Moments after Steve Bannon exited the White House, rumors are swirling that VP Pence McMaster have started to push for more troops in Afghanistan.
According to The Gateway Pundit, on the same day Steve Bannon departed from the White House, Vice-President Pence and National Security Advisor McMaster have teamed up to push President Trump to send additional troops to Afghanistan.
POLITICO reports that White House cabinet staff in favor of sending more troops to Afghanistan teamed up ahead of a high-level meeting on Friday to persuade President Donald Trump to step up American military involvement in the 16-year-old war.
Vice President Mike Pence and national security adviser H.R. McMaster rehearsed their pitch heading into the Camp David strategy session in an effort to persuade Trump to accept commanders’ proposals to beef up the 8,400 American troops in the country, the sources said.
The sources – an administration official and a senior White House aide – also confirmed that Erik Prince, the founder of the former Blackwater private security firm, had been scheduled to attend the session but that he was blocked at the last minute. The administration official said McMaster was the one who blocked Prince.
The administration official said Pence returned early from a trip to Latin America to work out the details with McMaster on how to get Trump to agree to send more troops, something he’s been hesitant to do.
McMaster enlisted the vice president’s help about six weeks ago, according to a third official, asking him to help build consensus within the administration and to work with him to make the case to the president.
“The vice president views his role on this as an honest broker,” a top aide to Pence said Friday. “The vice president has not weighed in on any side other than to make sure that the options presented to the president are fully fleshed out and objective.”
The post With the exit of Steve Bannon, VP Pence and NSA McMaster are calling to ramp up war in Afghanistan appeared first on The Duran.