Donald
Trump’s North Korea Briefing Was a Political
Stunt
"I didn't hear anything new," John McCain told
CNN about Trump's emergency North Korea summit
at the White House VIDEO
By Matthew Rozsa
April 27,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Salon"
- When President
Donald Trump’s administration announced earlier
this week that they were
holding an all-hands-on-deck meeting at the
White House about the North Korean crisis,
the most obvious question was why they would
hold a meeting usually reserved for Capitol
Hill.
The
answer, it seems, is that they put on a show for
its own sake.
Nothing new was divulged during the Wednesday
meeting,
according to a number of senators who attended
and spoke with CNN afterward.
After briefly appearing to discuss the crisis in
North Korea, Trump passed the baton to Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson, Director of National
Intelligence Dan Coats, Secretary of Defense
James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff Joseph Dunford.
“It was
a sobering briefing, and an important
opportunity for the entire Senate to hear the
emerging plans of the Trump administration to
confront what is a very real threat to our
security,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of
Connecticut told CNN.
His
Republican colleague, Sen. Bob Corker of
Tennessee (who chairs the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee), told the network that “it
was an OK briefing.”
Republican Sen. John McCain, who chairs the
Senate Armed Services Committee, told CNN that
“I didn’t hear anything new because I have been
heavily briefed before. It’s a very serious
situation, just as I had (thought) before I went
there.”
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The
disenchantment was perhaps best captured by
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who
told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that “It felt more
like a dog and pony show to me than anything
else. I guess it has something to with this 100
days in office.”
Matthew Rozsa is a breaking news writer for
Salon. He holds an MA in History from Rutgers
University-Newark and his work has appeared in
Mic, Quartz and MSNBC.
Copyright
© 2017 Salon Media Group, Inc.
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
