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Brett McGurk Profile picture
Brett McGurk
@brett_mcgurk
White House Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. Former presidential envoy. #GirlDad. Personal account.
14 subscribers
Oct 29, 2020 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
The United States must stand in full solidarity with France, our oldest ally. It must do so unequivocally and offer all appropriate support to dismantle the networks now targeting French citizens on its own soil. 🇫🇷🇺🇸 #Nice I am deeply concerned that the Trump administration has de-prioritized and largely dismantled the mechanisms built with allies to deter and detect terrorism and combat the ideologies that give it cover.
Sep 18, 2020 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Trump has built this alleged threat to our ambassador in South Africa into his tweets and rally speeches. He says any such attack “will be met with an attack on Iran that will be 1,000 times greater in magnitude!” politico.com/news/2020/09/1… But these reports came from leaked intel. Unlike intel leaked about Russia placing bounties on US troops: NOBODY in the WH has said people must “go to jail” over the Iran leak. Nor did Trump simply dismiss it as a hoax. Why? What’s the difference?
Sep 9, 2020 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
When Trump claims he’s bringing troops “home” from #Iraq, ask how many American forces are deployed in the Middle East. When he hailed pulling 1k troops out of Syria, for example, he sent another 14k troops elsewhere in the region.👇politifact.com/factchecks/201… Worse, he then left behind a much smaller force in Syria to carry out a mission that on his own terms (“keep the oil”) has no legal basis. Those troops are now under threat from Russian military forces that were nowhere near our positions before Trump’s withdrawal order.👇
Sep 1, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
INSANE: Trump peddles social media conspiracy theories aimed to DIVIDE us but dismisses warnings in his own PDB aimed to PROTECT us—including multiple warnings in JAN and FEB about #COVID19 and Russian bounties on US troops. Reminder: Now with 180,000 dead Americans—Trump never read or ignored a dozen PDB warnings about #COVID19 while simultaneously praising President Xi. And we’re still the ONLY advanced country in the world without a national plan.👇
Aug 20, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Trump today said “nothing happened” when he handed 2/3 of ISIS’s former caliphate in Syria to Erdogan and Putin, leaving our partners to fend for themselves, and displacing 200k people fleeing bands of extremists responsible for war crimes. 1/6 Here’s what happened👇washingtonpost.com/world/national…
Jul 23, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Two ISIS terrorists in US military custody (part of the Beatles) now admit to involvement in the captivity of Kayla Mueller in Syria. They should be prosecuted in a federal court here in the United States for their crimes. The families of the victims wrote this important oped today in the @washingtonpost. Such issues can be tied up in bureaucracy for years. The WH can help push them through: Bring Kotay and Elsheikh here to face justice.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
Jul 18, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Trump plays golf as US forces in Syria now on a daily basis confront Russians thanks to his impetuous decision to abandon 2/3 of once-stable ground to Putin and Erdogan. Mr. President: Pick up the phone and tell Putin to stop harassing our troops.👇 Background on this clip below. Our troops should NEVER be put in this position. Trump surely know nothing about it because it’s not on cable news. No real commander-in-chief would ever allow this to fester.
Jul 1, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
New WH explanation is absurd and alarming. PDB briefer didn’t READ the report on bounties to Trump. So he wasn’t “briefed” even though it was in the brief. Meanwhile, the US alerted its allies. Trump spoke with Putin at least five times. Still, nobody told him? 1/4 This suggests our country is as safe as Trump’s attention span during an oral briefing (notoriously short). On its face: he doesn’t read and nobody tells him what he needs to know even when making policy on the phone with hostile foreign counterparts. 2/4
Jun 27, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
If the White House has been sitting on credible intelligence about Russian threats to US forces overseas since MARCH, it further begs the question as to why it’s keeping an unclassified DNI threat assessment from the public for the first time ever. What’s in it?👇 More background on the DNI threat assessment (and its being kept from the public and Congress for the first time in its history) here👇
May 29, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
So Trump will speak later today about CHINA! He’ll pretend to act tough. It’s a joke. Authoritarian leaders like Xi cannot believe their windfall: a U.S. president that shreds our values and alliances, the two unique sources of American power they truly fear. 1/3 As Trump provides cover to “shoot” American citizens, recall what he said about protestors in #HongKong last year as they bravely stood up for their freedoms. He parroted PRECISELY the language of President Xi and Chinese Communist Party leaders. 2/3👇 bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Apr 24, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Watching this clip of Dr. Birx, five of my own observations after serving in the Trump administration: 

1. You can’t stay above crazy: On any issue, the crazy will catch up to you

2. There’s no policy: You’re always a Tweet away from all going sideways 3. You can’t speak credibly: Since there’s no policy, nobody speaks credibly for our country

4. Diplomacy is impossible: Foreign parties know that only Trump counts and he changes on a whim 

5. You may need to resign: In any senior role, your integrity will be tested
Apr 4, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
As this news breaks, important to ask: where’s the DNI threat assessment? An unclassified version is released each year to inform the American people about threats to our nation, including public health threats. Except this year. WHY NOT? What’s in it? 🤔 Some background on the bottled-up report in thread below. This is the first year since the DNI’s first threat assessment in 2006 that there has been no public report. Someone doesn’t want the public to see it. WHY? Presumption: because its authors—IC professionals—tell the truth.
Mar 29, 2020 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
My essay this morning in @TheAtlantic on the crippling absence of American diplomacy and leadership against a global threat that the United States cannot defeat alone. It’s compounding our late and disorganized domestic response. Some key points below. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… There had been a bipartisan standard by which presidents use diplomacy to rally friends and even adversaries to address borderless threats that the U.S. can’t effectively confront alone. This is particularly true in the area of infectious diseases. A few examples:
Mar 18, 2020 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
So Trump now considers himself a “wartime president”? I’ve seen three presidents (including him) make wartime decisions and teach a course at @FSIStanford on wartime decision-making from Truman to Trump. Also writing a book on it. Here’s what he might do (but won’t) 👉 First: establish a decision-making and execution process that can readily assess new information, anticipate, set realistic goals (proximate and long-term), mobilize essential resources to where they’re needed, and adapt to new circumstances. For my class, it looked like this👇
Mar 13, 2020 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
On September 16, 2014, John Allen and I had just been appointed to lead the response to ISIS. We were days away from the first US-led airstrikes in Syria. Obama asked to see us in the Oval (photo) for a detailed review of the diplomatic plan. After this meeting, he traveled to... The CDC in Atlanta, which was leading a global response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Obama gave an update on the response, and it’s worth noting in comparison to what we’re now hearing and seeing from Trump on the #COVID19 outbreak. Link/excerpts👇obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-offi…
Mar 8, 2020 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Trump says the coronavirus came “out of nowhere.” But last year, the DNI WARNED that we were vulnerable to a pandemic “that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources...” 👇 dni.gov/files/ODNI/doc… Despite this clear warning from our Intelligence Community, the Trump administration seems to have done little to prepare, and even sought to cut 80 percent of our epidemic prevention resources across the globe. This article is from 2018.👇 washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-h…
Mar 4, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I’ve had the privilege of serving with and getting to know Joe Biden over the last decade. He has the rarest combination of empathy, prudence, decency, thoughtfulness, and bare-knuckled toughness. These are all important traits for a president. During some dark moments of the ISIS fight, he never gave up or disengaged, even while handling unimaginable personal loss. When officials like me were overseas for extended periods, he reached out unprompted to our families & thanked them. He didn’t need to do this, but he did.
Feb 29, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The withdrawal provisions in this Afghanistan agreement seem far more comprehensive than advertised. It’s a TOTAL withdrawal of ALL American and NATO forces within 14 months. That would likely produce a gradual collapse of the state, civil war, and the Taliban back in Kabul. I helped negotiate the 2008 SOFA in Iraq, which called for a three-year withdrawal timeline but also had an extension arrangement through another deal signed in parallel (known as the SFA). We all presumed at the time it would be extended in 2011 to retain a small residual force.
Feb 21, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Some points made on @Morning_Joe this morning regarding ODNI situation:

- ODNI was established after the 9/11 attacks to ensure national security decisions are guided by unvarnished facts

- The intelligence community is our nation's first line of defense against foreign threats - Accordingly, chaos in ODNI (and a "shoot the messenger environment" inside the IC) means our country is less safe

- Other disturbing signs in addition to the sudden dismissal of Joe McGuire, a 40-year Navy veteran:
Jan 22, 2020 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
It’s enouragong that Trump met with both @BarhamSalih & @IKRPresident on the sidelines of Davos. It’s less encouraging that Trump used the time to say “we took the oil” and doesn’t seem to know the difference between northern Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan. Presidents Barzani and Salih are vital partners. We could not have fought ISIS without them. They’re both courageous and striving for a truly independent, fully sovereign, federal Iraq. The U.S. needs a strong policy to support them and see Iraq through new UN-backed elections.
Jan 7, 2020 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Citing Iran’s support for the Taliban as a justification for killing Soleimani is bizarre. The Taliban continues to kill Americans—took credit for attacks just last month—yet Trump invited its leaders to Camp David and Khalilzad is reportedly in talks with them this week. This demonstrates a policy that is now flailing for justifications as another 10,000 troops move into the Middle East and Esper says “we are prepared to FINISH” a war with Iran — a country 4x larger than Iraq with 3x the population. What does that mean? How? With what allies?