Slate - "The Grown-Ups Are Locked Out" (about sidelining of McMaster, Mattis, Tillerson)

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2017/03/the_powerlessness_of_mattis_mcmaster_and_tillerson.html

The Grown-Ups Are Locked Out

Trump is depriving Tillerson, Mattis, and McMaster of any real influence or support.

By Fred Kaplan

The few grown-ups in Trump’s Cabinet are getting sidelined, their expertise goes ignored, and the pledge that they could choose their own teams—an assurance they were given upon taking their jobs—lies in tatters. With each passing day, it seems clearer that this wreckage stems not from President Trump’s administrative sloppiness but from a deliberate strategy to concentrate power among his circle of confidants—and to strip power from all other quarters of the federal government.



Trump’s critics cheered when he named Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, one of the U.S. Army’s smartest and most insistent officers, as his national security adviser after Michael Flynn was forced out in scandal. Trump assured McMaster that he could clean house at the National Security Council—a promise that many assumed meant the imminent ouster of K.T. McFarland, a Fox News commentator that Trump had made deputy national security adviser, and the dismantlement of a parallel NSC structure set up by White House political strategist Steve Bannon. But three weeks after McMaster’s installment, there are few signs that either of these things are happening.* And just last Friday, McMaster tried to remove Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a 30-year-old Flynn acolyte, from the post of NSC intelligence director—and was overruled by Bannon and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

Across the Potomac, in the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense James Mattis had to withdraw his choice for undersecretary for policy after meeting disapproval from the same duo. (The official story was that a few senators would have opposed her nomination, but their concerns could easily have been overcome.) Mattis has been fuming since the inauguration over White House attempts to stack his deck with political hacks—and over repeated rejections of his own choices.

Remarkably, Trump has not nominated a single second- or third-tier official in the Defense Department. Obama’s deputy secretary of defense, Robert Work, agreed to stay on until a replacement was found. But all of the under- and assistant secretaries left on Inauguration Day—some by choice, others at the insistence of the White House—and the people sitting in their chairs in an “acting” capacity are very junior with no authority to speak for the Trump administration.

SNIP - more to read - worth the time to do so....click the link above

[pangaia]

1. Tillerson ain't no grownup.

He's a money grubbing fascist..

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. yes, there is that...

[KittyWampus]

5. He does not want things blown up the same way Bannon does. It's bad for Exxon.

[gratuitous]

6. I was gonna say

How pathetic is it that Wayne Tracker--I mean, Rex Tillerson--qualifies as a grown up in this fucked-up administration?

[pangaia]

7. Thing is, none of them are 'grownups.'

And if one can very broadly define mental illness as displaying greed, anger, hatred, dishonesty, lack of empathy, etc... then they are ALL mentally ill..

In fact, we all bare this weight, but some of us see it and work on ourselves to try to overcome it... some don't.

The ones who don't become republicans.

[mopinko]

3. the noncomplicit are locked out.

i dont think they have cut rex in on the deal yet. they are stalling.

[TeamPooka]

4. Fuck all three of those puppets. They signed up to be used and used they shall be.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

8. When it comes to Tillerson, I don't think he really cares about being sidelined.

He was appointed to the Secretary of State position most likely as a thank you to Russia, who had prior business dealings with Tillerson and Exxon and literally wined and dined him.

Tillerson has no interest in actually functioning as the Secretary of State in my opinion, and the administration has no interest in pretending that he does. Hence the deep cuts to the State Department.

It was a thank you appointment, plain and simple. It's not a real job for him and he's got no illusions that it is.