Nearly every US senator was attending an unusual all-hands meeting on North Korea at the White House Wednesday amid an increasingly tense standoff with Pyongyang.
President Donald Trump is not leading the session, leaving that responsibility to top his national security officials. But he was sighted walking into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building just before 3 p.m. ET, when the briefing was scheduled to begin.
Expectations for the session varied among lawmakers, who are usually briefed on national security matters on Capitol Hill.
Some said they looked forward to hearing directly from Trump about his strategy moving forward. Others questioned why the session was occurring at the White House at all, suggesting the gathering could amount to a substance-free — and inconvenient — photo-op.
The varying expectations underscored the highly unusual nature of convening the session on White House grounds instead of on Capitol Hill. Administration officials said it was merely a logistical decision rather than an attempt to convey any particular message.
The White House said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will lead Wednesday’s briefing, set to occur in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the West Wing.
Lawmakers traveled together in a fleet of buses from across town to attend the hour-long mid-afternoon briefing. On Tuesday evening, Trump’s attendance at the meeting wasn’t yet confirmed. But by Wednesday, officials said the President was likely to make an appearance, but not offer lengthy or formal remarks.
Some senators planning to attend said they would welcome hearing from the commander in chief directly about North Korea, which analysts believe is preparing for a sixth nuclear test.
“(The White House) is an adequate place for the President and his national security team to brief everybody,” said Sen. John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tuesday morning. “Obviously an assessment of what could be the greatest threat that we’ve faced since the Cuban Missile Crisis — I think it’s very helpful to hear from the president of the United States.”
Another Republican, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, said the decision to hold the meeting at the White House should be interpreted as a pointed message.
“I think the President is sending a signal that this is important,” Cornyn said. “It’s not just a congressional meeting. The President himself will be part of it. I think we’re all happy to go to the White House and hear what he has to say as well as his national security leadership.”
Trump administration officials, however, downplayed any suggestion that holding the meeting on the White House campus was meant to convey any particular message. Instead, they characterized it as a logistical arrangement between Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“That meeting is a Senate meeting led by Leader McConnell, just utilizing our space,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said. “So that is their meeting. So we’re not there to talk strategy.”
A spokesman for McConnell said Tuesday that Trump himself offered the White House as a venue for the briefing after McConnell requested an administration update on North Korea.
“The President offered to host the meeting and the Majority Leader agreed,” said McConnell’s spokesman, David Popp.
The auditorium on the White House grounds is not typically used for large-scale national security briefings, but can be outfitted to accommodate classified discussions among the lawmakers and officials, a White House official said.
Senators are regularly briefed by the administration on national security issues, particularly those lawmakers who sit on committees with oversight of intelligence and national security agencies. But typically those briefings occur on Capitol Hill, where rooms are specially designed for that type of sensitive discussion.
“I, frankly, don’t understand why it’s not easier to bring four people here than it is to take 100 there,” said Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, on Capitol Hill Tuesday.
At Tuesday’s weekly Democratic caucus lunch, there was “grumbling” about the optics of senators being summoned to the White House, according to a person in the room.
“Is this a real briefing or is this another Trump dog-and-pony show? This feels very much that this is just a Trump request to hold a photo-op, it is totally outside the normal boundaries,” said a Democratic congressional aide, who also questioned the security of the White House auditorium.
“A (secure facility) exists (on Capitol Hill) for a reason,” the aide said. “Will he be treating this as a stunt, is that the approach that he is bringing the briefing or will this be a serious conversation about North Korea?”
Popp, McConnell’s spokesman, downplayed the notion that the setting is unusual and waved off some Democratic concerns over what they see as theatrics playing into the briefing.
“This is just like any other all-senators briefing. Just a different location,” Popp said.