On Afghanistan, Trump poised to abandon pre-election positions

For quite a while, Donald Trump was consistent about his views on U.S. policy in Syria. He insisted, over and over again, that he saw military intervention in Syria as a terrible mistake. "We should stay the hell out of Syria," he declared at one point. "I would not go into Syria," Trump later added.

A few months after taking office, however, the Republican president did pretty much the opposite, launching a missile strike against a Syrian airbase controlled by the Assad regime.

Similarly, Trump has been consistent in criticizing U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, which sets the stage for the president's speech tonight in Virginia, where he'll "provide an update on the path forward for America's engagement in Afghanistan and South Asia," which seems likely to include increased deployments -- the result of a months-long White House review.

The review, which was led by National Security Adviser Lt. Gen H.R. McMaster, looked at whether several thousand more troops should be deployed to the country, U.S. defense officials told NBC News last month.

The troops would be assigned to counter-terrorism and NATO training missions, the officials said, and would expand the American military's current footprint of roughly 8,400 troops.

We'll have to wait for additional details before assessing the White House's new "path forward" in Afghanistan, but if the reporting today is accurate, and the president intends to increase troop levels, it will be pretty much the opposite of what voters were led to believe was Trump's position.

read more

The Secret Service confronts unique challenges in the Trump era

A couple of years ago, the U.S. Secret Service struggled with a series of damaging controversies, including some important security breakdowns, prompting a congressional investigation and a bipartisan report about an "agency in crisis." Among other things, lawmakers identified budget cuts one of the "primary causes" of the agency's difficulties.

And while the Secret Service has tried to turn things around since the release of that report, the agency is now facing another daunting challenge: Donald Trump's presidency.

The relationship between the Secret Service and the Republican president's team has already faced some difficulties. A leading Trump attorney, for example, tried to blame the agency for last year's infamous meeting in Trump Tower with a Kremlin-linked attorney, prompting the Secret Service to make a rare entry into a political debate in order to defend the agents' actions. That was soon followed by a leasing dispute between the agency and the New York building the president still owns.

But USA Today goes a step further this morning, highlighting a different kind of problem.

The Secret Service can no longer pay hundreds of agents it needs to carry out an expanded protective mission -- in large part due to the sheer size of President Trump's family and efforts necessary to secure their multiple residences up and down the East Coast.

Secret Service Director Randolph "Tex'' Alles, in an interview with USA TODAY, said more than 1,000 agents have already hit the federally mandated caps for salary and overtime allowances that were meant to last the entire year.

The agency has faced a crushing workload since the height of the contentious election season, and it has not relented in the first seven months of the administration. Agents must protect Trump -- who has traveled almost every weekend to his properties in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia -- and his adult children whose business trips and vacations have taken them across the country and overseas.

There are currently 42 protectees -- up from 31 in the Obama era -- including 18 members of the Trump family.

read more

White House aide: 'You have no idea how much crazy stuff we kill'

One of the more compelling parlor games in the political world right now is speculating about why Donald Trump's aides don't quit. It's taken as a given that staffers throughout the White House recognize the president's most alarming flaws, but it's less clear why they don't flee their erratic boss before he permanently tarnishes their reputations.

My argument last week is that White House officials stick around because they're not actually surprised. They chose to work for the guy who spent two years touting a racist conspiracy theory -- and that was before he launched a ridiculous presidential campaign that exposed some of Trump's most depraved qualities. They don't quit, I posited, because they knew what they were signing up for.

But there are some members of Team Trump who like to tell reporters that they resist the urge to resign because they're performing a valuable public service. Axios had a piece along these lines over the weekend:

We talked to a half dozen senior administration officials, who range from dismayed but certain to stay, to disgusted and likely soon to leave. They all work closely with Trump and his senior team so, of course, wouldn't talk on the record. Instead, they agreed to let us distill their thinking/rationale:

"You have no idea how much crazy stuff we kill": The most common response centers on the urgent importance of having smart, sane people around Trump to fight his worst impulses. If they weren't there, they say, we would have a trade war with China, massive deportations, and a government shutdown to force construction of a Southern wall.

I suppose the obvious response to this is that the White House is already responsible for all kinds of "crazy stuff," which suggests these officials aren't exactly succeeding in their efforts, but I'll concede it's possible that some in Trump World are intervening before their impulse-challenged boss acts on the worst ideas that pop into his mind.

The curious thing is, we've heard this quote before.

read more

GOP base comfortable with Trump's racially inflammatory posture

More than a few political observers, hopeful that American politics was still driven by decency and principle, saw last week as a deal-breaker of sorts for Donald Trump. The amateur president could spend months testing the limits of the fabric that holds the country together, the argument went, but he couldn't expect to get away with offering a tacit defense of white supremacists.

And yet, here we are. The Washington Post reported yesterday:

A GOP strategist working campaigns in red and purple states said that while support for Trump generally declined slightly since Charlottesville, support rose among his base, after a decline last month because of the failure on health care and revelations about the Russia investigation. This strategist said many Trump supporters applaud the president's continuing desire to shake up Washington, favor his economic priorities and admire his willingness to speak his mind.

Hugh Hewitt, a conservative pundit who hosts an MSNBC weekend show, added on Twitter the other day that he spoke to a group of influential California Republicans, and he came away convinced that Trump's support "has increased" within the party in the wake of the president's racially inflammatory comments.

I wish this were more surprising, but it's important that the political world start adjusting its expectations for what constitutes "the Republican mainstream" in 2017. This radicalized GOP is Donald Trump's party, and with that comes a degree of comfort and acceptance with presidential antics many other Americans consider contemptible.

read more