Trumps Public Humiliation [View all]

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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2017/02/robert_harward_turned_down_trump_now_others_can_too.html

Trump’s Public Humiliation

By rejecting the national security adviser job, Robert Harward gave cover to every professional who wants to turn the president down.
By Fred Kaplan


Donald Trump isn’t accustomed to hearing prospective underlings say “No.” So it came as a shock when retired Vice Adm. Robert Harward—his first choice to replace Michael Flynn as national security adviser—told the president he’d have to think about the offer. It must have been a double shock when, a few days later, Harward turned him down flat.

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Trump may now have a hard time filling the position with anyone whose qualifications or prominence would help calm the jitters of allies worldwide—and foreign-policy specialists here—who are wondering what the hell is going on with this president. At the moment, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, a competent administrator who had been the NSC’s chief of staff, is the acting national security adviser, and it may be that Trump will have to settle on him as the successor.

Three weeks into his term, Trump heads a White House with three or four vacant power centers. He has no national security adviser, a half-full NSC staff, hollow Defense and State Departments (where Trump has yet to nominate any deputy or undersecretaries), and the secretaries heading those departments—Mattis and Rex Tillerson—who, however smart and talented they may be, have never run a federal agency.

At his wild and woolly press conference Thursday afternoon, Trump twice insisted that his administration was “a fine-tuned machine.” It was a risible claim then. A few hours later, after news broke that a retired vice admiral and former Navy SEAL didn’t want to work for him, not even in one of the most vaunted jobs in the White House, the claim careened into total absurdity.