday, Vanity Fair’s Gabe Sherman said he’d spoken to a half-dozen prominent Republicans and Trump associates, who all describe “a White House in crisis as advisers struggle to contain a president who seems to be increasingly unfocused and consumed by dark moods.” Mr. Sherman reported two senior Republican officials said Mr. Kelly is miserable in his job and is remaining out of a sense of duty, “to keep Trump from making some sort of disastrous decision.” An adviser said of Trump, “He’s lost a step.” Two sources told Mr. Sherman that several months ago, former chief strategist Steve Bannon warned the president the great risk to his presidency isn’t impeachment but the 25th Amendment, under which the cabinet can vote to remove a president temporarily for being “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
There are a few things to say about all this. First, when a theme like this keeps coming up, something’s going on. A lot of people appear to be questioning in a new way, or at least talking about, the president’s judgment, maturity and emotional solidity. We’ll be hearing more about this subject, not less, as time goes by.
Mr. Corker deserves credit for going public with his reservations and warnings. The U.S. is in a challenging international environment; it’s not unfair or unjust to ask if the president is up to it and able to lead through it.
But we are a nation divided on the subject of Donald Trump, as on many others, and so this is a time to be extremely careful. Unnamed sources can—and will—say anything. If you work in the White House or the administration and see what Mr. Corker sees, and what unnamed sources say they see, this is the time to speak on the record, and take the credit or the blows.
What a delicate time this is. Half the country does not see what the journalists, establishment figures and elites of Washington see. But they do see it, and they believe they’re seeing clearly. It’s a little scary. More light is needed.
2a) The Media and the President It Deserves
Reason, honesty and self-discipline don’t come naturally to humans, including press humans.
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
The First Amendment exists not because of any special merit of the people and institutions of the media. If it did, Americans would have lost the First Amendment long ago.
The late economist Albert O. Hirschman observed that firms and institutions of all kinds, even under the lash of competition, do not relentlessly improve. They do what they’ve become comfortable doing, what lets them get by.
His most memorable work spoke of “exit, voice and loyalty”—three ways clients and customers can respond to institutions in decline. Loyalty—or the capital of past trust—is a thing that enables institutions to decline: Their customers don’t abandon them overnight. Loyalty also allows institutions to repair themselves, because their customers don’t abandon them overnight.
This column advised the GOP convention to deny Donald Trump the nomination. Our forecast from five months before Election Day of how a Trump administration might unfold looks pretty good today: “He could spend four years dragging the White House press corps to photo ops at various Trump golf courses and hotels. He could embroil the entire government apparatus in ‘walking back’ his unbon mots. He could sit for endless depositions spawned by his illegal attempts to impose the Trump agenda by decree. He could rail against a Congress that . . . is likely to be uncooperative regardless of party.”
Yet it does not follow that everything Mr. Trump does and says is illegitimate, false and unreasonable. This trope is itself a symptom of institutional decline in the media, practiced especially on a daily basis by MSNBC’s “ Morning Joe. ”
Words are put in Mr. Trump’s mouth. His tweet, “We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders . . . in P.R. forever!,” though a statement of the obvious, is reported as if he’s blaming hurricane victims for their suffering.
This, as the Trump administration and its nominal Republican allies in Congress are passing billions in aid for the island, and as Mr. Trump himself broaches the unwelcome (by Wall Street) topic of voiding Puerto Rico’s debt.
Mr. Trump’s statements about the advanced decay of the island’s grid and other public institutions are likewise statements of fact, not insults. Puerto Rico is different from Houston or South Florida not just because it’s surrounded by water—utility crews from distant states can’t just rush down the interstates to help; good Samaritans and entrepreneurs can’t just fill up their pickups with much-needed supplies from adjacent unaffected communities. Puerto Rico is also different because its credit is shot.
Texas and Florida can attract instant capital for relief and rebuilding based on the strength of their local economies and the solvency of their citizens. Not so Puerto Rico. It’s always possible to indulge happy hopes—its power system will be built with green energy! But more likely Puerto Rico will become even more of a federal welfare island as its remaining able-bodied and skilled citizens get the hell out. The territory, some seem to forget, is already an extraordinary ward of Congress due to its crippling debts.
Yes, all of this you could find in the media—just read around the sentences claiming it’s all Donald’s Trump’s fault.
Standards of honesty, reason and self-discipline do not come naturally to humans, including press humans. These virtues are in constant battle against the entropy of our disordered nature. At the same time, the media are absolutely indispensable to a modern society’s functioning, more so than any president. The quantity of information that must be circulated and absorbed to fulfill our roles as consumers, workers, taxpayers and citizens is almost beyond calculation.
Hysteria notwithstanding, Mr. Trump is no threat to this functioning. His occasional tweets against Jeff Bezos or NBC’s “licenses” are better understood as examples of his penchant for gadflyism rather than presidential speech.
But also, put aside even partisan bias: Notice, in the TV news, the reliance on relentless exaggeration. Notice how every statistic is accompanied by superlatives and intonation designed to elicit emotion instead of judgment. The institutional drift away from intellectual honesty—and toward “fake news”—is manifest in ways more quotidian and telling than the news business’s periodic anti-Trump fits. Where do you think Trump modeled his careless dishonesty?
Exit and voice—two ways customers discipline declining institutions—have been working overtime to reform/punish the traditional media in the digital age. Hence the mixed blessing of Breitbart, etc. But our industry also benefits from a uniquely institutionalized form of loyalty in the First Amendment, which we in the press would do well sometimes to remember is a completely unearned grace.
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3) Trump’s Iran Strategy
A nuclear fudge in the service of a larger containment policy.
By The Editorial BoardDonald Trump announced Friday that he won’t “certify” his predecessor’s nuclear deal with Iran, but he won’t walk away from it either. This is something of a political fudge to satisfy a campaign promise, but it is also part of a larger and welcome strategic shift from Barack Obama’s illusions about arms control and the Islamic Republic.
Mr. Trump chose not to withdraw from the nuclear deal despite his ferocious criticism during the campaign and again on Friday. The deal itself is a piece of paper that Mr. Obama signed at the United Nations but never submitted to Congress as a treaty. The certification is an obligation of American law, the Iran Nuclear Review Act of 2015, that requires a President to report every 90 days whether Iran is complying with the deal. Mr. Trump said Iran isn’t “living up to the spirit of the deal” and he listed “multiple violations.”
The President can thus say he’s honoring his campaign opposition to the pact, without taking responsibility for blowing it up. This partial punt is a bow to the Europeans and some of his own advisers who fear the consequences if the U.S. withdraws. The worry is that Iran could use that as an excuse to walk away itself, and sprint to build a bomb, while the U.S. would be unable to reimpose the global sanctions that drove Iran to negotiate.
This is unlikely because the deal is so advantageous for Iran. The ruling mullahs need the foreign investment the deal allows, and there are enough holes to let Iran do research and break out once the deal begins phasing out in 2025. Iran will huff and puff about Mr. Trump’s decertification, but it wants the deal intact.
Yet we can understand why Mr. Trump wants to avoid an immediate break with European leaders who like the deal. This gives the U.S. time to persuade Europe of ways to strengthen the accord. French President Emmanuel Macron has talked publicly about dealing with Iran’s ballistic missile threat, and a joint statement by British, German and French leaders Friday left room to address Iranian aggression.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump is asking Congress to rewrite the Nuclear Review Act to set new “red lines” on Iranian behavior. The Administration has been working for months with GOP Senators Bob Corker (Tenn.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.) on legislation they’ll unveil as early as next week. This will include markers such as limits on ballistic missiles and centrifuges and ending the deal’s sunset provisions. If Iran crosses those lines, the pre-deal sanctions would snap back on.
There’s no guarantee this can get 60 Senate votes. But making Iran’s behavior the trigger for snap-back sanctions is what Mr. Obama also said he favored while he was selling the deal in 2015. The difference is that once he signed the deal his Administration had no incentive to enforce it lest he concede a mistake. The Senate legislation would make snap-back sanctions a more realistic discipline. Senators may also want to act to deter Mr. Trump from totally withdrawing sometime in the future—as he threatened Friday if Congress fails.
The most promising part of Mr. Trump’s strategy is its vow to deter Iranian imperialism in the Middle East. The President laid out a long history of Iran’s depredations—such as backing for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and rebels in Yemen, cyber attacks on the U.S., hostility to Israel, and support for terrorism. Notably, Mr. Trump singled out the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime’s military vanguard, for new U.S. financial sanctions.
This is a welcome change from President Obama, who was so preoccupied with getting his nuclear deal that he ignored Iran’s efforts to expand the Shiite Islamic revolution. Mr. Trump is putting the nuclear issue in the proper strategic context as merely one part of the larger Iranian attempt to dominate the region. This will go down well with Israel and the Sunni Arab states that were horrified by Mr. Obama’s tilt toward Tehran.
One question is how this squares with Mr. Trump’s cease-fire deal with Russia in southern Syria. Russia is allied with Iran in Syria, and the cease-fire is serving as protection for Revolutionary Guard attempts to control the border region with Israel, which has had to bomb the area repeatedly. Mr. Trump still hasn’t figured out a strategy for Syria or Russia, and that could undermine his effort to contain Iran
Barack Obama left his successor a world in turmoil, with authoritarians on the march in China, North Korea, Russia and Iran. Mr. Trump needs a strategy for each, and the steps he took Friday are crucial in containing Iran.
3a)
Nikki Haley was Trump’s Iran whisperer
The U.N. ambassador paved the way for decertification as other Cabinet members urged caution.
At a midday meeting in the Oval Office in late July, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley came to President Donald Trump with an offer.
Trump had grudgingly declared Tehran in compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal earlier in the month, at the urging of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Trump hated the deal. But the two men pushed him to certify it, arguing in part that he lacked a strong case for declaring Iran in violation. A refusal to do so would have looked rash, they said, convincing Trump to sign off for another 90 days.
Haley, in that July meeting, which also included national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Vice President Mike Pence, asked the president to let her make the case for decertification.
“Let me lay a foundation for it,” she said, according a source familiar with the proceedings. The president agreed.
Haley would become the administration’s most vocal public proponent of decertification — and Trump’s favorite internal voice on Iran — further boosting her standing with the president at a time when she is seen as a potential successor to Tillerson, whose tense relationship with Trump has burst into the open in recent days.
A month after her talk with Trump, Haley flew to Vienna to visit the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Association, where she pressed officials about Iranian compliance with the deal. Soon after, she delivered a speech at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., airing her “doubts and concerns” about the agreement.
Haley’s role was described by a half-dozen administration officials who took part in the Iran policy review. While many of the president’s Cabinet members, aides and advisers work to restrain his impulses, when it came to the Iran deal Haley did the opposite — channeling what many Democrats and even some Republicans consider the president’s destructive instincts into policy.
Haley wasn’t alone. The fingerprints of former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, whose access to Trump was recently limited by chief of staff John Kelly, were also on Trump’s Friday address in the form of a warning that Trump, who opted not to push for steps that could undo the nuclear agreement, could still cancel the deal “at any time."
The line was added to Trump’s speech after Bolton, despite Kelly’s recent edict, reached the president by phone on Thursday afternoon from Las Vegas, where Bolton was visiting with Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson. Bolton urged Trump to include a line in his remarks noting that he reserved the right to scrap the agreement entirely, according to two sources familiar with the conversation.
Trump wound up saying that the agreement “is under continuous review, and our participation can be canceled by me, as president, at any time.” Bolton declined to comment on any conversation with the president.
Within the administration, Haley worked to chart a middle path by which Trump would decertify the deal while working with Congress in hope of strengthening it by adding new conditions on Iranian behavior to avoid a new round of U.S. sanctions.
In internal debates, where most members of the president’s Cabinet initially opposed decertification, Haley played a similar role: She was “the most engaged and most vocal” Cabinet member who favored decertification, according to a senior White House aide.
At times, that put her at odds with other Cabinet members, especially Tillerson, who vocally opposed her trip to Vienna in August — a matter that became another flashpoint in the ongoing feud between the two.
One White House official described the escalating tensions between Tillerson and Haley as reaching “World War III” proportions.
A spokesman for Haley declined to comment on her relationship with Tillerson or on her role in the broader Iran debate.
Tillerson had sent a top State Department deputy to a July meeting of the seven nations that are parties to the 2015 Iran deal and argued there was no need for Haley to meet with the IAEA a month later. But Trump green lighted Haley to make the trip, according to two administration officials. Her presence sparked headlines about administration concerns with the deal. Brian Hook, the director of policy planning, ultimately joined Haley in Vienna.
State Department spokesman R.C. Hammond denied any dispute between Tillerson and Haley over the Vienna trip, describing it as a “very useful” visit for Hook and Haley.
White House officials describe the tension between the two senior diplomats as one fueled as much by style as by ideology. “You have two big personalities, one person who doesn’t want to be managed and doesn’t think she reports to the other,” one White House official said of Haley, “and the other who is used to being in charge and doesn’t like to be contradicted.”
But differing views on Iran heightened the friction. Tillerson was among the strongest opponents of striking a blow at the nuclear deal, as Trump did Friday when he declared Iran in violation of “the spirit of” the deal.
The Iran debate also afforded Haley another chance to upstage Tillerson, who though more senior has maintained a lower public profile than most of his predecessors.
Two weeks after her return from Vienna, in remarks at AEI, Haley floated what one NSC official described as the “initial trial balloon” for the path the administration laid out on Friday. “The purpose of the AEI speech was to figure out, ‘Is this gonna work? Does this thread that needle?’” the official said, describing a strategy by which the president would decertify the deal but remain a party to it.
In that speech, Haley differentiated between the nuclear agreement itself and the legally mandated congressional certification. “That’s a very important distinction to keep in mind, because many people confuse the requirements of the deal with the requirements of U.S. law,” she said.
“The truth is, the Iran deal has so many flaws that it’s tempting to leave it. But, the deal was constructed in a way that makes leaving it less attractive,” she said. “It gave Iran what it wanted upfront, in exchange for temporary promises to deliver what we want.”
Even if the outcome wasn’t all he wanted, Bolton, one of Trump’s most hawkish outside allies, expressed satisfaction.
“The Iran deal may not have died today, but it will die shortly,” Bolton said.
The former U.N. ambassador supports a full U.S. withdrawal from the deal, something he told Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, during a meeting earlier this week.
At the behest of former White House strategist Steve Bannon, Bolton had prepared a plan for that approach that he never had the chance to present to Trump once Bannon was fired and Kelly cracked down on Oval Office visits.
But Bolton’s authorship of a key line in Trump’s speech makes clear that his influence at the White House endures.
Haley never explicitly called for withdrawal. But she was alone among top Trump officials to publicly call for Trump to declare Iran in violation of the deal. Even as most Cabinet officials — with the exception of CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Pence — privately cautioned Trump against upending it, Haley hammered the deal in multiple public remarks.
But after Trump seethed in July about certifying Iran’s compliance, a decision he is required by law to make every 90 days, few others voiced their concerns in his presence, a White House official noted.
After Trump announced at the U.N. General Assembly in September that he’d already decided how he would handle the next certification deadline of Oct. 15, and called the deal “an embarrassment to the United States,” his advisers realized that Friday’s announcement was inevitable.
Over the past several weeks, Trump’s national security advisers developed the strategy announced Friday — one that the State Department as well as the Department of Defense and the CIA ultimately signed off on. “The principles presented a consensus recommendation to the president,” said National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton.
But it was a consensus to which many were ultimately brought around — and that had been pushed, prodded and promoted by Haley for three months.
“If Rex is America's quiet diplomat.
Nikki is America's foreign policy
articulator,” Hammond said.
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