Top Experts Confounded by Advisers to Donald Trump

New York Times ^ | March 22, 2016 | ALAN RAPPEPORT

[reaganaut1]

When Donald J. Trump finally began to reveal the names of his foreign policy advisers during a swing through Washington this week, the Republican foreign policy establishment looked at them and had a pretty universal reaction: Who?

Many foreign policy experts have been wondering for months about who might be counseling the leading Republican presidential candidate, who has unfurled such provocative proposals as reinstating waterboarding and barring foreign Muslims from entering the country.

Mr. Trump has promised to hire the world’s brightest minds to make up for his lack of political experience, but his new foreign policy team left some of the country’s leading experts in the field scratching their heads as they tried to identify his choices. And on a day when the Islamic State struck a blow to a major European capital, Mr. Trump’s new team faced additional scrutiny.

“Many of us who have held senior positions in previous Republican administrations have been asking each other if we have ever heard of them, and pretty much everybody is turning to Google to see what they can find,” said Mike Green, a foreign policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who served on President George W. Bush’s National Security Council.

While most presidential campaigns have been offering lists of their high-profile advisers, Mr. Trump had repeatedly declined to reveal his, offering only that he developed his views about world affairs from listening to experts on television, and that he liked to come up with his own ideas.

That changed on Monday when, in an interview with The Washington Post editorial board, he shared the names of five advisers who signed up to be on his team: Joseph E. Schmitz, Gen. Keith Kellogg, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Walid Phares.

[okie01]

You mean he’s not listening to the architects of the Second Iraq War who relied on “WMD intelligence”...

Evidently, Trump is. Two of the five "foreign policy experts" he named were deeply involved in the Iraqi War...

Huh??? Your guess is as good as mine...

[okie01]

Here we go again, the establishment only wants the known established? God forbid we bring in someone who doesn’t want to play by their rules.

However, if you're on the foreign policy advisory team for Trump, aren't you supposed to know it?

Evidently, none of the four who could be reached has ever spoken with Trump or known they were on his "Foreign Policy Team". The fifth member of the "team" couldn't be found.

[Smokin' Joe]

Thanks for the lecture, sport! Have a lovely day.

[JBW1949]

You’re welcome....sport....