Trump gives Bannon permanent spot on National Security Council, removes chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff
White House officials are defending US President Donald Trump’s move to give top political strategist Stephen Bannon a permanent spot on the National Security Council while limiting the role of the Director of National Intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“We are instilling reforms to make sure that we streamline the process for the president to make decisions on key, important intelligence matters,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.
In a presidential memorandum issued Saturday, Bannon, 63, a former executive at the right-wing Breitbart News website, was given a permanent spot on the NSC’s principals committee, the senior-level interagency group that considers major national security policy issues. Others with permanent seats on the White House policy council include the secretary of state and secretary of defence.
Under the new policy, however, the Director of National Intelligence and the chairman of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff will attend only “where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed,” according to the memo. Both were permanent members under president Barack Obama, but had a similar ad hoc status under George W. Bush.
Republican John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday he was concerned that adding Bannon to the council while leaving out Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was a “radical departure.”
The changes also drew sharp criticism from Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, who said in a Twitter message that the moves were “stone cold crazy”, as she shared a tweet that referred to Bannon as “a Nazi”.
Rice also criticised aspects of the order that would let Vice-President Mike Pence chair meetings of the council in lieu of the president, and reduced the role of the US Ambassador to the United Nations.