John R. Houk
© March 23, 2018
The swamp is draining slowly but to date, it is draining
with the Dems and Deep State Obamanites/Clintonistas screaming all the way.
With that in mind, President Trump’s business globalist-minded business-oriented
Secretary of State is out. And Three-Star General H.R. McMaster is out
seemingly more for abrasiveness with President and his own National Security
staff than ideological differences.
I think a March 4 Wall Street Journal article
provides the most cogent explanation of how Lt. Gen. McMaster lost favor in the
Trump Administration:
…
… Gen. McMaster through the year
positioned himself as one of Mr. Trump’s most hawkish allies in fractured
debates on the president’s top national-security challenges, including North
Korea.
But that, in turn, has put Gen.
McMaster at odds with other members of the national-security team, especially
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson [Gone] and Defense Secretary Jim
Mattis, who have pushed for more measured approaches in policy debates,
according to current and former Trump administration officials.
…
Hobbled in his ability to translate
Mr. Trump’s sometimes-unorthodox ideas into concepts acceptable to more
cautious members of the national-security team …
…
“In general, I think H.R. has been
slightly more hawkish on most questions than most cabinet members and, in that
regard, he’s aligned with the president’s instincts,” said Sen. Tom Cotton …
The issue that has brought the
internal divisions to the forefront is North Korea, where
Gen. McMaster has been a firm advocate for
beefing up the military options, according to administration officials.
Gen. McMaster has raised the idea
of taking a “preventive” strike against North Korea’s nuclear-missile program
if diplomacy fails. And he has promoted the administration’s “maximum pressure”
strategy against Pyongyang.
That has created alarm at the
Pentagon and State Department, where officials worry that Gen. McMaster’s
efforts could make it more likely that Mr. Trump would decide to strike North
Korea.
…
Gen. McMaster also has alienated
prospective allies in the military by directly calling combatant commanders
around the world without first telling Mr. Mattis, U.S. officials said. …
…
Inside the White House, meanwhile,
he has struggled to retain support from a volatile president who has lashed out
over Gen. McMaster’s successful push to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan
and to preserve former President Barack Obama’s nuclear-containment deal with
Iran.
He has been known to speak over
other members of the national-security team in Situation Room meetings when he
doesn’t like what he’s hearing and to frustrate the president with lengthy
policy dissertations in the Oval Office.
“He doesn’t have any chemistry with
the president,” said one former Trump administration official. “He lectures,
and you can’t lecture the president.”
If the WSJ perspective is accurate, it seems to me McMaster
didn’t disagree with the substance of President Trump, but rather the method.
McMaster is being replaced by former UN Ambassador John Bolton as National
Security Advisor. Mr. Bolton definitely follows the same substance of the
President and Lt. Gen. McMaster. The trick will be if Mr. Bolton and President
Trump can work together without arguing. I suspect Bolton will run into the
same issues with the National Security Council staff as McMaster did. Time will
of a Bolton/Military camaraderie.
Now that John Bolton will become the National Security Advisor,
Counterjihad writer Ryan Mauro believes the stage is not complete to move to
place the
Muslim Brotherhood on the State
Department’s Terrorist Watch List. Certain obstacles within the Trump
Administration has been preventing the obvious move to occur. The exit of
Tillerson being replaced by Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State and the
fortuitous anti-terrorist Gina Haspel as the first female CIA Director (pending
Senate confirmation) were some of the first moves making it possible the Muslim
Brotherhood where it belongs – bloody global Caliphate-minded Islamic
terrorists.
Sign
The Clarion Project’s petition
to place the Muslim Brotherhood on the Terrorist Watch List now that the stage
is set to make such a move effective.
JRH 3/23/18
***************************
March 22, 2018
With Tillerson out and Pompeo in and McMaster’s days
numbered, it is now probable that the Muslim Brotherhood will finally be
designated by the State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, paving
the way for its infrastructure in America to begin being dismantled.
Groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood network like
the Jamaat-e-Islami and
Jamaat ul-Fuqra are likely
to see a similar fate. President Trump’s desire to pressure Pakistan and more
closely ally with India adds to the likelihood that these Pakistani-led groups
will be blacklisted.
The incoming secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, was one of the
earliest cosponsors of the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act when he
was a member of Congress. Now, as secretary of state, he has the authority to
designate Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).
Now, most of the Trump Administration’s top officials are
staunch foes of the Brotherhood, including:
§
Attorney General Jeff
Sessions, who was one of the few early cosponsors of the Muslim Brotherhood
Terrorist Designation Act when he was a Senator.
§
Secretary of Defense James
Mattis, who was
forced to withdraw a
senior appointment he desired who was a strong ally of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
However, he has
articulately made the case for
identifying the enemy as “
political Islam” and described
the negative impact of the Obama Administration’s friendly attitude towards the
Brotherhood.
§
Director of the Office of
Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney, who was a cosponsor of the legislation
when he was a congressman.
§
Senior adviser and chief
speechwriter Stephen Miller
§
National Security Council’s
Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Communications Michael Anton
§
Senior White House Adviser
to the Department of Homeland Security Frank Wuco
§
Senior Department of
Homeland Security Adviser Katharine Gorka (who is the wife of former Deputy
Assistant to the President Dr. Sebastian Gorka)
It is almost universally reported that National Security
Adviser McMaster is about to be replaced, despite Trump’s denials (just like
his denials before Tillerson was fired).
The leading candidate for his job is former U.N. Ambassador
John Bolton, another known supporter of FTO designation for the Brotherhood.
Trump’s pick for CIA Director, Gina Haspel, is presumably on
the same page because Pompeo recommended her. However, she is expected to have
a
fight ahead of her to get
confirmed by the Senate.
U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s position is not known. She
previously struck a neutral tone when asked about designating the Brotherhood,
stopping short of defending Tillerson and McMaster’s known positions at the
time,
saying, “That is not something
that has been discussed within the administration.”
Outside of the White House, President Trump is back to
consulting with his former
Deputy Assistant Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a passionate voice for designating the
Brotherhood as an FTO.
Pompeo’s appointment represents a stunning reversal of
fortune for the Muslim Brotherhood, which previously succeeded in getting plans
for such a designation
shelved. One Brotherhood official
said the Islamist group
had spent $5 million to lobby officials and influence the media. Brotherhood
apologists even succeeded in
influencing CIA assessments that
conveniently leaked to the media.
Qatar even managed to seduce a former senior staffer to
Senator Ted Cruz—the very man who introduced the Senate version of the Muslim
Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act—with a contract for $50,000 per month.
Even President Trump
reversed course on Qatar.
And now—the Muslim Brotherhood network is screaming.
The
Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR), identified by the Justice Department as an “entity” of the
Muslim Brotherhood, is fighting tooth and nail to stop Pompeo from getting
confirmed by the Senate. One of the favorite tactics of the Brotherhood,
especially CAIR, is
deception.
CAIR has
predictably labeled Pompeo
as an “Islamophobe,” even though he empowered a convert to Sunni Islam at the
CIA to fight Al-Qaeda and Iran. Its
factsheet uses
out-of-context quotes to paint Pompeo as an extremist, while CAIR paints the
Brotherhood as “moderate.”
The evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist
group is
overwhelming, including
terrorist activity in the U.S. Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist group, is
the Brotherhood’s Palestinian wing. Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 plot had
links to the Brotherhood’s
network in America.
The terror-funding trial of the Holy Land Foundation proved,
in detail, that the Brotherhood’s international leadership runs a Hamas support
network on American soil.
Investigator Patrick Poole’s
three-part interview with
a former senior Egyptian counterterrorism official connects the
dots between the
Brotherhood and the terrorists it claims are “rogues” that it should not be
held accountable for.
Failing a blanket designation of the Brotherhood, an
alternative approach would be to designate several Brotherhood branches where
the group’s connection to terrorism is clearer. This approach would meet less
political resistance.
The changes within the Trump Administration indicate that
the Muslim Brotherhood’s day of reckoning is finally near.
PETITION
– NO PLACE FOR MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IN U.S.
PETITION
– NO PLACE FOR MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IN U.S.
_______________________
McMaster Out – Bolton In and the Muslim Brotherhood
John R. Houk
© March 23, 2018
____________________
American Day of Reckoning
for Muslim Brotherhood?
Ryan Mauro is ClarionProject.org's Shillman Fellow and national
security analyst and an adjunct professor of counter-terrorism. He is
frequently interviewed on top-tier television and radio.
The Clarion Project (formerly Clarion Fund) is a 501(c)3 non-profit
organization dedicated to educating both policy makers and the public about the
growing phenomenon of Islamic extremism. The Clarion Project is committed to
working towards safeguarding human rights for all peoples.
About Clarion Project
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proliferation and cultural jihad — to threaten the West.
The ClarionProject.org web
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