Featured photo screenshots from White House website. Public Domain.
In May, the Trump Administration took a buzzsaw to the bloated staff National Security Council (NSC), a downsizing that is long overdue. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, filling the role of National Security Advisor, was set to chop the staff of about 400 in half! Rubio is one of the driving forces behind Trump’s cleanup of career government workers in D.C. Rubio has advocated that Trump’s policy objectives, particularly on foreign policy, aren’t going to come from career insider staff. Well, the NSC is the nerve center of the “resistance” in D.C. to conservative leadership. One Trump 47 White House official observed that “the NSC is the ultimate Deep State.”
Mike Waltz was initially appointed as National Security Advisor, but quickly MAGA grassroots howled in protest over placing a neocon in this key role. On May 1, Trump astutely reassigned Waltz to be Ambassador to the United Nations, where he cannot entangle America in foreign wars.
Trump is right to have only staff who are loyal to his agenda and to him, as he is intimately familiar with the results otherwise. One example of that many of us know was Ukrainian-born (then the USSR) Alexander Vindman and his twin brother Eugene, who were in key positions on the NSC during the first Trump Administration. Eugene complained about Donald Trump’s “perfect call” with Zelensky, and his brother Alexander then testified against Trump during the first impeachment hearings.
At the beginning of Trump’s second term, the NSC orchestrated a bombing attack in Yemen during the opening weeks of the Trump administration. Vice President JD Vance rightly opposed such a move, but the NSC refused to listen.
It’s high time for accountability in the foreign policy career bureaucracies. America elects a commander-in-chief to direct our military and our foreign affairs. We should no longer tolerate unelected figures in the shadows deciding what wars our money will be spent on and what shores our sons will die on. Trump is fulling the America First mandate given to him last fall.
This post originally appeared at https://phyllisschlafly.com/national-sovereignty/america-first/trump-whacks-the-deep-state-2/
Phyllis Schlafly