Jen Psaki: Bolton-Pompeo Rift ‘a Huge Problem’

EXCERPT:

PSAKI: “Well, in a normal White House, the National Security Adviser is really the coordinator of the entire national security team, so they’re not a person who would be negotiating deals typically or traveling a lot. Sometimes they travel a bit, but the break down is a reflection of the dysfunction here, right? So if Pompeo and — if they’re not talking at all, if Bolton and Pompeo are not talking at all, it means they’re not having kind of conversations after national security meetings. They’re not having phone calls where they’re saying where do we go with this? What do you think of this crisis? That’s a huge problem. Though reading this story, I think what stuck out to me was the fact that the isolation of Bolton, because Pompeo clearly has an in to President Trump. I mean, we’ve seen that. Typically, the National Security Adviser is the most powerful in the sense that they have the ear of the president. They can walk into the Oval anytime, they know what they’re thinking, they speak on their behalf. That certainly was the case in the White House I worked in. This reflects his isolation and that was interesting to me."