Ben Carson Admits What Trump Won't: He's Not Qualified

Professor Eliot Cohen and former counsel to Condi Rice was asked by the teetering Trumpists to make recommendations on national security positions:

Eliot A. Cohen . . . said in an interview on Tuesday that a Trump transition aide asked him for recommendations for the national security team.

But when Mr. Cohen suggested the caveat that many foreign policy hands would only enlist if there were credible people leading national security agencies and departments, he said he received a vituperative email in response.

The tone of the email surprised him, he said, expressing a level of vengefulness at odds with an administration that is trying to fill important national security positions with qualified people.

“They think of these jobs as lollipops,” Mr. Cohen said. “I think we’re on the verge of a crisis here.”

In other news reported by the Times, Ben Carson will not be in the Trump Cabinet:

Ben Carson spent months trying to persuade voters to elect him president but, according to his spokesman, he does not think he is qualified to run a federal agency in the Trump administration.

According to Armstrong Williams, who is also Mr. Carson’s business manager, Mr. Trump offered the retired neurosurgeon a “buffet” of job options as a reward for being a loyal ally after dropping out of the race for the Republican nomination.

“The president-elect said, ‘Ben, tell me whatever you want to run, it will be yours,’” Mr. Williams recounted.

But Mr. Carson has no experience running large enterprises, Mr. Williams said, and did not think it would be a wise move to start in the new administration. Mr. Carson had been discussed as a candidate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education or to be surgeon general.