No. of Recommendations: 9
Yesterday a group of senators, foreign affairs specialists gathered in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for the Halifax International Security Forum, told reporters they had spoken to Rubio about the plan. Senator Angus King (I-ME) said Rubio had told them that the document “was not the administration’s position” but rather “a wish list of the Russians.” Senator Mike Rounds (R-SC) said: “This administration was not responsible for this release in its current form.” He added: “I think he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives,” Rounds said. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”
But then a spokesperson for the State Department, Tommy Pigott, called the senators’ account of the origins of the plan “blatantly false,” and Rubio abruptly switched course, posting on social media that in fact the U.S. had written the plan.
Anton La Guardia, diplomatic editor at The Economist, posted: “State Department is backpedalling on Rubio’s backpedal. If for a moment you thought the grown-ups were back in charge, think again. We’re still in the circus. ‘Unbelievable,’ mutters one [of the] disbelieving senators.”
Later that day, Erin Banco and Gram Slattery of Reuters reported that the proposal had come out of a meeting in Miami between Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Dmitriev, who leads one of Russia’s largest sovereign wealth funds. They reported that senior officials in the State Department and on the National Security Council were not briefed about the plan.
This morning, Bill Kristol of The Bulwark reported rumors that Vice President J.D. Vance was “key to US embrace of Russia plan on Ukraine, Rubio (and even Trump) out of the loop.” He posted that relations between Vance and Rubio are “awful” and that Rubio did, in fact, tell the senators what they said he did.
Yaroslav Trofimov, chief foreign affairs correspondent of the Wall Street Journal, posted: “Foreign nations now have to deal with rival factions of the U.S. government who keep major policy initiatives secret from each other and some of which work with foreign powers as the succession battle for 2028 begins, is how one diplomat put it.”——Heather Cox Richardson
No. of Recommendations: 11
Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, are set to invest a staggering $1.4 billion into turning an abandoned Soviet weapons base into a luxury island resort
"I would spend every waking minute of my life raging against this grifting, criminal enterprise...if Trump were a Democrat!" ~marco000
No. of Recommendations: 2
What a fustercluck!
This incompetent administration looks more idiotic and destructive of US interests every day.
This is what you get when the POTUS cares nothing about competence and only about blind loyalty and the willingness to do whatever stupid thing he wants.
No. of Recommendations: 5
Foreign nations now have to deal with rival factions of the U.S. government who keep major policy initiatives secret from each other and some of which work with foreign powers as the succession battle for 2028 begins, is how one diplomat put it.”
To be fair, this is nothing new. Henry Kissinger tried to usurp all foreign policy from the State Department during the Nixon era. Dick Cheney certainly didn’t care what State said about, well, anything under Bush Jr.
Even in the Colonial days there were skirmishes over who controlled what, and which advisor should be listened to. It wasn’t Foreign Affairs, this time, but Hamilton famously triumphed over many others who opposed the creation of a national bank to pay off the Revolutionary War debts.
So there are disagreements and political push-pull between departments with overlapping responsibilities? Color me not surprised.
