The only things you can count on in the Trump administration are high turnover and public humiliation on the way out the door. We’ve seen it time and time again, from Omarosa Manigault-Newman to Rex Tillerson to John Bolton. People come into the Trump administration with high hopes, hitching their wagons to the incompetence and whimsy of Donald Trump, only to be tossed aside and publicly humiliated when the mood strikes their man.
And so begins Robert O’Brien’s march to a humiliating end. In a tweet, Donald Trump named O’Brien his fourth national security adviser in three short years. If there was ever a position where you wanted stability, overseeing national security would be the one. During his eight years in the White House, President Obama had three national security advisers, with Susan Rice in the role for the final five years of his presidency.
O’Brien comes to the role from the State Department, where he was the chief hostage negotiator. Trump apparently admired his work in Sweden, where he tried to intervene in a case with rapper A$AP Rocky, who was jailed for his role in a skirmish involving his bodyguards and two men who were following them. In the end, it was a judge who set them free, not the work of O’Brien. In April, Trump tweeted praise of himself, praise he said came from O’Brien, but the State Department refused to confirm the source of the quote.
As Aaron Blake of The Washington Post noted, there are only two possibilities with this questionable quote: One is that O’Brien is a sycophant of the highest order, which is problematic, and the other is that Donald Trump completely made up the quote, which is obviously problematic for other reasons.
In fact, O’Brien was never a fan of Donald Trump. In 2015, he penned an article for Politico in which he advised Ted Cruz to campaign harder against Trump because of his “chummy” relationship with Vladimir Putin.
Accordingly, Cruz will need to abandon his “kid glove” treatment of Trump and Carson and draw contrasts with them tonight. He certainly has an opening to do so on national security versus Trump, who has been playing up how chummy he will be with Vladimir Putin if he is elected.
After Trump won (the Electoral College) in 2016, O’Brien was interviewed by Larry King and told the talk show host he was not interested in the job of national security adviser. Oliver Will at Share Blue has that video, in which O’Brien says, “If I was to be the new national security adviser—and I won't be, I'm glad it's General Flynn who's got that job and not me—the most immediate threat is ISIS and Islamic terrorism."
Like others before him, Robert O’Brien is embarking on the beginning of the end of his credibility. He likely swallowed his pride and his dignity long ago to ascend in this administration. The question is, how long will he last? One Scaramucci? Ten Scaramuccis? Will he do what others have been unable to do and stick to it until the end of this administration? It’s unlikely. It’s also unlikely that any serious candidate would want the role afterward, but it never ceases to amaze me how many qualified career diplomats are willing to join this circus.
In the end, everyone who doesn’t have the last name Trump eventually gets shown the door. Everyone who considers working for Trump had better come into the job knowing that simple truth—they are the frog and Donald Trump is the scorpion. He’s always going to sting them in the end.
Good luck, O’Brien. You are going to need it.