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Vice President Mike Pence, President Donald Trump, and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster at a lunch with armed service members at the White House on Tuesday.

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On Tuesday, President Donald Trump hosted several service members at the White House to discuss Afghanistan strategy over lunch. We have plenty of ideas from a lot of people, but I want to hear it from people on the ground, Trump told reporters before meeting the troops.

Meeting the troops is a fine thing for a commander in chief to do, but this kind of symbolic meet-and-greet doesnt substitute for Trump actually doing his job. Our nation deserves an elected leader who will do more than delegate key decisions on war to the Pentagon. Our troops deserve a leader who will do more than promise to make the military great again. And if youre going to meet the troops for lunch, Mr. President, by God, visit them in theater, like your two predecessors, so you get a glimpse of the hardships and sacrifices theyre making on your orders.

In the six months since hes taken office and the 10 weeks of transition before that, Trump has effectively ignored the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this despite bombastic campaign promises to win in each place (whatever win means). What he has done is cede warmaking authority to Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who now reportedly has plenary power to set objectives, allocate resources, and move troops to fight in both countries. Although National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster reportedly limited Mattis to 3,900 more troops in Afghanistan for now, its clear from Trumps own statements and reporting on the White House that the president has delegated his war powers down to Mattisalong with whatever political risk may come from bad outcomes.

Such a delegation of war power may be attractive to Trump, whose lack of experience is balanced by the incredibly deep expertise of his national security adviser and secretary of defense. Nonetheless, this also represents an abdication by the president, who is the sole elected official of the executive branch and the only person capable of being held politically accountable for decisions involving war and peace. Trump is right to set broad objectives and delegate decisions about tactics and operations to his generals. But he cannot escape responsibility for the strategic decisions about objectives, nor evade his duty to marshal public support and resources from Congress to pursue those ends.

In the Washington arena, Trump has also been AWOL from his important political duties as commander in chief. In February, he submitted a budget that boosted defense spending by $54 billion. However, it soon trickled out that even this increase fell far short of the Pentagons needs to meet the Trump strategy (such as it is) for national security or even dig itself out of the fiscal hole caused by sequestration. In response, the House and Senate armed services committees moved to propose a defense budget $37 billion higher than Trumps. However, given the enormous continuing costs of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and long-deferred modernization projects within each of the services, even these budgets are likely to fall short of military requirements. They also dont keep pace with the wartime budgets proposed during the previous two administrations, which, despite their faults, kept the Pentagon running even at the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

If Trump wanted the military to do less with less, he could. Right now, hes forcing it to do more without adequate resources.

These failureswhich fairly belong to both Trump and Congressare creating risk for our military around the world. The perennial failure of Congress and the White House to reach a budget deal in a timely manner creates uncertainty that ripples through the entire military establishment. This uncertainty adversely affects long-term procurements for aircraft and ships, frustrates personnel planning, and makes it impossible to forecast training resources and rotations. Process failures aside, the Pentagon still does not have the aggregate resources it needs to continue fighting two wars, carry out special operations missions around the world, deter Russia and North Korea through forward deployments, and conduct myriad other missions. All four services arguably need more personnel, newer weapons systems, and more money to fund training. Military aircraft are literally falling out of the sky (and killing troops) because of a lack of resources for training and maintenance and deferred modernization, too. Transforming the military, and adding new capabilities like a cyber corps or space corps, will take even more moneymoney that, so far, Trump has failed to procure from Congress.

Some of these resource shortfalls could be addressed through strategy or better management. Shortening the list of military obligations would reduce the numbers of troops, ships, planes, and bases drawing on the massive Pentagon budget. Managing the Pentagon better could shave a little off the top as well. But so far Trump has chosen neither better strategy nor better management; hes doubled down on commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan without a clear strategy for either and blustered his way into confrontations elsewhere. If Trump wanted the military to do less with less, he could make that happen, but right now hes forcing it to do more without adequate resources.

Trumps abdication of his leadership role and refusal to give the troops resources would be enough to declare him a failure as commander in chief. Hes also added insult to injury through his repeated missteps and gaffes involving service members and veterans, from the campaign trail to the White House. Hes not just insulted them. Hes actively sought to corrode their integrity, by politicking before military audiences and using them as props for his most controversial domestic policy proposals like the travel ban.

Wednesdays lunch with troops fits into this model. Trump isnt interested in fulfilling his constitutional role as commander in chief of the armed forces, nor in a serious policy discussion with veterans of our Afghanistan wars. Hes using the troops as props, attempting to hide behind their bright medals and pressed uniforms, and to use their credibility for his own political gain. While the soldiers invited to the White House undoubtedly had experiences to share with the president, its unclear how much these troops personal vignettes will help the president decide on the future of the war at this inflection point.

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Trump has no choice but to bow out of making military decisions. He knows nothing of relevance, and he has no concept how to learn anything of relevance to the issues. More...

Summoning the troops to the White House for such a lunch is a presidential prerogative, to be sure. But its imperious to do so and unlikely to instill confidence among members of the military or the public. Trump has now had six months in office to visit the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, like his predecessors did on multiple occasions. (President Barack Obama first visited Iraq in April 2009 and then visited Afghanistan in March 2010.) Trump even had a perfect opportunity to do so in May, during his Middle East trip, when Air Force One literally had to skirt Iraq when flying between Saudi Arabia and Israel. And yet he avoided landing in Iraq or Afghanistan, missing the opportunity to see these battlefields, hear directly from commanders there, and meet the troops following his orders.

We might not expect more of President Trump based on his own history of evading wartime service. Nonetheless, Trumps advisersincluding McMaster, who wrote a book titled Dereliction of Duty regarding leadership failures during the Vietnam Wardo know better. Our troops deserve a better commander in chief, and our nation needs a better president, for these wars continue to grind on and consume American blood and treasure even if the president wants to ignore them.

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Donald Trump Is Abdicating His Role as Commander in Chief - Slate Magazine

Duke believes in the primacy of visual culture, and most right-wing figures, he says, dont take enough care to make themselves look good. Newt Gingrich, he tells me, is disheveled; Steve Bannon is a schlub; Trumps hair is problematic. At the same time, he thinks left-leaning media outlets which is to say, just about anything other than Breitbart News and The Drudge Report go out of their way to present the right in a negative way. Recently, he drew my attention to New York magazines March cover story on Kellyanne Conway. Though he hadnt read the article, Duke was bothered by Martin Schoellers clinically lit portrait, the equivalent of being rendered by a fax machine, he griped in an email.

Theres no Vanity Fair for the right, Duke told me, and such an assertion hints at the rather quixotic nature of his project. Within the alt-right, a loose-knit movment of online reactionaries, Duke is seen as a kind of hidden-hand figure, doing his part to influence the movements image from the shadows. During the election, for instance, Duke worked behind the scenes as the creative director for MAGA3X, a nebulous and now defunct coalition of Trump supporters who believe they helped elect the president, in part, by propagating online memes. Duke often doles out imaging advice to those in his orbit; he persuaded Cernovich, for example, to quit wearing Under Armour and put on a collared shirt. Dukes subjects seem to appreciate his input; most of them have used his portraits on their social-media profiles.

Dukes goal is to get the American public to view his subjects the way he does. Whether such a goal is realistic or not, his project inadvertently exposes the inner workings of the alt-right mind-set its pathologies, its obsessions laying bare the depth of the movements distrust of the mainstream, its finicky need to conquer reality and construct alternative versions of everything.

Duke seems to think the rights negative image is solely a matter of perception a faith in the power of the superficial that dates, perhaps, back to his days of shooting clothing and apparel ads for department-store catalogs and glossy magazines. From the late 1970s to the early 90s, Duke captured a number of models and actresses on their way to fame, including Drew Barrymore, Sunrise Coigney, Sharon Stone and Milla Jovovich, whose career he helped launch. But he always felt somewhat alienated in the fashion industry, particularly during the AIDS crisis, which claimed a number of friends. People would bad-mouth Reagan, said Duke, who believes that President Ronald Reagan was treated unfairly. Since the 80s, Duke believes, the left has only grown more extreme, which has pushed him into a defensive crouch. He thinks that Joseph McCarthy is an American hero and that progressives are communists by another name. As a gun owner, he sees it as an infringement on the Second Amendment that he isnt allowed to carry his Beretta, which he bought during the Obama presidency, to his local Starbucks.

But Duke didnt feel entirely comfortable making his views known until he met Andrew Breitbart, the firebrand conservative and eponymous founder of the news site. Duke first encountered Breitbart, who died in 2012, at a meeting of the Pacific Palisades Republican Club in October 2011, and he was impressed by his musings on politics and the media. Duke shot Breitbarts portrait that day. It became the first installment in Dukes collection, and also a statement of intent. In the image, Breitbart is dressed, raffishly, in a dark blazer and white button-down, his chest hair exposed; it looks as if hes making a point, or about to, and raising an index finger.

One of Breitbarts central ideas was that the left uses Hollywood as a sort of cudgel to assert its superiority over the right. Politics, Breitbart believed, is downstream from culture, and for Duke, that oft-repeated dictum became a rallying cry. I got a wild hair up my ass, Duke told me, and I said, I want to start taking pictures of our side and making our side look heroic.

In 2014, Duke found a test case in Charles Johnson, the 28-year-old conservative journalist with a reputation for online trollery. Johnson runs GotNews.com, a sensationalist website on which he has posted a number of false allegations, and WeSearchr, a crowdfunding platform that functions like a kind of vindictive Kickstarter for the right; rather than funding projects, users raise bounties on information that could be damaging to their ideological opponents. Looking him up on Facebook, Duke found his appearance lacking but figured he could use Johnsons bright-red mop and thick, scruffy beard to his advantage. I said, You look like a muppet, and I want to make you look like a rock star, Duke recalled. He said, You can do that? Duke shot him outside the Los Angeles Gun Club, looking casually defiant in his Wayfarer-style sunglasses, metal rings, and gray T-shirt. He really gets my essence, said Johnson, who now allows only Duke to photograph him. Not long after that, Duke shot Johnson in more formal attire on the same day Johnson, on GotNews, sought to out the anonymous University of Virginia student at the center of Rolling Stones now-discredited gang-rape story. (He identified the wrong woman.)

Through Johnson, who is now a close friend of Dukes, Duke connected with several more subjects, including Cernovich, the right-wing social-media personality who helped spread the PizzaGate myth, which imagined a vast child-sex ring run by powerful Democrats out of a pizza restaurant in Washington. In December, Duke took his portrait at a protest in Los Angeles. Cernovich was sweating through his shirt when Duke found him, so he mopped him down and snapped a few shots, one of which Cernovich has used as his Twitter profile head cropped within the frame and tilted at an angle, his slightly wet-looking hair brushed jauntily to the side and his squinting blue eyes matching his collared shirt. My intention, Duke said, was to make him look like a strong, forceful personality.

Duke had a similar idea in mind on a tranquil afternoon in February, as he photographed Anthime Gionet, the right-wing provocateur better known by his digital stage name, Baked Alaska. Wearing ripped black jeans and a camouflage T-shirt and cap, Gionet was situated before a seamless white background at a spacious studio with high, lofted ceilings in Culver City, Calif. He was squatting, froglike, and staring off into the distance. Chin up, said Duke, camera in hand, prostrate on the floor. There you go, he said, peering through the viewfinder and chuckling. Be the frog, man, be the frog. Duke clicked away.

Gionet, who is 29, was channeling Pepe the Frog, the cartoon amphibian appropriated as a symbol of the alt-right. Like Pepe himself, the Anchorage native was in need of an image reboot. During the election, Gionet found some fame orchestrating pro-Trump flash mobs (along with releasing a string of seemingly earnest rap videos with titles like MAGA Anthem and We Love Our Cops). But he had recently gotten himself into trouble over a series of coded anti-Semitic tweets. (Jews control the News, he wrote in one; in another he referenced the JQ, or Jewish question.) Duke didnt care about that. As he saw it, Gionet was a victim of a politically correct culture. At the photo shoot, he handed Gionet a Barbie doll covered in fake blood and nailed to a cross of wooden blocks. This is a symbol of me, Gionet said approvingly. I am the sacrificial lamb.

Later, Duke pulled out a black pitchfork, onto which he had mounted a laser sight, and told Gionet he could use it to go after crooked politicians. Staring menacingly into the camera, Gionet clutched the pitchfork in a pose reminiscent of Grant Woods American Gothic. Revolution! he yelled.

A few months after the shoot, I would find that one image from the shoot that day had made it onto the cover of Gionets self-published book, Meme Magic Secrets Revealed.

Before we met, Duke and I had been corresponding for a month or so about media coverage of right-wing figures, and every so often, when I came across a photo, I would send it his way to get his read on it. At one point, I asked him in an email for his take on Time magazines cover portrait of Steve Bannon craggy skin, red nose, lazy eye published in early February. He responded by sending back a five-year-old head shot of me, publicly available online, which hed edited on Photoshop to make my face look ghoulish and depleted. His point, at least as I understood it, was that its easy to make someone look bad. It seemed like an obvious thing to say, but it was still disturbing to be on the receiving end of it.

Theres this kind of, I think, phony idea that things are objective when you push the button, thats the objective reality, and I just dont think thats true, Duke told me, not long ago, on our early evening walk along the bluffs. Duke sees photography as a kind of weapon in the culture wars, and in a way, it may be the perfect medium for a movement like the alt-right, which wants to refashion reality on its own terms. Pictures are, after all, factually malleable vessels that do not present reality as it is but suggest an alternative one as the photographer sees it.

As the sun set on the Pacific, Duke asked me if I wanted my picture taken. I initially declined, skeptical of his intentions. But high on the cliff, I decided to trust him. It looks pretty nice right here, he said reassuringly. I can make you look good. As he leaned down for a better angle, adjusting the ISO on his camera, I was surprised to find his presence somewhat calming; the shutter of his camera fluttered gently as he made off-handed remarks between shots. I could imagine, in the moment, how he would pull the humanity out of his subjects.

A few days later, Duke sent me the photo in an email attachment. Examining my expression, I couldnt help but think that I looked profoundly uneasy, and even slightly disgusted. But I wasnt sure if that was my doing or his.

Matthew Kassel is a writer living in Brooklyn.

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The Annie Leibovitz of the Alt-Right - New York Times

JTA Jake Tapper, the CNN anchor, uses Twitter as a platform to joke, kibbitz with friends and colleagues, and, as he does on his show, The Lead, to call out deviations from what he sees as basic American values like tolerance and free speech.

One of his best-known encounters of the latter kind came last year, when he pressed candidate Donald Trump to disavow an endorsement by David Duke, the anti-Semite and racist. (Trump did, eventually.)

So it was odd to see Linda Sarsour, the feminist and Palestinian-American activist, say on Twitter on Tuesday that Tapper had joined the ranks of the alt-right.

It was part of a fraught exchange between a Muslim American well known for her friendship with some liberal Jews and for her clashes with the Jewish establishment she endorses the boycott Israel movement and a celebrity who makes no secret of his Jewishness. But it was one in which Jews never came up, at least explicitly.

So what started it all?

Tapper earlier on Wednesday criticized Sarsour and the Womens March which she helped found for celebrating the birthday of Assata Shakur, a black militant convicted in the 1973 murder of a New Jersey State Trooper. She was jailed in 1977 and escaped in 1979, eventually fleeing to Cuba, where she lives today. Tapper responded to Sarsours birthday greetings by tweeting, Shakur is a cop-killer fugitive in Cuba. This, ugly sentiments from @lsarsour & @dykemarchchi Any progressives out there condemning this? He linked to a Womens March tweet marking Shakurs birthday.

The Womens March, in an extensive thread, had said that it was feting Shakur because of her role in repudiating sexism in the black nationalist movement, and did not endorse her role in the murder of the trooper.

Sarsour rejoined on Twitter, first with her gibe about Tapper joining the alt-right and then asking him directly: Please share my ugly sentiments? Unapologetically Muslim? Unapologetically Palestinian? Pro-immigrant? Pro-justice? Shame.

Tapper, replying, referred to Sarsours attacks on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the onetime Muslim who is now an outspoken critic of Islam. Ali has at times said her focus is only on militant Islam, but at other times has targeted the faith more broadly, earning herself a reputation in some quarters as an Islamaphobe.

In a now deleted 2011 tweet, Sarsour, comparing Ali to anti-Islam activist Brigitte Gabriel, had said: Brigitte Gabriel=Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Shes asking 4 an a$$ whippin. I wish I could take their vaginas away they dont deserve to be women. (Asked about the tweet recently, she said, People say stupid shit sometimes.)

That, Tapper said, was pretty vile addressed to Ali, a survivor of female genital mutilation.

So, nothing in this fight is Jewish, right?

Yair Rosenberg, the Tablet blogger, noted on Twitter that Tapper a graduate of Akiba Hebrew Academy in suburban Philadelphia who frequently celebrates his Jewish upbringing came in seventh among Jews in an Anti-Defamation League tally of journalists abused by the alt-right.

Beyond that, there are some hints of a Jewish subtext that Tapper was coming at this from the perspective of Jewish experience, and that Sarsour understood this. Certainly, Sarsour seemed, by lumping Tapper in with the alt-right, to be seeking to wound him in the way that some folks belittle some black men by referring to them as Uncle Toms.

Activist Linda Sarsour speaks during a Women For Syria gathering at Union Square, April 13, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images via JTA)

And Tapper, in his initial tweet pointing out progressive excesses, called out the Chicago Dyke March, for also wishing Shakur a happy birthday. Chicago Dyke Marchs only known controversy of late was its ejection of three Jewish marchers for bearing flags marked with the Star of David.

(Sarsour did not reply to a request for comment, and CNN did not reply to a request to interview Tapper.)

On the other hand, Tappers overarching outrage at the happy birthday greeting would appear to stem not from any animus toward Sarsour or anti-Zionists, per se, but toward Shakur. As an ABC reporter in 2011 he aggressively pursued a story about how unhappy New Jersey cops were that then US president Barack Obama had invited the rapper Common to the White House; Common had recorded a paean to Shakur. As recently as last year Tapper urged fellow journalists travelling to Cuba to ask Shakur if she wanted an interview.

Added bonus irony? Tapper, now reviled by US President Donald Trump and many of his followers who consider CNN hopelessly biased, earned kudos in 2011 from conservatives for holding Obamas feet to the fire.

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Linda Sarsour calls Jake Tapper 'alt-right' - The Times of Israel

Jack Posobiec, a prominent alt-right activistand promoter of right-wingconspiracy theories, on Thursday posteda video attheAuschwitz-Birkenau Memorial in responseto a list the Anti-Defamation League compiled associating him withthe so-called alt-right movement.

It would be wise of the ADL to remember the history of what happened the last time people started going around making lists of undesirables, Posobiec said in the video posted on Twitter.

To make those accusations on the hallowed ground of Auschwitz is offensive and twisted and, unfortunately, proves the point about our research, an ADL spokesperson told TPM by email.

Posobiec, who describes himself on Twitter as a filmmaker, and recovering political operative and promoted the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, took exception to the ADLs listassociating him with thefar-right movement.

The ADL described the so-called alt-right movement as a segment of the white supremacist movement consisting of a loose network of racists and anti-Semites who reject mainstream conservatism in favor of politics that embrace implicit or explicit racist, anti-Semitic and white supremacist ideology.

It listed Posobiec as a member of the alt lite, a loosely-connected movement whose adherents generally shun white supremacist thinking, but who are in step with the alt right in their hatred of feminists and immigrants, among others.

Posobiec railed against the list on Twitter, where heaccused the ADL of targeting Trump supporters with hate lists and called the whos-who a death list.

Josh Mandel, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio, on Thursday accused the ADL of becoming a partisan witchhunt group by publishing the list and declared solidarity with Posobiec and Mike Cernovich, another Twitter troll included on the list.

Comparing those who disagree with him to Nazis is not a new tactic for Posobiec, who accused audience members ata New York production of Shakespeares Julius Caesar starring a figure resembling President Donald Trumpof making minister of propaganda for the Nazi regime Joseph Goebbels proud.

In May, Reuters reported that Posobiec received White House press credentials.

A Republican member of Congress apologized earlier in July for usingthe gas chambers at Auschwitz as a settingto promote the U.S. military.

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'Pizzagate' Promoter Responds To ADL's Alt-Right List With Video From Auschwitz - TPM

The so-called alt-right rose to such prominence during the course of the 2016 presidential election, and was being mentioned in the media so frequently, that the Associated Press felt it necessary to issue guidelines on how to use the term. Just a few weeks after Donald Trumpwith support from the alt-rightbeat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, the AP said mention of the movement should always be accompanied by a definition, such as an offshoot of conservatism mixing racism, white nationalism and populism, or a white nationalist movement.

The movement has remained active and visible in the months since Trumps election and inauguration, but another group of right-wing activists has also emerged onto the scenethe alt-lite. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released a whos who guide to right-wing activists on Tuesday to define and differentiate between the two groups, and to identify several key figures associated with each.

In the past year, members of the alt right and alt lite have been increasingly at odds with each other, even as they hold public rallies to promote their extreme views, Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADLs CEO, said in a statement. We want people to understand who the key players are and what they truly represent.

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The ADL defines the alt-right (or alternative right) as a segment of the white supremacist movement that rejects mainstream conservatism and embraces racist, anti-Semitic and white supremacist ideology. Its a loose network whose members tend to be relatively young and active on the Internet and social media. The alt-lite, which is sometimes also referred to as the New Right, refuses to publicly support the white supremacist aspects of its counterparts beliefs. But members of the alt-lite do hate feminists, immigrants, Muslims and anyone on the left. In other words, the main differentiator between the two groups is the explicit racial component of their nationalism.

While the alt right has been around for years, the current iteration is still figuring out what it isand isnt, Oren Segal, director of ADLs Center on Extremism, said in a statement. This is further complicated by the emergence of the alt lite, which operates in the orbit of the alt right, but has rejected public displays of white supremacy. Both movements hateful ideologies are still somewhat fluid, as are the lines that separate them.

Nevertheless, the ADL has begun a whos who guide to both branches of right-wing activists, featuring 36 key figures to start. Some have been in the spotlight in recent months, while others are less familiar.

The alt-right list includes figures such as Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, who was recently sued by a Jewish woman in Whitefish, Montana, accused of orchestrating a troll storm of harassment and threats against her and her family. It also features Richard Spencer, the white supremacist who is credited with coining the term alternative right. Less than two weeks after the election, Spencer gave a speech at a conference of the National Policy Institute, of which he is president, that was met with Nazi salutes.

Milo Yiannopoulos, the well-known provocateur whose book was dropped by Simon & Schusterafter a controversy about comments he apparently made about pedophilia, is classified as an alt-lite figure here. Hes joined by Gavin McInnes, Proud Boys leader and founder of theFraternal Order of the Alt-Knights and Vice magazine, which heleft in 2008. A video he posted in March titled 10 Things I Hate About Jews sparked such controversy that he later changed the title to 10 Things I Hate About Israel.

The ADL plans to update the guide as new activists and leaders surface in the fluid landscape of right-wing figures.

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'Alt-Right' or 'Alt-Lite'? New Guide From ADL Classifies Right-Wing ... - Newsweek