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On Monday night on CNN, Carl Bernstein made this proclamation: "The president and his presidency is in chaos."

It's a remarkable statement given that we are only 11 days into the presidency of Donald Trump. It's also very hard to dispute.

Consider this amazing and I do mean amazing WaPo story today about how Trump and his inner circle produced the very controversial executive order instituting a travel ban on refugees and all visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The story details the infighting and blame game among Trump's top advisers and includes some eye-popping lines.

Among them:

* "Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly fumed privately to associates over the weekend because they had been caught unaware by a travel ban that was drafted and set into action largely in secret by the White House, according to three people who have spoken with them."

*The problem theyve got is this is an off-Broadway performance of a show that is now the number one hit on Broadway, said former House speaker Newt Gingrich of the Trump administration. (Sidebar: Gingrich is an informal adviser to Trump!)

*A little bit of under-competence and a slight amount of insecurity can breed some paranoia and backstabbing, one White House official said of White House chief of staff Reince Priebus. We have to get Reince to relax into the job and become more competent, because hes seeing shadows where there are no shadows.

Any one of those lines is problematic in a normal White House. The quote from an anonymous White House official about Priebus who, let me emphasize, is the White House chief of staff, is stunning. If that line was used in "House of Cards," I would roll my eyes and say it would never happen in real life.

And, it's not just the Post story that shows the seeming tumult among Trump's senior advisers. A piece in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday details how Department of Homeland Security chief John Kelly is at odds with the White House over staffing in his organization. A Vanity Fair post details the struggles of Trump son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner as he seeks to exert influence over the president.

Read any one of those stories and the word "chaos" jumps to mind. Or "turmoil." Or "dissension." All of them convey the same thing: Less than two weeks into his presidency, there is a knife fight happening daily among Trump's top aides.

Bernstein clearly meant his chaos comments in a negative way. Chaos, in traditional political thinking, is bad. It suggests a president who doesn't really have control over his people and a White House that resembles a roller coaster car shuddering as it travels at too high a speed down the tracks.

And, maybe that's all true. It's possible that the Trump train is on the verge of jumping the tracks. (Mixed metaphor alert!)

But, every indication from what we know of Trump the businessman and reality TV star suggests that he revels in the chaos, that he believes the chaos produces just the sort of results he likes.

Think back to the "boardroom" on "The Apprentice." Bring everybody in. Let them attack one another and level allegations. Consult with a few of your consiglieres George for the win! and then make a bold and, often, unpredictable decision. Yes, that was a TV show. But it was a TV show created by Trump (and Mark Burnett). That means that the way the show worked came directly out of Trump's brain and generally speaking represents his view of how things should work.

Remember that for Trump, appearances matter most. And he likes the perception of himself as the decider, the buck-stopper, the only one who can cut through all of the noise and battling egos to make the call. In order to make that image truly work, you need noise around you at all times. So Trump put in place a senior leadership team that would create it.

The other important point here is that Trump believes all of life business and politics included amounts to a sort of survival of the fittest/toughest. His critique of Hillary Clinton's health during the 2016 campaign was based on the idea that anyone who has a weak moment as Clinton did at a 9/11 memorial service can't possibly be up to the top job in the country. For Trump, the constant battles between his aides are a sort of real-life "Survivor" episode. The toughest SOB is the one Trump wants. And only through political combat can that be determined.

The combination of chaos, combat and constant sniping is not a bad thing in the worldview of Donald Trump. In fact, it is the one truly necessary thing.

Read more:
Donald Trump's White House is in chaos. And he loves it. - Washington Post

Yates was a remnant of the Obama administration, only in office until the Senate confirms Jeff Sessions as the next attorney general. But her dismissal reflected the sudden political forces unleashed in Washington in the early days of the Trump administration as the President seeks to impose his authority on the federal government and shows little patience for those who would block him from implementing core campaign pledges.

Democrats reacted with outrage to the night's dramatic events, warning that it called into question the independence of the Justice Department in the Trump administration.

"Trump has commenced a course of conduct that is Nixonian in its design and execution and threatens the long-vaunted independence of DOJ," Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers tweeted. "If dedicated gov officials deem his directives to be unlawful & unconstitutional, he will simply fire them as if gov is a reality show."

The dramatic move came soon after CNN reported Yates told Justice Department lawyers not to make legal arguments defending Trump's executive order on immigration and refugees.

"(Yates) has betrayed the Department of Justice," the White House statement said.

Dana Boente, who Trump appointed to succeed Yates as acting attorney general, rescinded Yates' guidance and instructed the Justice Department to "defend the lawful orders of our president."

Yates was fired as the administration was still recovering from the fury surrounding Trump's hardline immigration measures, including stinging criticism from some congressional Republicans who said the administration's process was far from smooth.

"They know it could've been done in a better way and my guess is they're going to try to clean it up," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, told reporters. "They probably learned that communication and the inter-agency process would probably be helpful."

But Trump's former GOP rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, jumped to the President's defense.

"After eight long years of a lawless Obama Department of Justice, it is fitting--and sad--that the very last act of the Obama DOJ is for the Acting AG to defy the newly elected President, refuse to enforce the law, and force the President to fire her," Cruz said in a statement.

Trump's immigration order has triggered one of the more significant moral and constitutional controversies in recent memory. But on a more fundamental level, it is raising basic questions about how Trump's White House will function.

On Monday evening, officials at the Department of Homeland Security were still spending hours in back-and-forth conversations with the White House. One source described receiving "cleared talking points" only to be called back minutes later to say they weren't right. The source said pages and pages of questions regarding interpretation of the travel bans were still being sent to the White House from the department.

"These sort of amateur hour hijinks are costing President Trump precious political capital ahead of his aggressive legislative push," said Howard Schweitzer, a former high-ranking official in Republican and Democratic administrations. "The PR debacle and failure to circulate this plan with leaders in Congress or our allies was a costly error and overwhelms any of the legitimate policies behind his order."

Trump's rocky opening days come just as the administration needs to be at the top of its game ahead of Trump's announcement of his Supreme Court pick Tuesday night.

Tuesday's unveiling of a Supreme Court nominee will test whether he can win over crucial backing in Washington. In a polarized political atmosphere, a seamless introduction of a potential justice would strain even the most experienced West Wing, let alone a staff that has only been in place for less than two weeks and is already under fire.

If the administration clean up on the immigration order succeeds, there may be no lingering political price to be paid. But if the Supreme Court push staggers out of the gate, the Trump team could face an early political crisis on two fronts that will cast doubt on its capacity to enact its ambitious congressional agenda.

All new administrations have teething problems and it's not unusual for even experienced West Wing staffs to fumble badly. The disastrous debut of the Obamacare website in 2013 played into GOP claims that the law was botched by an incompetent administration.

And there is no doubt that Trump is doing exactly what voters who rewarded him with 306 electoral votes sent him to Washington to do.

There is a strong sense in many parts of the country that the US government has been too lax in its vetting of Muslim visitors to the US out of a sense of political correctness. And while chaos reigned at the weekend, Trump's penchant for stirring confusion with his improvisational management style has often served him well as a businessman and in his short, successful political career.

Still, one of the president's central claims to the White House is that he, and only he, can cut through what he portrays as dire problems facing Americans. So any hint of incompetence could damage his presidential brand and undercut his claims that his business tycoon personality can get things done.

The administration's defense of its actions Monday followed a now familiar tactic -- attacking the media for its coverage and fogging the facts with an alternative narrative.

"I think this has been blown way out of proportion and exaggerated," said White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Monday. "I think frankly government functioned very well. That's the takeaway from this, that the system worked well, the country is safer for it."

The White House also made a case that the sudden change in policy was necessary to keep Americans safe from terrorism.

"We had 109 people that were temporarily detained. They were temporarily detained to make sure that the safety of the other 324 million Americans was put first. I don't see how that's a big problem," Spicer said.

Trump, meanwhile, said in a tweet that it would have been foolhardy to have announced his policy in advance, as it would tipped off terrorists.

"If the ban were announced with a one week notice, the "bad" would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad 'dudes' out there!" Trump tweeted Monday.

Though advancing a hardball national security argument, Spicer appeared to indicate on Monday there was no specific intelligence suggesting an attack was imminent from nationals of any of the seven listed nations.

"I think what we're trying to say is you don't know when the next threat is coming," Spicer said.

Terrorism experts have pointed out, however, that none of the terror attacks on US soil since 9/11 emanated from any of the seven nations targeted by Trump.

The sense of administrative confusion in the government also undermines White House claims that everything went smoothly. Minutes before Trump signed the order in the Oval Office on Friday, his counsellor Kellyanne Conway told reporters that the immigration measure would not be issued that day. And in the hours after its release the White House struggled to explain exactly what it meant and which nations it would impact.

Meanwhile, it seems instructions for how to enforce the new rules did not reach the officials on the front line at America's airports sparking delays and confusion.

"At the operator level, there was confusion and that needed to be flushed out and perhaps still needs to be flushed out," said James Norton, a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Department of Homeland Security during the Bush administration.

America's borders are policed by a diverse collection of officials from Customs, Immigration and Citizenship agencies and not all were clear what the new rules entailed.

That may explain uncertainty over whether green card holders were affected.

US allies were still puzzled Monday with the implications of the ruling. Britain said UK dual nationals would not be stopped from entering the US. Germany was not so sure.

There was also intense frustration on Capitol Hill, where GOP aides rejected the rationale that they were kept in the dark for national security reasons.

"If that's their approach going forward in terms of engaging the Hill on national security issues, then they're going to find out that the results are more than just a weekend of bad press," said one aide who asked not to speak for attribution.

Spicer denied that the White House had left its congressional allies and government agencies in the dark.

"Everybody was kept in the loop at the level necessary to make sure that we rolled it out properly," he said.

But Schweitzer, who has piloted the Senate confirmation process of 20 presidential nominees, warned that if the White House did not up its managerial game, it would be offering an opening to its opponents.

"Trump's executive order was poorly written and implemented, and has generated so much negative press that it's reinforcing the Left's image of the Trump White House as xenophobic, incompetent hardliners," he said.

Read this article:
Donald Trump's early crisis - CNN

Donald Trump after his speech at C.I.A. headquarters, where he reiterated his interest in seizing Iraqi oil.CreditPHOTOGRAPH BY OLIVIER DOULIERL / GETTY

Donald Trump has had a fixation on Iraqs oiland Americas right to seize itfor at least six years. In 2011, he told a Fox News producer that the U.S. should take the oil. It was a common theme on the campaign trail last year. We go in, we spent three trillion dollars. We lose thousands and thousands of lives, and then look what happens is we get nothing. You know, it used to be the victor belong the spoils, Trump said on NBCs Today Show, in September. There was no victor there, believe me. There was no victory. But I always said, Take the oil.

During his first week in office, Trump has twice repeated the claimand alluded to a new opportunity to do just that.Maybe youll have another chance, he said, in unscripted remarks at the C.I.A., on his first full day in office. Four days later, ABCs David Muir pressed him on what he meant. Were gonna see what happens, the President said. You know, I told you, and I told everybody else that wants to talk when it comes to the military, I dont wanna discuss things. The Administration is now reviewing options to be more aggressive, in both Iraq and Syria, against the Islamic State (ISIS).

The reaction, from Washington to Baghdad, has been outrageand bewilderment. What hes talking about is theft, pure and simple, Robert Goldman, a professor at American University who has taught the laws of war for four decades, told me. We have no right, and never had a right, even as an occupier, to take their oil. So what he is talking about is patently illegal under the laws of war, under which we are bound.

Trumps statements have infuriated Iraqisand added to the woes of the fragile government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, the pivotal U.S. ally in the war against the Islamic State. Iraqi troops, backed by U.S. air power and military advisers, have retaken about sixty per cent of the Iraqi territory seized by the pseudo-caliphate in 2014.

Iraqs oil is for Iraqis, and any statement contradicting that is unacceptable, Abadi countered at a press conference in Baghdad, last Tuesday. Another Iraqi official said that Trumps suggestion amounted to looting, and questioned how the new Administration might do it. Would he send the U.S. Navy to interdict tankers with Iraqi oil?

Across the Middle East, Trumps comments have revived accusations that the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in 2003, was always about petroleumand that recent efforts to help are, too. Iraq is estimated to have thefifth-largest reserves in the world. I spoke to Hoshyar Zebari, who was Iraqs first foreign minister after Saddam Husseins ouster, from 2003 to 2014, and its finance minister from 2014 until 2016. This will be a rich menu for those conspiracy theorists in the Mideast and Islamic world who now say, We told you so. They are only after your oil interests. It will inflate their imaginations further, he told me. They are already being recited on television programs in the region and the Islamic world.

Laws of war are among the oldest in human historythey date back to Sun Tzus The Art of War, in the fifth century B.C., and are cited in the Old and New Testaments, the Koran, at leastthreeHindu texts, and a core text of Buddhism. During the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln issued to Union soldiers the Lieber Code, the first formal national laws of war. It covered everything from the protection of civilians to pillaging. The Lieber Code influenced the1907 Hague Convention, which outlines the obligations of and constraints on victorious armies that occupy foreign lands; it was embraced by all major powers at the time it was written. The 1949 Geneva Conventions, ratified by all United Nations members, deal largely with the protection of victims of armed conflict.

These two international treaties are still the principle texts setting out the rights and duties of an occupying power. They stipulate that a foreign military is basically a trustee that steps in to carry out the duties of the state. Article 47 of the Hague Convention stipulates, Pillage is formally forbidden. The other articles say that an occupying army can make temporary use of local fruits or profits, but only to cover its own needs or costs. The Convention does not allow a foreign government to claim ownership of the resources of the territory it occupies.

The United States has had three roles in Iraq: in 2003, after the ouster of President Saddam Hussein, the U.S. proclaimed itself an occupying power. In 2004, limited sovereignty was transferred to an Iraqi caretaker government. In 2005, when Iraq wrote a new constitution and elected its first parliament, the United States remained in the country, conducting military operations at the invitation of the elected government but no longer serving as an occupier. U.S. troops were withdrawn in 2011. There then was a three-year absence. Since 2014, U.S. troops have been deployed in steadily increasing numberssome five thousand nowlargely as advisers and trainers to help the Iraqi Army fight ISIS militants. American military personnel are not now in combat roles, nor acting as an occupying force.

None of these disparate roles have provided a legal basis for the United States to claim Iraqs oil outright, according to legal experts, as well as current and former U.S. officials.

It would have been unlawful for the U.S. to take Iraqs oil resources to benefit the United States during the occupation, and it would be even more clearly unlawful to try to take Iraqi oil now that Iraq has returned to full sovereignty, John B. Bellinger III, the chief legal adviser to the State Department and the National Security Council during the George W. Bush Administration, told me.

Legally, an occupying army can make limited and tightly defined claims to income from national assets. Yes, you can use some of a countrys oil revenues, but you step into the shoes of the former government and you have a responsibility to keep the lights on, keep the police functioning, and so on, Goldman, the American University professor, told me. So you could take certain things to defray costs, but not to the detriment or the impoverishment of the people.

The Bush Administration, Bellinger said, decided that Iraqs oil would be used only for the benefit of the Iraqi people. U.S. companies had to compete with other foreign corporations for Iraqi oil contracts.

The White House has yet to clarify President Trumps thinking or intentions. We want to be sure our interests are protected, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, told reporters. Were going into a country for a cause. He wants to be sure America is getting something out of it for the commitment and sacrifice it is making.

But the legal scholars I consulted challenged this interpretation. The issue is complicated in its details, but basically what Trump has in mindpillaging during occupationis prohibited, Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who served in the Bush Administrations Justice Department, told me.

The President has also made a connection between Iraqs oil and the rise of ISIS. If we kept the oil, you probably wouldnt have ISIS, because thats where they made their money in the first place, Trump told intelligence officers at the C.I.A.So we should have kept the oil.

That link is dubious, according to current and former U.S. officials and Middle East experts. The Presidents geography and timing are off. The U.S. withdrew its troops from Iraq in 2011. The Islamic State, exploiting the chaos of Syrias war, swept from its bases in Syria into Iraq in 2014. By 2015, half of ISISs income indeed came from oilabout 1.3 million dollars a day, according to the Pentagon and the State Department. However, a very small part of ISIS oil assets were in Iraq, a U.S. official said. In 2014, ISIS seized Iraqs largest oil refinery, in Baji, which is halfway between Baghdad and Mosul. But it was liberated in 2015. (ISIS also had access to a couple of oil fields near Mosul.) The vast majority of the Islamic States oil assets were instead in Syria, mainly around the city of Deir Ezzor, according to a State Department official.

Since Operation Tidal Wave II, in 2015, the U.S.-led coalition has conducted dozens of air strikes on Syrian oil wells and tankers under the control of ISIS fighters. (Tidal Wave I, incidentally, was carried out during the Second World War, against Nazi oil fields in Romania.) More than fifteen hundred tankers have been destroyed, and much of the oil infrastructure under ISIS control has been disabled.

ISIS has also made hundreds of millions of dollars off taxes, extortion, smuggling, theft, seized bank assets, mineral mines, antiquities, and even religious alms required of devout Muslims. Oil is far from its only asset.

When asked about Trumps comments on Iraqi oil, the former Defense Secretary and C.I.A. director Robert Gates, who worked for eight Presidents, told NBC, I have no clue what hes talking about.

Bellinger, the former senior legal adviser to President George W. Bush, warned of the political and psychological dangers of Trumps claimsand of playing into the narrative espoused by ISIS and other extremist groups. The Presidents lawyers and national-security advisers need to educate him on the applicable international law and U.S. interests in the region, Bellinger said. Perhaps Trump should have done that before his Inaugurationor before he aroused even more anti-American sentiment in the Middle East.

Read the rest here:
Donald Trump, Pirate-in-Chief - The New Yorker

The demonstration was part of a fierce backlash in the UK to the announcement last week by Prime Minister Theresa May that US President Donald Trump had accepted an invitation conveyed from the Queen for a state visit later this year.

All this has left the Queen at the centre of a political firestorm -- not a comfortable place for a constitutional monarch.

In a letter to Tuesday's Times newspaper, the respected former head of the Foreign Office, Peter Ricketts, said May had put The Queen in a "very difficult position" and should protect her by downgrading Trump's invitation to an "official visit". Such a trip would be shorn of the ceremonial hoop-la that The President is currently expecting, involving only talks with the Prime Minister and a low-profile courtesy call on the monarch.

May is in a precarious position. If she bows to pressure and downgrades the trip she risks more than losing face: it could cost her a crucial trade deal she's been working on with President Trump.

It could also test relations with Buckingham Palace: Ricketts noted in his letter to the Times that the government's role in protecting the monarch from political controversy was being "put under strain because of the ill-urged advice to the Queen to rush out an invitation to President Trump".

As Ricketts' letter made clear, the Queen doesn't actually have a say on who is invited on a state visit to Britain. Instead, she acts on the advice of the Foreign Office in consultation with Downing Street. May has the ultimate sign-off and only she can alter or withdraw the invitation.

So far the Prime Minister is resolute: the invitation stands, she said at a press conference with the Irish prime minister on Monday evening.

Whether The Queen is a fan of the President is a different matter and, not to put too fine a point on it, irrelevant. Her role is to stay above politics and over the decades she has hosted all sorts of controversial figures from Nicolae Ceaucescu of Romania to Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Never have we heard a public utterance of her personal feelings about any of her official guests --she's a stickler for protocol.

The government has its own reasons for wanting to improve relations with the guests, and whether or not the Queen relishes the idea of hosting President Trump, she will oblige, as is her duty.

We don't know how Trump would react to a downgraded invitation but he's unlikely to welcome it and at worst it could be taken as an insult and cause a diplomatic rift.

The Queen no doubt eagerly awaits the guidance from her ministers.

More here:
Theresa May in trouble over Trump's UK state visit invite - CNN

Jared Kushner feels that his father-in-law, President Donald Trump, is undermining his efforts as White House senior adviser, a new Vanity Fair report claims.

The news outlet reported that the real estate developer, 36, who married Ivanka Trump in October 2009, spent 24 hours trying to arrange a meeting between Donald, 70, and Mexican president Enrique Pea Nieto last week to discuss the construction of the MexicoUnited States border wall. A source familiar with the situation claimed Kushner even considered flying to Mexico to convince Pea Nieto, 50, to travel to the White House.

The Mexican president who has strongly reiterated that his country would not pay for the barrier, which would cost an estimated $12 billion to $15 billion initially agreed to meet with the former Celebrity Apprentice host, an accomplishment Kushner presented to Donald on Wednesday, January 25.

"It was his first real victory in the West Wing in his role as senior adviser, and it would be a major step toward turning one of Trump's main campaign promises into a reality," Vanity Fair noted in its report on Monday, January 30.

However, less than 12 hours later, Donald tweeted, "If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel this upcoming meeting." The Twitter post infuriated Kushner, who tirelessly worked to arrange the gathering of the rival presidents. Shortly after, Pea Nieto announced that he had canceled the meeting.

"Kushner was f--king furious," the source told Vanity Fair. "I'd never once heard him say he was angry throughout the entire campaign. But he was furious."

The novice senior adviser's role appears to be taking a "physical toll" on him, the insider told the site. According to the report, Kushner has "become pale" and has "lost a noticeable amount of weight from his already slim frame in just a week." The source also claimed Kushner's body language and demeanor toward Donald has changed since the Pea Nieto kerfuffle. A second insider close to Kushner said he likely lost weight because he "forgets to eat when working long hours."

Vanity Fair's report also claimed that Ivanka, 36, "feels terrible" about posting a photo of herself and her husband at a gala amid the chaos of dad Donald's immigration ban. "[She] does not want something like this to happen again," a source familiar with the situation told the site.

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Jared Kushner Is 'Furious' at Donald Trump for Undermining His Efforts as Senior Adviser, Stress Is Taking a ... - Us Weekly