White House interviewing Petraeus as possible Flynn replacement

[HAPPY2BME]

President Trump and his top advisers will talk with retired Gen. David Petraeus this week as a possible replacement for National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, according to a report.

Trump regularly referenced Petraeus during his campaign speeches last year, telling guests at rallies that the former general was punished more severely for leaking classified information to his mistress than former State Sec. Hillary Clinton was reprimanded for setting up a private email server.

Trump had briefly considered Petraeus for secretary of state. He passed over him due to the earlier incident and the problems that might create with confirmation in the Senate, a hurdle which is not in the way for national security advisor.

Flynn has become a problem for the White House in recent days after reports broke about contacts with Russia before the inauguration. The Justice Department alerted the White House about the contact, according to the Associated Press. Flynn also apparently misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.

While congressional Democrats - led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer - have called for an independent investigation into Flynn's conversations with Russia's ambassador, including possibly discussing the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Moscow, Trump's senior advisers are said to be considering who to appoint to Flynn's position if he is fired.

"They are trying to figure out the solution to Flynn right now," a source close to the White House told Politico. "The problem is they don't have it yet. They need to get a solution. You can't have a firing without an immediate replacement. You need a plan."

The administration is also considering former President George W. Bush's former national security advisor Stephen Hadley and former national security aide Tom Bossert - who oversees cybersecurity currently in the administration. Adm. James Stavridis, the dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts is also being floated for the job.

Rep. Mike Coffmann, R-Col., called on Monday evening for Flynn to "step down immediately" if he "purposely misled" the administration on Russia.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/white-house-interviewing-petraeus-as-possible-flynn-replacement/article/2614723

[HAPPY2BME]

The Kremlin Is Starting to Worry About Trump

Now that Trump is in power, political elites in Moscow have stopped cheering. They recognize that Russia’s position has become abruptly and agonizingly complex.

It’s true that Trump’s accession opens up the possibility of “normalizing” Russia’s relations with the West, beginning with a reduction or even elimination of sanctions. It also validates many of Russia’s ideological criticisms of the liberal order and may perhaps foreshadow policy reversals that Moscow has long hoped for: from Washington’s disengagement from the Ukraine crisis to its dissolution of the Cold War Western alliance. Russians also celebrate Trump’s unfiltered stream-of-consciousness diatribes as signaling a welcome end to America’s hypocrisy and condescension.

But Trump’s revolution is also ushering in a period of turmoil and uncertainty, including the likelihood of self-defeating trade wars. Still traumatized by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia’s present leadership has no appetite for global instability.

With Trump in the White House, moreover, Putin has lost his monopoly over geopolitical unpredictability. The Kremlin’s ability to shock the world by taking the initiative and trashing ordinary international rules and customs has allowed Russia to play an oversized international role and to punch above its weight. Putin now has to share the capacity to keep the world off balance with a new American president vastly more powerful than himself. More world leaders are watching anxiously to discover what Trump will do next than are worrying about what Putin will do next. Meanwhile, using anti-Americanism as an ideological crutch has become much more dubious now that the American electorate has chosen as their president a man publicly derided as “Putin’s puppet.”

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/13/the-kremlin-is-starting-to-worry-about-trump/