Trump focuses efforts on filling security post
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump met with contenders for national security adviser at his Palm Beach club Sunday, hoping to fill the job in the coming days as he seeks to refocus his administration.
Trump also drilled down on policy during his working weekend at Mar-a-Lago, attending a strategy session on how to repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The meeting included top aides such as Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House budget office.
While in Florida, the president found time for a few holes of golf on Saturday and Sunday. And with his wife, Melania, Trump stopped by a fundraiser put on by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute on Saturday night at his private Palm Beach club.
Trump also took to Twitter to explain a comment he made Saturday about violence in Sweden. During a rally Saturday, the president suggested that some kind of major incident had taken
place in the country Friday night, but on Sunday he said he was referring to something he saw on Fox News.
Trump also spoke over the weekend with the leaders of Panama and Trinidad and Tobago.
But high on Trump’s to-do list was finding a replacement for Michael Flynn as national security adviser.
Flynn resigned Feb. 13 at Trump’s request after revelations that the national security adviser had misled Vice President Mike Pence about discussing sanctions with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. during the presidential transition. Trump said at a news conference Thursday that he was disappointed by how Flynn had treated Pence, but that he did not believe Flynn had done anything wrong by having the conversations.
Trump’s first choice to replace Flynn, retired Navy Vice Adm. Robert Harward, turned down the offer.
The White House arranged for four contenders to fly to Mar-a-Lago for interviews Sunday. Trump met with John Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations; Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, a top Army strategist; Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen Jr., superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; and retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s acting national security adviser.
But Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a White House spokesman, said that was not the complete field. “We may have some additional names and meetings” today, she said. She added that Trump might also summon one or more of the four people he met with Sunday for an additional talk.
Trump told reporters Saturday that he had a favorite, though he did not identify the candidate. “I’ve been thinking about someone for the last three or four days; we’ll see what happens,” he said. “I’m meeting with that person. They’re all good; they’re all great people.”
The presidential business came a day after Trump held a rally before thousands of supporters at an airplane hangar in Melbourne, Fla. He revived campaign promises to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, reduce regulations and create jobs — and continued his attacks on the media.
The rally was planned by Trump’s campaign rather than the White House. Trump told reporters he was holding a campaign rally because “life is a campaign.”
Trump, who held a rally in the same spot in Florida in September, relished being back in front of his supporters,
welcoming the cheers and letting one supporter up on stage to offer praise for the president. He also enjoyed reliving his victory over his opponent in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton.
The rally came as Trump nears the end of his first month in office, a period that has included the courts’ rejection of his immigration order, struggles confirming his Cabinet picks and numerous reports about strife within his administration.
Trump’s chief of staff used appearances on the Sunday news shows to praise the administration’s first-month accomplishments and to echo his boss’s complaints about media coverage of the White House.
“The truth is that we don’t have problems in the West Wing,” Reince Priebus said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
During an appearance Sunday on CBS’ Face the Nation, Priebus told interviewer John Dickerson that he disagreed with the details of two recent stories that he described as “grossly inaccurate, overstated, overblown” and “total garbage.”
One was a New York Times report that phone records and intercepted calls show Trump’s aides had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election. CNN has published a similar story. The other was a Wall Street Journal article about U.S. intelligence officials withholding sensitive information from the president because of fears that it could be leaked.
On The New York Times article in particular, Priebus said in another interview that he had assurances from “the top levels of the intelligence community” that the disclosures were false.
The disputed stories relied on revelations by current and former officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose classified information.
That’s a problem, Priebus said.
“I think that we’ve gotten to a place, John, where the media is willing to run with unnamed sources, apparently false, leaked documents,” the chief of staff said. “We deal with one after the next. I think the media should stop with this unnamed-source stuff. Put names on a piece of paper and print it. If people aren’t willing to put their name next to a quote, then the quote
shouldn’t be listed, period.”
Trump has used the reliance on unnamed sources to attack the credibility of news organizations, dismissing their stories as “fake news” and “conspiracy theories.” In a tweet Friday, he referred to the media — specifically mentioning The New York Times, NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN — as “the enemy of the American People.”
Priebus said Trump’s characterizations should be taken seriously. The media “really needs to get its act together,” he said on Face the Nation. In a separate Fox News Sunday interview, Priebus said, “There are certain things that are happening in the news that just aren’t honest.”
He echoed his boss’ criticisms, dismissing recent media
stories as “stupidity” and saying the reporting is based on information that didn’t come from the heads of intelligence agencies.
“And we’re sitting here talking about it,” he said. “And it’s a shame. And it needs to end.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., offered a different opinion, saying in response to Trump’s description of the media that a free and at times adversarial press is essential “if you want to preserve democracy.”
Dictators “get started by suppressing free press,” McCain said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press that was broadcast on Sunday, adding that he wasn’t saying Trump aims to become a dictator.
“I hate the press. I hate you especially,” McCain joked in
the interview with NBC journalist Chuck Todd, who laughed. “The fact is, we need you.” Without a free media, “I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time,” McCain said.
McCain has clashed with the president since Trump during the campaign questioned whether the former prisoner of war was an American hero. Speaking last week at a security conference in Munich, McCain, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told European allies that the new administration was “in disarray.”
McCain said on NBC that “We need a free press. We must have it. It’s vital. If you want to preserve — I’m very serious now — if you want to preserve democracy as we
know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press.”
Defense Secretary James Mattis said Sunday that he does not see the press as the enemy of the American people, disagreeing with Trump’s Friday claim.
Mattis, asked directly about Trump’s criticism of the media, said he has had “some rather contentious times with the press” but considers the institution “a constituency that we deal with.” The defense secretary added: “I don’t have any issues with the press myself.”