The media&#8217;s narrative this week &#8211; that Donald Trump&#8217;s cabinet picks were chaotic and wild &#8211; was quickly silenced on Friday morning as Trump named major figures to three key positions: Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to Attorney General, General Mike Flynn to National Security Advisor, and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) for CIA Director.
It&#8217;s a mixed bag.
Pompeo is obviously a good pick. He graduated first in his class from West Point, graduated from Harvard Law School, and has a long record on the House Intelligence Committee. He takes radical Islam seriously, and he&#8217;s extraordinarily pro-Israel and anti-Iran deal. Civil libertarians are upset with Pompeo&#8217;s attempts to preserve the National Security Administration&#8217;s bulk metadata program, but that&#8217;s relatively uncontroversial among intelligence hawks.
Sessions is an excellent pick for Attorney General. He&#8217;s a stickler for law enforcement, a major advocate of more stringent border security, and an ardent opponent of lawlessness. He&#8217;s a diametric shift from the race-based anti-police world of Eric Holder&#8217;s and Loretta Lynch&#8217;s Justice Department. Police departments across the country will no longer have to fear trumped-up charges of systemic racism resulting in onerous federal oversight; localities and states will no longer have to face down persecution for attempting to enforce immigration law. Sessions is well-respected in the Senate, and it is unlikely that his confirmation would be stalled, despite media reports to the contrary.
That doesn&#8217;t mean the media left won&#8217;t attempt to destroy Trump over Sessions. Sessions&#8217; nomination for a federal judgeship was withdrawn by President Reagan in 1986 over Democratic accusations of racism. In particular, the left is focusing on testimony given during Sessions&#8217; confirmation hearings, in which a black assistant US attorney who worked for Sessions alleged that Sessions called him &#8220;boy&#8221; (Sessions denied it) and accused Sessions of joking that a white lawyer working with civil rights groups was a &#8220;traitor to his race.&#8221; The hearings also discussed Sessions joking about the Ku Klux Klan, &#8220;those bastards; I used to think they were OK, but they are pot smokers.&#8221; In both those latter situations, Sessions made the jokes in front of the black lawyer; even the lawyer accusing Sessions of racism acknowledged that Sessions was joking. Sessions&#8217; response to the KKK joke: &#8220;Senator, my impression of the situation was that it was so ludicrous that anybody would think that it was supporting the Klan that he would not be offended by it.&#8221; There have been no allegations of racist conduct by Sessions in his official capacity.
The most controversial pick is General Flynn. Flynn has a stellar record with the Joint Chiefs of Staff; he obviously takes radical Islam extraordinarily seriously. He&#8217;s been a bombastic opponent of President Obama&#8217;s. By the same token, however, he has close ties with the Russians. RT, the official Russian propaganda outlet, says, &#8220;The former DIA chief has been criticized in US circles for refusing to take an anti-Russian stance.&#8221; Flynn <a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/367375-trump-flynn-national-adviser/">appeared on RT</a> in October and stated, &#8220;Russia and the United States working together and trying to work with the other partners that we all have in this region can come up with some other solutions.&#8221; He met with and took photos with Vladimir Putin at RT&#8217;s 10th anniversary party in Moscow. Flynn equated RT with MSNBC and CNN.
Flynn is also seen as <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/michael-rubin-why-general-flynn-taking-erdogan-side-521633">warm</a> toward the Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Even as Erdogan cracks down on dissent and looks to extend his rule to 2029, Flynn wrote, &#8220;the Obama administration is keeping Erdogan&#8217;s government at arm&#8217;s length.&#8221; He suggested that Erdogan opponent Fethullah Gulen be sent back to Turkey, presumably to be executed: &#8220;If he were in reality a moderate, he would not be in exile, nor would he excite the animus of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government.&#8221; Michael Rubin of American Enterprise Institute writes that Flynn is &#8220;making the mistake of hubris, giving into blackmail, and empowering the very radicalism which [he] seek[s] to fight.&#8221;
So, how will all of this play out? We&#8217;ll have to see when Trump fills his Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense positions. But for Trump, every day is Good Trump/Bad Trump.

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MIXED BAG: Flynn for NSA, Pompeo for CIA, Sessions for AG

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