With the “Russia paid Taliban to kill US soldiers” hoax dominating the discussion, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany concluded yesterday’s White House Press Briefing by hitting at the policy fight underlying this latest hoax: President Trump’s promise to end the War Party’s endless wars.
President Trump has and will protect American troops that are threatened, McEnany said, but “ultimately the way to protect American troops is to not get into needless foreign wars. This President is on record for decades and decades and decades opposing— opposing foreign wars. And Iraq is a great example, a 20— nearly two-decade war. You have this President, who, when Washington was unanimous in saying, ‘We’re going into Iraq,’ this President said, ‘No, that’s not the right decision.’ He’s wound down our troop presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
She also emphasized that leaking classified information is a crime, quoting NSC and ONDI statements to that effect, to then horrify some reporter by stating that “it very possibly could be” that “members of the IC are going after Trump.” Likewise, that there is no consensus among that Intelligence Community (IC) that the alleged intelligence is true (citing that the National Security Council says not verified; the Defense Department: no corroborating evidence; and the Office of National Director of Intelligence says “we are still investigating").
Given the environment, she insisted that President Trump has been tougher than anybody against Russia, including the withdrawal from the INF and Open Skies treaties in her longer list of evidence of the steps he has taken against Russia. But, as she said, “the President believes that we have to have diplomatic relationships — relations with the top economies of the world.”
