President Donald Trump’s National Security Council is to undergo a drastic downsizing just weeks after the president replaced his national security adviser and handed his Secretary of State Marco Rubio the top job.
Trump and Rubio have laid out plans for a vast restructuring, significantly reducing the council’s staff and transferring many of its responsibilities to the State and Defense departments, Axios reported.
“It’s terrible. Less people means less control of the bureaucracy,” one former member of the NSC told CBS News.
The NSC is the key body typically advising the president on national security and foreign policy deliberations. Since taking office, the Trump team have increasingly seen it as overly bureaucratic and staffed by partisan workers who don’t share the president’s vision for the U.S.
“The NSC is the ultimate Deep State. It’s Marco vs. the Deep State. We’re gutting the Deep State,” a source told Axios.
Around half of the NSC’s 350 staff will be cut, with Rubio saying the changes will bring the agency “in line with its original purpose and the president’s vision.” At least 20 people within the department have been told they’ve been placed on administrative leave, sources told CBS. Further reassignments will take effect next week.
The move follows the firing of at least six NSC aides in early April who were presented to Trump by far-right activist Laura Loomer on a list of those suspected of disloyalty to the president.
The newly-departing staffers include Alex Wong, the principal deputy national security advisor who is being moved to another department. Wong was also one of Loomer’s top targets. Vice President JD Vance’s national security advisor, Andy Baker, is taking over from Wong, sharing the position with White House deputy chief of staff Robert Gabriel.
Rubio added the role of national security advisor to his Cabinet portfolio three weeks ago. He replaced Mike Waltz following the Signalgate fiasco which saw a journalist added to a group chat in which top officials were discussing military plans for an assault on Yemen.
Waltz was subsequently nominated by Trump as his pick for ambassador to the United Nations—which, in a musical chairs moment, sent the candidate originally tapped for that role, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, back to her House seat.
