Barely 72 hours after his victory, Donald Trump’s team is already taking shape. Our latest reporting reveals that Brian Hook―known from Trump’s first term to be a major Iran hawk―is being tapped to run the transition at the State Department. In a follow-up report, we exposed a lobbying campaign by neoconservatives to bring war hawk Mike Pompeo, who plotted to assassinate Julian Assange during the previous Trump years, back into the cabinet.
But we also reported that he is facing fierce opposition internally, and that Trump is leaning against reinstalling Pompeo. This comes as Trump has tapped his daughter’s father-in-law, the Lebanese-born Massad Boulos, to advise on Middle East policy. Boulos says he’ll be traveling to Lebanon to seek a “just and comprehensive peace” and enter into a new nuclear deal acceptable to “the Iranians, neighboring countries, and the US.”
In other words, things are quite fluid. The Drop Site News team gathered to discuss what we know about how Trump might handle Israel and what that will mean for war with Iran; who might lead the State Department; and the broader dynamics of the Middle East.
The mainstream media will spend its energy pressuring Trump to nominate figures who are “respectable” on the outside, because they speak in complete sentences and observe Washington norms of civility, yet relentlessly pursue war in every direction. The push to make Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Secretary of State is a perfect example.
Drop Site will be here to remind the Trump universe that he campaigned in explicit opposition to the neocon ideology. There is a strong faction within Trump’s world that can leverage our reporting in the face of Trump’s too-often willingness to buckle to pressure from the militaristic wing of the GOP.
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