White House Watch: Trump Accomplishes His Narrow Mission in Syria

------=_Part_959063973_1672853945.1523888897275 Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable And a "Never Trump" aide backs out of Pence aide job. [View this as website]( [header]( Share: [Share on Facebook]( [Share on Twitter]( [Share on Google+]( For the president, Friday night’s targeted strike against the Syrian government was a “mission accomplished.” [That’s what Donald Trump tweeted Saturday morning]( after the strike, in which the United States was joined by Britain and France. “A perfectly executed strike last night,” Trump said. “Could not have had a better result.” The strike hit what Defense Secretary James Mattis referred to as “chemical weapons infrastructure,” and the White House set out on Sunday to reaffirm that this narrow mission had, in fact, been accomplished. “They went out to destroy critical chemical weapons infrastructure in Syria and they did exactly that,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told ABC News. “And they also sent a strong message to Syria, to Russia, to Iran that when this president has a red line, he will enforce it.” But what is next for the United States with regard to Syria and the regime of Bashar al-Assad? United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley told CBS Sunday said the administration is “not looking for war” but that “we wanted to send a strong message that they needed to stop the chemical weapons program.” To that end, Haley said, the Treasury Department will be announcing new sanctions against Russia, an important ally of Syria. “They will go directly to any sort of companies that were dealing with equipment related to Assad and chemical weapons use,” she said. [Read more...]( One More Thing—After his Saturday morning tweet, the president has spoken out publicly only one additional time about Syria. In between tweets on Saturday and Sunday blasting James Comey, criticizing the FBI raid on his lawyer Michael Cohen, and praising a good poll number, Trump commented on the media scrutiny of his “mission accomplished” tweet. [tweet-11]( While the Trump administration may be preparing more Russian sanctions on top of the several other individuals and entities who have been targeted by the United States in recent weeks, the president himself has been lashing out about some of his government’s actions against Russia. That’s according to [an incredible Washington Post story]( how has “battled aides” on Russia recently—and lost. In March, Trump’s aides presented him with a plan to expel Russian diplomats from the United States in response to Moscow’s apparent involvement in the poisoning of a former spy in London. According to the Post, Trump wanted the number of diplomats to match what European allies planned to do. “The next day, when the expulsions were announced publicly, Trump erupted, officials said. To his shock and dismay, France and Germany were each expelling only four Russian officials — far fewer than the 60 his administration had decided on,” reads the Post story. “The president, who seemed to believe that other individual countries would largely equal the United States, was furious that his administration was being portrayed in the media as taking by far the toughest stance on Russia.” Photo of the Day [tweet-13]( ADVERTISEMENT Never Mind—Jon Lerner, a deputy to Nikki Haley at the United Nations, will no longer join Vice President Mike Pence’s staff as national security adviser. “Tonight Jon informed the vice president that he was withdrawing from coming on board as national security advisor,” said Pence spokeswoman Alyssa Farah on Sunday. “Vice President Pence holds Jon Lerner in the highest regard and expressed his deep gratitude for Jon’s willingness to consider joining our team.” Lerner had planned on continuing to work for Haley in addition to his work at the White House. He will stay with Haley despite his withdrawal from the Pence position. [Josh Rogin at the Washington Post had first reported]( of the Lerner hire, but on Sunday afternoon, Jonathan Swan of Axios reported Trump [had tried to block Lerner’s appointment]( last week after learning of the Republican operative’s work during the 2016 primary campaign on ads against Trump A White House source tells me the vice president’s office tries to avoid “drama” and that Lerner will continue to advise Pence on national security matters in an informal way. Lerner is close professionally with Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers. Both Ayers and Lerner also worked on Haley’s 2010 campaign for governor in South Carolina. Trey Gowdy, the retiring Republican congressman from South Carolina, defended on Sunday New York prosecutors’ decision to raid the home and office of President Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen, noting that the warrant was signed by “a neutral, detached federal judge that has nothing to do with politics." Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, also pushed back against Republican critiques that special counsel Robert Mueller had acted improperly by referring information about Cohen to the Southern District of New York attorney’s office. “I don’t know what Mueller was supposed to do other than what he did,” Gowdy said. “When a prosecutor comes in contact with information or evidence of a crime, what are you supposed to do other than to refer it to the appropriate jurisdiction?” The April 9 raid on Cohen’s office provoked a torrent of grievances from the president and his congressional allies, with Trump calling it an “attack on our country” and “an attack on what we all stand for.” Republican members of Congress, such as Senator Rand Paul and House member Matthew Gaetz, have insisted the raid provides further evidence the Mueller probe should be ended. Gowdy’s remarks make him the first high-profile GOP lawmaker to explicitly push back on that narrative. [Read more...]( Must-Read of the Day—Be sure to carve out a few minutes to read [Andrew Ferguson’s latest for the magazine]( on the revival of (or rebuttal to?) the groundbreaking BBC docuseries Civilisation. Here’s an excerpt: About that word civilization, the mere utterance of which set Clark off on his great televised adventure. He confronts it in the first episode’s opening moments, as he stands on the banks of the Seine with Notre-Dame Cathedral rising up behind him. “What is civilization?” he asks us. Then, amazingly—this is, after all, the title of his TV show—he shrugs! “I don’t know,” he says. It is a shrug at once amused, modest, and perhaps genuinely baffled. “I can’t define it in abstract terms. But I think I can recognize it when I see it.” He turns to look over his shoulder at the cathedral. “And I’m looking at it now.” Clark was endowed with the traditional English distaste for abstraction and preference for the particular. He is more inclined to show than tell. But a sense of civilization’s meaning, by his lights, forms soon enough. Throughout the programs certain words come up over and over: enlarge, deepen, extend, broaden, expand, and above all, life-enhancing. An act or piece of art that is life-enhancing—that allows us to have life, and to have it more abundantly—is civilized; one that isn’t isn’t. The word is not even a measure of craftsmanship or artistry. In the first episode Clark compares the ornamental prow of a Viking ship, showing a fearsome animal head, with the head of a once-celebrated sculpture from antiquity known as the Apollo Belvedere. The prow is “a powerful work of art,” he acknowledges, and “more moving to most of us” than the Apollo. Each expresses a cultural ideal. The prow emerged from “an image of fear and darkness” while the Apollo, the product of “a higher stage of civilization,” emerged from an ideal of harmony and perfection, justice and reason and beauty held in equilibrium. This is the civilizing ideal that Western Europe inherited from Greece and Rome. (Both civilizations, needless to add, were responsible for numberless acts of barbarism themselves.) The Greco-Roman ideal, he says, was “without doubt the most extraordinary creation in the whole of history.” It was nearly lost with the sacking of Rome—by barbarians, did he mention?—in the 5th century and then barely survived the advance of Islam in the 8th. It lay dormant, tended by monks, until the millennium, when it began to manifest itself in a variety of ways in Europe. ADVERTISEMENT In case you missed ABC’s big exclusive interview with former FBI director James Comey, read the transcript [here](. Comey’s book, A Higher Loyalty, comes out on Tuesday. Song of the Day—[“Time (The Revelator)” by Gillian Welch]( [tweet-14]( Copyright © 2018 MEDIA DC, All rights reserved. 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