The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Donald Trump is considering the firing of a deputy to National Security Adviser John Bolton over an exchange she had with the First Lady regarding seats on an airplane.
Mira Ricardel is Bolton’s top deputy, and was heavily involved with Melania during the First Lady’s recent trip to Africa, where Mrs. Trump attracted a lot of attention by publicly declaring that the press was paying too much attention to her — while wearing a symbol of white colonizers and blowing almost $100,000 on a hotel room she never slept in.
Ricardel apparently got into a huge “fight” with Melania’s staff over seating aboard the plane that took the group to the continent, as well as requests to use National Security Council resources, according to the Journal, and Mrs. Trump got her husband involved.
The feud between Ricardel and Mrs. Trump may not have been the only reason for the President’s decision to fire her — she also apparently has been involved in disagreements with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis over staffing issues and in quibbles with the Pentagon in general regarding policy decisions.
Of course, the unwritten subtext of the entire affair is that Ricardel is part of old-school Washington; as a deputy to John Bolton, her experience in government comes at the direction of those who have actually spent time practicing diplomacy — Bolton himself having once been the nation’s top foreign diplomat as the Ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush.
All of this follows the forced resignation of now-former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom the President has replaced, perhaps illegally, with an acting AG who has not been confirmed by the Senate for any position within the Justice Department. That replacement, Matt Whitaker, is already the subject of lawsuits, condemnation over his openly anti-Robert Mueller comments, and even an FBI investigation.
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