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Donald Trump has drastically reduced the White House National Security Council shooting several officials, placing others with administrative license and ordering many secondes to return to their origin agencies.
Several people familiar with the firings said that the NSC, which is being temporarily administered by the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, had retained some staff members, mostly superior directors, while eliminating boxes of positions in the office.
The movement, which a person is described as a “liquidation”, occurs three weeks after the president dismissed Mike Waltz as his first national security advisor, the main position in the NSC.
The officials who lost their positions were notified on Friday afternoon. The movement followed weeks of speculation about imminent purge in the NSC.
The NSC Cabinet Chief Brian McCormack, sent an email to the officials shortly after 4 pm to tell him that the issue had 30 minutes to eliminate his belongings from his desks and leave the NSC building next to the White House.
He was uncle if Alex Wong, the deputy national security advisor, would have been dismissed. Laura Lomer, a theoretical right -wing theoretical one that helped persuade Trump to fire Waltz, has also been shooting for Wong, a very respected official with aggressive opinions about China.
Three people familiar with the dismissals said that Ivan Kanapathy, senior director of Asia, remained, but his entire team, including his China staff, had been fired. Loomer had also urged Trump to say goodbye to Kanapathy, a former combat pilot.
Robert O’Brien, who served as National Security Advisor at the Trump’s First Administration, recently wrote an opinion article that requested that the NSC be reduced to about 60 officials. The NSC, which has traditionally served as a coordination office, but has a leg used to centralize power in the White House, had more than 200 officials.
“There is no doubt that the NSC in the Biden Administration had inflated and was trying to implement policies instead of doing its traditional role in coordinating the implementation for the rest of the national security safety impatimentals.
“That said, there is a danger that a severely trimmed NSC does not have the power of executive fire to ‘rebaque the cats’ of the national security system.”
Some supporters said the measure would help Trump reducing the number of officials from other agencies that could not support their “make the United States again again.”
A person close to the White House said Trump had learned a lesson from his first administration when he came to believe that many NSC officials were silently blocking his agenda. “I wasn’t going to make the same mistake again,” said the person.
But others questioned the impact that purge would have on politics, and particularly the ability to arbitrate disagreements throughout the government.
“While it may seem like a limited bureaucratic movement because the purpose of the NSC is to serve the president, its importance is much more,” said a former NSC official.
“By reducing NSC personnel to almost nothing, the ability of the United States government is encouraged to generate foreign policy options, or to potentially act a brake on Trump’s preferences. Everything that remains is the presidential power.”
Trump also dismantled the majority or NSC direction that supervised the national security technology and policy, according to several people. The president previously fired David Feith, who led the office, which was created during the Biden administration.
This direction was essential to create export controls that were designed to make it difficult to make advanced American technology that could help the military.
The NSC did not comment. But Brian Hughes, NSC’s spokesman, said he would remain and “continue to serve the administration.” The White House Secretary did not respond to a request for comments.
Axios first reported that Trump would restructure the NSC.
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