New: White House Official Floated Withdrawing U.S. Forces to Please Putin

[MelissaB]

White House Official Floated Withdrawing U.S. Forces to Please Putin

A member of Trump’s National Security Council staff had a radical notion: to pare back American troops in Europe as a way to curry favor with the Kremlin.

A senior National Security Council official proposed withdrawing some U.S. military forces from Eastern Europe as an overture to Vladimir Putin during the early days of the Trump administration, according to a former administration official in the room with him.

While the proposal was ultimately not adopted, it is the first known case of senior aides to Donald Trump seeking to reposition U.S. military forces to please Putin—something that smelled, to a colleague, like a return on Russia’s election-time investment in President Trump. The White House did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast's request for comment.

The official who offered the proposal, a deputy assistant to Trump for strategic planning, mused in February 2017 about withdrawing U.S. troops close to Russian borders as part of a strategy proposal to “refram[e] our interests within the context of a new relationship with Russia,” the former official told The Daily Beast, who heard this directly from the official, Kevin Harrington.

Harrington is the NSC’s senior official for strategic planning. He had neither military experience nor significant government experience before joining the White House. But he had an influential credential: as a managing director for the Thiel Macro hedge fund, he was close to Trump patron and ally Peter Thiel. Trump’s first national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, announced Harrington’s arrival in early February as part of a “talented group” ready to bring “fresh ideas to the table.”

More: https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-official-floated-withdrawing-us-forces-to-please-putin?preview=true

[MelissaB]

1. snip

According to the ex-colleague, Harrington considered it a gesture to the Kremlin that would enable the nascent Trump administration to see if its desire for a friendly relationship with Russia would be reciprocated. It was included in a strategy paper that, conspicuously to the former official, made no mention of Russia as either a competitor or adversary.

snip

Still, the former official said there was an urgency to Harrington’s exercise, and Flynn was Harrington’s primary audience for the proposal.

It was not Harrington’s only foray into unilateral gestures aimed at Russia. In March, Harrington proposed lifting U.S. sanctions on Russian oil, something an administration official justified to the Daily Beast as Harrington wondering,“if these sanctions are harming our economy without putting any pressure on Russia, what’s the point?”

snip

This fit a pattern within the Trump administration, before and after Flynn’s White House tenure, of sidling up to Russia. Taken in sum, the pattern raises a question about whether Trump and his team are willing to pay Russia back for the Kremlin’s role in the election.

[MelissaB]

2. From the editor at the Daily Beast

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[Eliot Rosewater]

3. He is a traitor but so are most of the GOP who know by name.

I dont see how we avoid a problem if we arent able to remove them all.

Problem is the deplorables dont care that putin kills his opponents, kills innocent men, women and children etc.

They dont care.

They would also like to do that.

[MelissaB]

4. This official, Kevin Harrington, is still on the NSC.

Link to tweet

[RandomAccess]

5. This is quite an article -- people ought to read it

[MelissaB]

6. Video from Rachel Maddow

Jump to 6:25 for more info on Kevin Harrington here: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-administration-distinguished-by-high-level-departures-1117090371854?cid=sm_tw_maddow