Want To Be a Presidential Adviser? Keep Your Mouth Shut.

The first meeting held by Lyndon Johnson after he became President in 1963 was a meeting to decide whether to increase our troop commitment in South Viet Nam, an increase requested by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At that meeting were all the advisers who constituted the inner circle that JFK had brought to DC in 1961.

The group included the former President of the Ford Foundation, the former Dean of Harvard College, the former CEO of one of America’s biggest corporations and a lifelong and very well regarded member of the foreign policy establishment — a group which JFK always referred to as the ‘best and the brightest.’

When the meeting began, Johnson made it clear that he was in favor of increasing the U.S. military force in Viet Nam. Every one of those experts then quickly agreed with him and the single, worst foreign policy decision ever made by any American President took place. We lost over 60,000 troops, we immolated probably a million peasants in Viet Nam and Cambodia, and the names of two of my schoolmates are inscribed on that fucking memorial wall

I was reminded of this terrible history when I watched yesterday’s session of the Select Committee with testimony from two members of Pence’s staff about how they felt about Trump’s attempt to pressure Pence into sending the electoral college…