Elliott Abrams and the Jewish Lobby

The media claimed that Elliott Abrams was the leading candidate for Deputy Secretary of State, that Tillerson wanted him badly, but then it reported that Trump vetoed Abrams for the job.  I think this whole Elliott Abrams episode was made up by a bunch of Jews who are desperate to get more Jews into the Trump administration.  Abrams was a good candidate because he is a Jewish Republican with foreign policy experience at high levels.  Tillerson may have said he wanted Abrams, but if so, he hardly knew him.  There is no reporting on their having a long relationship.  Influential Jews in State, and in Washington more generally, worked the levers of power to pressure Tillerson to ask for Abrams.

The Jewish-owned New York Times was pressed into this political service and complied with articles about Abrams’ great qualifications and his imminent appointment to the job.  On February 6, the Times ran an article by Gardiner Harris and David Sanger (probably Jewish), “Elliott Abrams, Neoconservative Who Rejected Trump May Serve Him.”   

Then, when Abrams did not get the job, the NYT still praised him, but said in the article, “Trump Overrules Tillerson, Rejecting Elliott Abrams for Deputy Secretary of State,” that the main objection to Abrams was that he had written a highly critical article about Trump in the Weekly Standard, run by the Jewish William Kristol, “When You Can't Stand Your Candidate.”  Interestingly this article deals at length with Abrams’ time working as a staffer for Senator Scoop Jackson, along with another Jackson staffer, Jewish Republican wildman Richard Perle.  Jackson is most famous for the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment, responsible for getting thousands of Jews out of the old Soviet Union.  According to Wikipedia, it was responsible for allowing about 500,000 Jews to emigrate from the old Soviet bloc to the United States and about one million to Israel.

On February 19, the NYT ran a follow-up article, “Trump, an Outsider Demanding Loyalty, Struggles to Fill Top Posts,” that still praised Abrams and still advocated for more Jews in the Trump administration.  The article quotes Richard Haass, a Jewish Republican who is the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, on how hard it will be for Trump to get people to work in his administration.  He said Trump had “ruled out much of an entire generation of Republican public policy types,” but the article added that Haass’ name had been floated for a position.  The article ends with a plea from Abrams encouraging “everybody to go into the government if offered an appropriate position.”  I take this to be a plea mainly to Jews who might not approve of Trump to join his administration if possible.