HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020025.jpg

The information he did not get was formal information. The data. The details. The options. The analysis. He didn’t do PowerPoint. For anything that smacked of a classroom or of being lectured to—‘professor” was one of his bad words, and he was proud of never going to class, never buying a textbook, never taking a note—he got up and left the room. This was a problem in multiple respects—indeed, in almost all the prescribed functions of the presidency. But perhaps most of all, it was a problem in the evaluation of strategic military options. The president liked generals. The more fruit salad they wore, the better. The president was very pleased with the compliments he got for appointing generals who commanded the respect that Mattis and Kelly and McMaster were accorded (pay no attention to Michael Flynn). What the president did not like was /istening to generals, who, for the most part, were skilled in the new army jargon of PowerPoint, data dumps, and McKinsey-like presentations. One of the things that endeared Flynn to the president was that Flynn, quite the conspiracist and drama queen, had a vivid storytelling sense. By the time of the Syrian attack on Khan Sheikhoun, McMaster had been Trump’s National Security Advisor for only about six weeks. Yet his efforts to inform the president had already become an exercise in trying to tutor a recalcitrant and resentful student. Recently Trump’s meetings with McMaster had ended up in near acrimony, and now the president was telling several friends that his new National Security Advisor was too boring and that he was going to fire him. McMaster had been the default choice, a fact that Trump kept returning to: Why had he hired him? He blamed his son-in-law. After the president fired Flynn in February, he had spent two days at Mar-a-Lago interviewing replacements, badly taxing his patience. John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Bannon’s consistent choice, made his aggressive light-up-the-world, go-to-war pitch. Then Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr., superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, presented himself with what Trump viewed positively as old- fashioned military decorum. Yes, six No, sir That’s correct, sir. Well, I think we know China has some problems, sir. And in short order it seemed that Trump was selling Caslen on the job. “That’s the guy I want,” said Trump. “He’s got the look.” But Caslen demurred. He had never really had a staff job. Kushner thought he might not be ready. “Yeah, but I liked that guy,” pressed Trump. Then McMaster, wearing a uniform with his silver star, came in and immediately HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020025