"Everyone can breathe easy," Stephen Colbert joked on Wednesday's Late Show. Because President Trump has finally replaced John Bolton in the critical role of "future former national security adviser."
Trump announced that he has selected State Department hostage negotiator Robert O'Brien in Los Angeles, "which explains why the guy looks like the second male lead on Suits," Colbert said. "So that's interesting — he hired a hostage negotiator, someone who is known to talk madmen down from the brink. That will come in handy."
Still, "hostage negotiator doesn't seem like a natural résumé for national security adviser, so what possibly brought him to Trump's attention at this critical juncture?" Colbert asked. First, "Trump sent him as a special envoy to A$AP Rocky's Swedish assault trial. I did not realize that A$AP Rocky was being held hostage! What was Sweden asking for in return? Mamma Mia 3?" And also, as Trump himself noted yesterday, O'Brien once called him "the greatest hostage negotiator in history," Colbert noted. "Oh, I would love to see Hostage Negotiator Trump."
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But Colbert was essentially right about O'Brien's selling points. Trump had "narrowed his shortlist for the post to Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg and O'Brien, but the envoy's high-profile work to help free A$AP Rocky ... was a key factor in Trump's decision to name him to the post," Yahoo News reports — though "family members of American hostages," The Washington Post adds, "were furious when O'Brien spent a week in Sweden monitoring the trial" when he could have been working to free actual hostages.
O'Brien also published a book in 2016 criticizing former President Barack Obama's foreign policy as weak, and he has heaped praise on Trump during televised hostage-release ceremonies. "His physical appearance did not hurt, either," The New York Times reports. "Whereas Mr. Trump was known to grouse about Mr. Bolton's famous bushy mustache, the president has been taken with Mr. O'Brien's well-tailored looks and easy demeanor, and thinks he 'looks the part,' as one person close to the president said."
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