bread and circus, sustenance and entertainment. so far all we have gotten in s the circus. for more, goo to cnn.com/fareed and read my washington post column this week and let s get started. president trump is set to be interviewing candidates to be his national security adviser after michael flynn exited the post on monday night after just 23 days in office. one potential replacement has already turned down the job. meanwhile, at the end of the week, a shakeup at the state department left many career officers anxious about what their future will be. so who is running national security at the u.s. government? let s ask three people who have held top jobs doing just that. tony blinken, averil hanes and elliot abrams were deputy national security advisers and
key positions in government. blinken was also deputy secretary of state under obama. he s now a global affairs analyst. hanes was previously the number two at the cia under obama. the first female deputy director at the agency and elliot abrams had many different senior roles at the national security council, including deputy national security adviser during the george w. bush administration. elliot, let me start with you to just ask you a question about your own personal story. you were effectively offered the deputy secretary of state job by rex tillerson, met with trump, with president trump and was then withdrawn. what happened? well, the president vetoed it which one has to say it s his absolute right to do. these are presidential appointments. but he looked back to the campaign and decided i d been too critical of him during the campaign, during the primary fight and snowed to tillerson. but what i m struck by is that there have been many people who
were critical of donald trump, betsy devos, he met with paul singer who effectively funded the entire never trump campaign. so it seems as if you re a billionaire or general you can have criticized him but nobody else. well, i m neat they are. tony blinken, let me ask you. the national security is run by the deputy committees, the deputy national security adviser shares the committee with the deputy secretary of state, deputy cia director. they run the government. push up the final decisions that need to be made by the president, secretary of state, et cetera. at this point you don t have a deputy secretary of state or