ZZZZ. White House Threatened Syria While Trump Yawned, Insiders Say
ZZZZ
White House Threatened Syria While Trump Yawned, Insiders Say
Tillerson secretly warned the Russians, and Kushner and Bannon were consulted before the White House rattled its saber. But the commander in chief was consumed with ‘fake news.’
ASAWIN SUEBSAENG
SPENCER ACKERMAN
06.27.17 12:26 PM ET
Hours before the White House issued an ominous warning to Syria’s dictator against launching another chemical assault, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave the same message to Bashar Assad’s patron in Moscow, The Daily Beast has learned.
According to a knowledgeable senior administration official, Tillerson warned his counterpart, Sergei Lavrov: the U.S. sees that Russia and Syria may be prepping for another chemical weapons attack; and that there will be consequences if Assad follows through with it.
All this occurred this week as President Donald Trump displayed what two White House officials characterized as relative indifference and passivity towards the subject, instead opting to focus his public and private energies towards fuming at his domestic enemies in the Democratic Party and the “fake news.”
“The president cares more about CNN and the Russia story than [Syria] at the moment,” one official observed.
The first senior administration official would not discuss the underlying intelligence behind the White House’s warning, but said it matched the sort of indications the U.S. had previously observed ahead of Assad’s “prior CW [chemical weapons] attacks,” and the Trump administration opted to deliver a warning through public and private channels.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-threatened-syria-while-trump-yawned-insiders-say
