Trump reportedly nixes Elliott Abrams as State Department’s top deputy

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump has scrapped Elliott Abrams from the list of potential candidates to serve as deputy secretary of state, according to a CNN report that said the president was aggrieved by the veteran diplomat’s highly critical writings about him during the campaign.

Abrams, a figure of the Washington establishment and pro-Israel community, held multiple high-level positions in the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations. He was long cited as a top contender for the position.

Both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Trump’s Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner were reported to have strongly urged the hiring of Abrams, citing his vast foreign policy experience, but were unable to convince Trump after he learned of the his rebuke of him months ago.

In May 2016, Abrams penned an article for the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard titled “When You Can’t Stand Your Candidate,” which described the former reality television star as “someone who cannot win and should not be president of the United States.”

The piece was published shortly after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich dropped out of the GOP race, solidifying Trump’s victory as the party’s 2016 presidential nominee.

CNN cited a Republican source familiar with the matter who said Abrams was scrapped as a candidate for the job at State because of “Donald Trump’s thin skin and nothing else.”

The two met at the White House Tuesday about the position, and while that conversation reportedly went well, Trump then became familiar with Abrams’ critique of his candidacy and ruled out hiring him.

Trump has spoken harshly in the past of many foreign policies that Abrams played a critical role in crafting, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which Trump first supported but would later denounce.

Abrams, who is Jewish, is associated with neoconservatism, an ideology that favors interventionist foreign policies and democracy promotion around the globe — two core principles unaligned with Trump’s stated thinking. Abrams’ late wife, Rachel Decter Abrams, was the daughter of Norman Podhoretz, one of the movement’s founders.

During the Bush administration, Abrams served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, where his portfolio included the White House’s Middle East policy. During the Reagan administration, he was an assistant secretary of state; he pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress on the Iran-Contra scandal, but was pardoned by George H.W. Bush.

Abrams has also been affiliated with a number of Jewish and pro-Israel groups, including the American Jewish Committee, for which he was once a member of its National Advisory Council, and the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor.

He is currently a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.