Trump's National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien has coronavirus
Trump: 'I haven't seen him lately.'
July 27, 2020
National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien has coronavirus. CNN reports that he abruptly left the office on Thursday (July 23), but that no email was sent to NSC staff informing them of their potential exposure, and some NSC staffers only learned of it from press reports today.
The White House, in a statement acknowledging O’Brien’s condition, notably insists that “there is no risk of exposure to the President or the Vice President.” Uh, that speaks volumes.
Pres. Trump added to the sense that his own National Security Advisor is someone he only runs into from time to time, telling reporters as he left for North Carolina today, “I haven’t seen him lately.”
O’Brien traveled to Europe July 13-16, and the NSC posted photos of a maskless O’Brien’s interactions with fellow European security advisors and press from the trip.
To read:
The prepared testimony of Iraq war vet and member of the D.C. National Guard Adam DeMarco, who is testifying on Tuesday before the House Natural Resources Committee about the government’s use of force to clear protesters from Lafayette Square in front of the White House on June 1st for Trump’s Bible photo op.
“The events I witnessed at Lafayette Square on the evening of June 1 were deeply disturbing to me, and to fellow National Guardsmen,” DeMarco writes in his prepared testimony. “Having served in a combat zone,…at no time did I feel threatened by the protestors or assess them to be violent...It was my observation that the use of force against demonstrators in the clearing operation was an unnecessary escalation...From my observation, those demonstrators – our fellow American citizens -- were engaged in the peaceful expression of their 1st Amendment rights...Yet they were subjected to an unprovoked escalation & excessive use of force.”
DeMarco invokes the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia), who said: “When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something, to do something.”
“The oath I swore as a military officer, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, is a bedrock guiding principle and, for me, constitutes an individual moral commitment and ethical instruction,” DeMarco writes. “And it compels me to say something – and do something – about what I witnessed on June 1 at Lafayette Square.“
More from the WaPo.