Who’s Dina Powell? A rising Donald Trump national security figure
The photo from inside Donald Trump‘s makeshift situation room at Mar-a-Lago affirmed what White House insiders have recognized for some time — that Dina Powell has quietly established herself as a White House power. Though sandwiched between other administration officials, the deputy national security adviser for strategy stands out as the only woman among 13 staffers in the room on the night the president ordered the missile attack in Syria. And in a White House that is split between outsider ideologues and more traditional operators, Powell is viewed as a steady force in the growing influence of the latter. Her West Wing experience, conservative background and policy chops have won over Trump’s daughter and son-in-law. Now, Powell is at the table as the president turns more of his attention to international affairs, attempting to craft a foreign policy out of a self-described “flexible” approach to the world. “No one should ever underestimate Dina Powell.” says Brian Gunderson, a former State Department chief of staff. He hired her to work in former House Majority Leader Dick Armey‘s office early in her career and later worked with her in George W. Bush‘s White House. Powell, 43, declined comment for this story. She is a rare Bush veteran in a White House that has largely shunned its Republican predecessor’s legacy. She came via Goldman Sachs — decidedly not a rarity for the new president — originally to work on economic development at the behest of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. An Egyptian-American with international experience and fluency in Arabic, she was soon moved to the National Security Council, though she retains her economic title. Powell’s ties to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who recruited her, and to economic adviser Gary Cohn, a fellow Goldman alumnus, mean she has been labeled by some as part of a more moderate group at the White House. But GOP leaders describe her as a longtime conservative thinker. She has quickly earned the respect of the president, who said in a statement to The Associated Press: “Dina is an extremely intelligent and competent member of my team. She is highly respected and a great person.” National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster said he recruited Powell “because of her exceptional expertise and leadership skills, to lead an effort to restore the strategic focus of the national security council. She has already accomplished this shift in a few weeks, establishing great relationships across our government and with key international allies.” Powell’s foreign policy experience was forged under Condoleezza Rice, who brought her into the State Department when the Bush administration was trying to improve diplomacy in the Middle East. Calling her a “member of my Middle East brain trust,” the former secretary of state said that Powell knows the region well and “not just confined to Egypt.” She added that Powell was “somebody who understood the limits of secularism in the Middle East but the dangers of fundamentalism. She brought sensitivities to those issues.” Still, Powell is plunging into a national security role at a fraught moment, as the United States ponders next steps with Syria, navigates complex relationships with North Korea, China and Russia and seeks to combat the rise of ISIS. All under a president, who campaigned on a platform of “America First” but whose foreign policy has proved unpredictable. Tommy Vietor, who served as NSC spokesman under Barack Obama, said the administration is still struggling to present a coherent foreign policy. “Does ‘America First’ mean we don’t care anymore?” he asked. “They need to do a better job making clear people understand where they stand on many issues.” Powell was brought onto the national security team after a period of tumult. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn was asked to resign in February amid revelations that he misled senior administration officials about his Russian contacts. One of his deputies, K.T. McFarland — notably absent from the Florida photo — is expected to exit soon. She is in line to be U.S. ambassador to Singapore. As deputy national security adviser for strategy, Powell is working to coordinate the various U.S. security-related agencies and advisers. According to a recent national security memo, she attends meetings of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee and Deputies Committee. Those advisers briefed Trump with options last week after a chemical attack that the U.S. determined was ordered by Syrian President Bashar Assad. Born in Cairo, Powell moved to the United States with her family at the age of four and had to learn to speak English. She is a Coptic Christian, the faith that was targeted with bombings of two churches in Cairo on Palm Sunday. Entering Republican politics at a young age, Powell put herself through the University of Texas by working in the state Legislature. After stints with several GOP congressional members and at the Republican National Committee, she joined George W. Bush’s administration. There she became the youngest person to ever run a president’s personnel office. Later she served Rice as assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs and as deputy undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. From the White House, Powell went to Goldman Sachs, where she worked for a decade, becoming a partner, looking after global investment and serving as president of the company foundation, overseeing an effort to invest in female entrepreneurs around the world. Speculation is already underway about whether her current role could grow. “She’s already ascending in a big way,” said Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, who has known Powell for years. “My sense is she will continue to be someone to look for.” Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Jared Kushner, taking new White House role, faces rare scrutiny
Jared Kushner has been a power player able to avoid much of the harsh scrutiny that comes with working in the White House. But this week he’s found that even the president’s son-in-law takes his turn in the spotlight. In a matter of days, Kushner, a senior Trump adviser, drew headlines for leaving Washington for a ski vacation while a signature campaign promise fell apart. The White House then confirmed he had volunteered to be interviewed before the Senate intelligence committee about meetings with Russian officials. At the same time, the White House announced he’ll helm a new task force that some in the West Wing have suggested carries little real influence. Kushner became the fourth Trump associate to get entangled in the Russia probe. North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, the chairman of the intelligence committee, said Tuesday that Kushner would likely be under oath and would submit to a “private interview” about arranging meetings with the Russian ambassador and other officials. The news came as the White House announced Kushner would lead a new White House Office of American Innovation, a task force billed as a powerful assignment for Kushner. But the task force’s true power in the White House remained unclear, according to a half-dozen West Wing officials and Kushner associates who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official White House line is that the group would have sweeping authority to modernize government, acting as strategic consultants who can draw from experiences in the private sector — and sometimes receive input from the president himself — to fulfill campaign promises like battling opioid addiction and transforming health care for veterans. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday that it would “apply the president’s ahead-of-schedule-and-under-budget mentality” to the government. But others inside and outside the White House cast doubt on the task force’s significance and reach, suggesting it was a lower priority for the administration and pointing out that similar measures have been tried by previous presidents with middling success. The assignment revived lingering questions about whether Kushner had opted to focus his time on a project that would put him at some distance from some Trump’s more conservative and controversial policy overhauls. The announcement came just days after Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, were photographed on the ski slopes of Aspen, Colorado, as the GOP health care deal began to unravel amid protests from conservative Republicans that it did not go far enough in replacing President Barack Obama‘s Affordable Care Act. Kushner rushed back to Washington on Friday but it was too late to save the bill, which was scuttled hours later by House Speaker Paul Ryan. Two people close to Kushner vehemently denied the president was upset at his son-in-law for being absent, saying Trump had given the trip his blessing. And a senior White House official insisted the timing of the task force announcement was planned weeks in advance. Kushner, who has been at his father-in-law’s right hand since the campaign, has long been viewed as a first-among-equals among the disparate power centers competing for the president’s ear. Kushner, who routinely avoids interviews, draws power from his ability to access Trump at all hours, including the White House residence often off-limits to staffers. His portfolio is robust: He has been deeply involved with presidential staffing and has played the role of shadow diplomat, advising on relations with the Middle East, Canada and Mexico. Though Kushner and Ivanka Trump have been spotted with some frequency on the Washington social circuit, the president’s son-in-law is routinely in the office early and leaves late, other than on Fridays when he observes the Sabbath. While those close to Trump flatly state that Kushner, by virtue of marriage, is untouchable, this is a rare moment when he has been the center of the sort of political storm that has routinely swept up the likes of White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, chief of staff Reince Priebus and senior counselor Kellyanne Conway. It points to a White House whose power matrix is constantly in flux. Kushner has been closely allied with senior counselor Dina Powell and National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs executive and a registered Democrat. That group has, at times, been at odds with conservatives led by Bannon, who to this point has been the driving force behind the White House’s policy shop. When Kushner officially joined the administration in January as a senior adviser, it was suggested that the real estate heir would draw upon the private sector to streamline and modernize government. His task force has been meeting since shortly after the inauguration and started talking to CEOs from various sectors about ways to make changes to entrenched federal programs. “Jared is a visionary with an endless appetite for strategic, inventive solutions that will improve quality of life for all Americans,” said Hope Hicks, Trump’s longtime spokeswoman. A list supplied by the White House of some of those who have met with Kushner reads like a who’s who of the American business world, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Tim Cook of Apple and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase. Kushner usually does more listening than talking in the meetings, largely avoiding ideological arguments while asking questions about efficiency and best practices, according to a person who has attended a gathering but is not authorized to discuss private conversations. But the Trump team is hardly the first seeking to improve how the government operates. The Reagan administration tasked the Grace Commission in 1982 with uncovering wasteful spending and practices, while the Clinton administration sought its own reinvention of government in 1993 with what was initially called the National Performance Review. Previous commissions have not produced overwhelming results in changing the stubborn bureaucracy, casting some doubt on what Kushner’s team can accomplish. Philip Joyce, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, said the domestic spending cuts in Trump’s budget blueprint suggest that this new committee would most likely focus more
The 40-year-old Kansan behind the Clinton-knocking website
Jed McChesney awoke Friday morning to find that his website had crashed. When he glanced up at MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” he learned why: Bernie Sanders had tweeted it to his 1.5 million followers. McChesney had made the site, iwilllookintoit.com, earlier this month, after hearing Hillary Clinton say those words in a Democratic presidential debate. That was her response when asked whether she would release transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs and other big banks. Clinton’s speeches were on McChesney’s mind. A day earlier, she’d seemed dismissive of the six-figure fees the banks had given her when she said in an interview that’s what they’d offered her. “To me, it was the equivalent of her saying, ‘Let them eat cake,’” McChesney said. And that’s when the 40-year-old web developer in Olathe, Kansas said he became a fan of Sanders, whom he calls “genuine” and “the real deal.” Within a few days, McChesney had donated $650 to the campaign and created the now-famous website. It’s exceedingly basic, with red text on a white background and a running timer showing how long it has been since Clinton uttered the “look into it” promise. The site had been getting a little news coverage here and there but exploded in popularity after the Sanders tweet. No one from the campaign reached out to him beforehand, McChesney said. “This is all a total surprise,” he said. The Sanders campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. About 50,000 visitors flooded into the site before the crash, and another 50,000 had clicked in the first two hours after McChesney switched to a larger server and got the site back up, he said. The site’s temporary error message Friday morning was what helped The Associated Press track down McChesney. It showed that iwilllookintoit.com is hosted by website promoting the sale of a Kansas ranch owned by McChesney’s parents. McChesney made the ranch’s website, too. The Clinton-questioning website took him five minutes to put together, McChesney said, “and it’s the most successful thing I’ve ever done.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
