‘He’s not a good influence on the president’ is the title of the #1 trending Politico article, which is an interview with Elliot Abrams, probably the most war-mongering Neocon there is.
Step one, says Elliott Abrams: Get rid of Steve Bannon.
“He’s not a good influence on the president,” Abrams, no man to mince words, tells me. Having the White House’s chief political strategist on the National Security Council “was a terrible mistake,” and booting him was a good start to what needs to happen. A giant smile spreads across his face at the thought of Bannon being forced out of the White House completely…
“Now, he did not become a neocon overnight,” Abrams says of Trump’s explanation that he ordered the missile strikes out of humanitarian concern for Syrian children. “I think we can rest assured of this.”
To Abrams, this is a president realizing, now that he’s in the job, that he’s a lot closer to conventional Republican foreign policy, and—much to Abrams’ delight—is picking sides against Bannon in the raging West Wing ideological war over America’s place in the world. Having served in the George W. Bush administration and under Ronald Reagan before that, Abrams probably would have been waging those internal battles himself had Trump not overruled Tillerson at Bannon’s behest…
“I think there was always a conflict inherent in that line about not getting involved in all of these things on the one hand and ‘Make America Great Again’ on the other, because making America great, to me, is going to require some involvement around the world,” Abrams says. “To me, this is sort of being president, and this is realizing there is an American role here that is impossible to replace.”
The other pole in the White House is Jared Kushner, and Abrams is glad to see him winning against Bannon, knocking back those who attack the president’s powerful son-in-law and adviser using the same names he was called himself when helping lead George W. Bush’s Middle East policy through Iraq and beyond: “I don’t view him at all as an empire builder.”…
Abrams blames Bannon for torpedoing his chances at getting into the administration…
As for his own future with Trump, Abrams teased that it may still be in front of him, depending on how things shape up with Bannon and Kushner, the latter of whom he kept going out of his way to praise…
Being seen as the voice of reason and potential savior by liberals who once hated him, Abrams says, has been “amusing and gratifying.”
Man, how things have reversed.
In the ‘70s, the liberal establishment was anti-war. Today, we have the NYT & Neocons (the twin poles of Jewish political influence) essentially praising the idea of war with Syria and ‘stopping Putin’.
