What Fiona Hill Tells Us About Trump

Curt Mills

Politics, Americas

Trump’s cavalier approach to hiring advisors has boomeranged on him.

The explosive House testimony this week by former National Security Council aide Fiona Hill, a key former deputy to former national security advisors H. R. McMaster and John Bolton, was a key development in the Ukraine scandal engulfing the Trump White House. Hill relayed that John Bolton was deeply concerned by machinations in Ukraine being undertaken by unofficial advisors to the president, namely former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani. “I am not part of whatever drug deal [EU Ambassador Gordon] Sondland and [White House chief of staff Mick] Mulvaney are cooking up,” Hill said Bolton remarked. Hill took aim, in particular, at Sondland, whom she classified as a “security risk.” Sondland is something of a Johnny-come-lately to diplomacy.

Hill’s testimony was hailed on much of the Washington foreign policy circuit. Her admirers noted the length of the testimony. Tom Wright of the Brookings Institution, where Hill directed the Center on Europe and the United States until joining the administration, tweeted earlier this week: “Hour ten now. In awe of Fiona’s stamina and strength.” But how is it that an establishment figure such as Hill ever became a member of the Trump administration in the first place?

A former senior National Security Council official tells the National Interest that Hill “was a total pro” but “hated the sight of Trump.” Another former senior official on the National Security Council confirms that she was “the consummate professional, very easy to get along with, never made waves” and wryly notes that she had “impeccable timing” in resigning from the White House earlier this summer before Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Her tenure in the administration offers a striking example of how Trump’s inattention and indifference to the staffing of his administration has come to haunt him as congressional Democrats pursue an impeachment inquiry that is doing real damage to him and his presidency.