What’s the holdup? Deputy national security advisor K.T. McFarland is waiting to leave the White House to prepare for her new assignment as the U.S. ambassador to Singapore. An administration official confirmed back on April 9 that McFarland, a veteran of the Reagan administration who was a Fox News contributor when she was brought into the National Security Council with former national security advisor Mike Flynn, would be leaving the NSC.
But Flynn’s successor, H.R. McMaster, has yet to name a replacement for McFarland. That, I’m told, is holding up the transition process. McFarland has continued to report to her job at the NSC and can’t begin the State Department’s procedure for becoming an ambassador.
‘Adapting’ the NSC
McFarland’s exit, whenever it happens, will continue McMaster’s task of reforming the NSC. Since taking over on February 20—in a few days, McMaster will have been in the job for three times as long as Flynn was—McMaster has added Dina Powell, a traditional Republican hawk, as deputy national security advisor for strategy. And the removal last month of Steve Bannon, President Trump’s chief strategist, from the NSC’s principals committee also had McMaster’s approval.
In an interview last week, McMaster characterized the tumult within the NSC over the first 100 days of the administration as a natural part of bringing together a national security team.
“There’s been a lot of attention, I think, on changes and changes in the way of doing things,” McMaster said. “Just from a historical perspective, every White House staff, every National Security Council has to make changes and modify how it does things based on the preferences and the personality of the president and those he brings in to assist him with implementing his agenda.”
McMaster continued. “We’re not going to try to change the president to meet the NSC processes. What we’ve done is we’ve adapted how the NSC operates to best serve the president and his key advisers to help him advance his agenda,” he said.
KBH to NATO?
CNN first reported Tuesday that Kay Bailey Hutchison, the former U.S. senator, is now the “leading contender” to become the United States’s ambassador to NATO. “The hope is to have Hutchison in place before NATO meetings in Brussels later this month,” reported CNN’s Jim Acosta.
That would mean a sidelining of the man long thought in Washington to be Trump’s selection for the job: Richard Grenell, the communications director for the United Nations ambassador throughout the George W. Bush administration. According to someone briefed about the administration’s decision, Grenell was blocked from the job by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Hutchison, who represented Tillerson’s home state of Texas in the Senate, was a compromise.
