Donald Trump says he doesn’t need and won’t hire any of the 50 Republican foreign policy bigwigs who signed a scathing open letter last week against his candidacy.
But who does advise Mr. Trump on foreign policy and who might get the top jobs in a Trump administration?
It’s a question that many are asking in anticipation of a major foreign policy speech that Republican insiders expect will follow up Mr. Trump’s rollout of his economic plan last week.
The catch is that nobody seems to have a clear answer because the list of those advising Mr. Trump has barely grown since he made headlines in March by rattling off the names of a few party stalwarts — some better known than others — who he claimed were leading his foreign policy team.
The biggest player was Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who had a reputation for bucking the party on foreign policy points — such as NATO’s relevance and the need for free trade deals — long before Mr. Trump began underpinning his campaign with them.
But the extent to which Mr. Sessions is guiding Mr. Trump on those issues and others, including his statements against Muslim immigrants or his praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin, remains unclear.
Several other players’ foreign policy views are seen to be carrying weight inside the campaign.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who was chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Obama from 2012 to 2014, has been informally advising Mr. Trump since February. Reuters has reported that the former general wants the U.S. to work more closely with Russia to resolve global security issues.
There is also former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. A high-level congressional source told The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity in June that Mr. Giuliani had emerged as Mr. Trump’s point man for trying to persuade Republican lawmakers with key national security and foreign policy committee positions to publicly say they were advising the campaign.
“To be honest with you, not many of us are biting,” the source said at the time.
But several lower-profile advisers are already on board. They include longtime Middle East affairs commentator Walid Fares, an American scholar of Lebanese Maronite Christian background; energy consultant George Papadopoulos; Joseph E. Schmitz, a former Defense Department inspector general; Carter Page, managing partner of Global Energy Capital; and retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich also is among a small group of former members of Congress who have defended Mr. Trump on TV news shows and who have resisted signing the anti-Trump letter published last week by The New York Times.
The letter was signed by 50 former national security officials from Republican administrations, including former Homeland Security Secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, former CIA and National Security Administration Director Michael V. Hayden, and former Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte.
They all agreed that Mr. Trump’s temperament is so erratic that they simply cannot support him, and that his lack of foreign policy credentials is so great that it will “put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”
“He would be the most reckless President in American history,” they warned.
Mr. Trump, in characteristic fashion, brushed off the letter by thanking those who signed it for coming out against him. It was good, he said, for voters to know who was to blame for “making the world such a dangerous place.”
The signatories, Mr. Trump said, “are nothing more than the failed Washington elite looking to hold on to their power, and it’s time they are held accountable for their actions.”
Mr. Hayden, the former NSA and CIA director, followed up with an op-ed published by The New York Times on Wednesday in which he opined on dangers of providing Mr. Trump with periodic classified intelligence briefings during the months ahead — something customary for Republican and Democratic nominees to receive before Election Day.
“Mr. Trump has asserted that the Islamic State is gaining strength, questioned the need for NATO, praised President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and extolled the benefits of Brexit,” wrote Mr. Hayden. “Yet I can picture that he’ll soon receive a briefing that would include phrases like recent successes against the Islamic State, or threats to NATO unity, or Mr. Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine, or the crippling consequences of Brexit.
“How Mr. Trump — who routinely describes those with alternative views as weak, corrupt or stupid — would respond is anyone’s guess,” he wrote. “But I’d rather not find out.”
Even before the anti-Trump letter, some Republican insiders said the nominee was wasting valuable time by failing to name a deeper slate of high-level advisers to his team.
Robert C. O’Brien, author of the forthcoming book “While America Slept: Restoring American Leadership to a World in Crisis,” said Mr. Trump made a smart move in May by announcing 11 conservative judges he would consider to fill the seat of deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Why not do the same with foreign policy? Mr. O’Brien wondered in an analysis published last week by Real Clear Politics.
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has spent recent weeks “busily reinventing herself as a national security expert in an effort to lure GOP hawks into her tent,” he wrote. “As an advisor to past GOP presidential campaigns who is not connected to the Trump campaign, let me offer some advice on how to quickly quash Clinton’s initiative. Trump should do exactly what he did with judges — release a list of foreign policy experts that he would consider for the key roles in his Administration.”
Among those who should be on the list, Mr. O’Brien said, are former Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton as secretary of state, former Sen. Jim Talent of Missouri as defense secretary and Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee as national security adviser.
In the interim, said one longtime Republican national security source, the campaign is scrambling to come up with a list of high-powered names that it can identify as supporters — all while lower-level campaign staffers prepare a major foreign policy speech for Mr. Trump to deliver during the coming weeks.
Neither Trump campaign press secretary Hope Hicks nor campaign communications adviser Jason Miller responded to a request by The Times for comment.
Mr. Fares, whom many reports have referred to as Mr. Trump’s lead adviser on foreign policy, also did not respond.
But the longtime commentator has appeared to acknowledge how vital it will be for Mr. Trump to surround himself with “the right experts” on foreign policy if he is serious about creating effective strategic relations with the world should he become president.
When pressed during an interview last week on Fox News over why he believes Mr. Trump would be able to handle the complicated geopolitics of the Middle East, Mr. Fares responded: “Because I heard him, I met him, we looked at maps. I’ve heard what the partners are saying. He can mobilize public opinion.”
Mr. Trump can mobilize “the American public,” Mr. Fares added, “as long as he has the right direction and the right experts of course in the future.”
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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