Revealed: Allies are grilling career intel staff to ensure total loyalty to Trump
Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with House Republicans at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Washington, DC, U.S. on November 13, 2024.
During his first term as president, Donald Trump clashed with a long list of non-MAGA conservatives he believed were insufficiently supportive of him — including former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, ex-White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, ex-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and former National Security Adviser John Bolton. But for his second administration, the president-elect is making a point of nominating loyalists who are less likely to question or challenge him.
In an article published on January 13, Associated Press (AP) journalists Aamer Madhani and Zeke Miller report that members of the incoming Trump Administration "have begun questioning career civil servants who work on the White House National Security Council about who they voted for in the 2024 election" as well as "their political contributions" and "social media posts."
A U.S. official, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told AP that Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Florida), Trump's choice for national security adviser, has indicated that he plans to purge the NSC of nonpolitical appointees by Inauguration Day if he doubts their loyalty to Trump.
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Madhani and Miller explain, "A wholesale removal of foreign policy and national security experts from the NSC on Day 1 of the new administration could deprive Trump's team of considerable expertise and institutional knowledge at a time when the U.S. is grappling with difficult policy challenges in Ukraine, the Mideast and beyond. Such questioning could also make new policy experts brought in to the NSC less likely to speak up about policy differences and concerns."
Jake Sullivan, national security adviser under outgoing President Joe Biden and a former Obama Administration official, fears that purging the NSC of well-qualified staffers could harm the U.S. from an intelligence standpoint.
Sullivan told AP, "Given everything going on in the world, making sure you have in place a team that is up to speed, and, you know, ready to continue serving at 12:01, 12:02, 12:03 p.m. on the 20th, is really important."
According to Madhani and Miller, another U.S. official — also interviewed on condition of anonymity — "told the AP that he was informed weeks ago by incoming Trump Administration officials that they planned on raising questions with career appointees that work at the White House, including those at the NSC, about their political leanings."
Sullivan told AP that historically, the NSC's priority has been hiring "the best of the best" — not screening applicants for their political views.
"When they are selected to come over," Sullivan said, "they're not selected based on their political affiliation or their policy opinions — they're selected based on their experience and capacity. And so we have a real diversity of people in terms of their views, their politics, their backgrounds."
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Read the full Associated Press article at this point.
